Sanskrit

[acharya]

<b>Prakrits (vernaculars, des'i), Sanskrit and Samskriti of Bhratam Janam</b>
By Dr. Srinivasan Kalyanaraman

Tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/hmpfl


The emphasis is on recuperating cultural authenticity of the subaltern from Sanskritic hegemony. These attacks against Sanskrit are grounded in the following beliefs:

There has been no connection between Sanskrit and Prakrit (and/or other vernacular languages of South Asia. This is because Sanskrit was entirely elitist and was never a spoken language and there were never any native speakers of it.

Sanskrit has been an effective instrument of creating a civilization (Sanskriti) built on Brahmanical hegemony and domination of the subaltern classes.

Sanskrit is a language of rites and rituals that are devoid of philosophical merit.

Sanskrit does not have the expressive spirit and temper of science and technology. Hence, to make Indians modern they must abandon it.

Sanskrit has no value to non-Hindu traditions. It would compromise secularism.

As a dead language, Sanskrit has no future in the world culture."

These attacks of Sheldon Pollock and Robert Goldman are variants of the attacks on Sanskrit and vernaculars launched by Macaulay when he introduced English education in the early years of the British colonial regime in Bharat. The terminology used is borrowed from two sources: 1. marxists' attack on the 'hegemony' of ruling classes in a universal explanation of history as a class struggle; and 2. christist proselytizers' attack on social discriminations targeting the so-called 'dalit' communities for conversions.

The dishonest nature of the attacks may be seen from the fact that both Sheldon Pollock and Robert Goldman indulge in suggestio falsi and suppressio veri. They suppress the fact that both Vyasa who is the author of the Mahabharata and Valmiki who is the author of the Ramayana are not Brahmins and hence cannot be accused of brahminical hegemony. Vyasa was the son of a fisherwoman. Valmiki was a hunter.