Iyam Akashvani. Samprati Vartaha Shruyantam.
These are the first words you will hear every morning and evening if
you tune in to Akashvani’s, or All India Radio’s (AIR’s), Sanskrit news.
The announcement in Sanskrit goes, “This is Akashvani. You are now
listening to the news.”
Who
is the announcer talking to? If you were to round up all the Sanskrit
speakers in Delhi, or even the country, they might not fill up even
one-fourth of the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium. According to the 2001
census, the latest figures available, they number 14,135. More Indians
speak regional languages like Dogri and Bodo than Sanskrit, one of the
22 official languages listed in the Constitution.
Yet
the Delhi studio of AIR broadcasts a Sanskrit news bulletin twice
daily. “To my knowledge, this is India’s only such regular bulletin,”
says Divyanand Jha, a Sanskrit newsreader on AIR.
Greek to me: The Sanskrit Team. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint.
Perhaps it’s not such a surprise—the motto of the public service broadcaster in Sanskrit is: “
Bahujan hitaya, bahujan sukhaya (
the welfare of many, the happiness of many)”
And there is a message that the newsreaders do not read out loud: that
AIR dares to go where others will not, that the service has more to do
with the preservation of a rich linguistic heritage than with making
money.
“It
is fashionable to dismiss AIR as a government mouthpiece,” says
Rajendra Chugh, the celebrated chief Hindi newsreader at Akashvani who
retired in September. “But can the film music-dominated FM channels,
owned by profit-obsessed corporate companies, dare to run a service in
Sanskrit?”
“The
Sanskrit news broadcast from AIR’s Delhi headquarters is an attempt to
keep alive the spirit of ancient India,” says Jha. “These 5-minute
bulletins carry forward the heritage of the Vedas, Upanishads, Valmiki Ramayan, Kamasutra, and Vastu Shastra, all of which were in Sanskrit.”
G.
Mohanty, director general (news), AIR, puts it fittingly, “Being a
public broadcaster, we cater also to those who are not catered to by the
market.”
The
first Sanskrit bulletin on AIR was broadcast in 1974, at 9am on 30
June, almost four decades after the national radio service started in
1936. Why did AIR take so long? Baldevananda Sagar, a veteran of
Akashvani’s Sanskrit newsroom, who also retired this year, explains:
“One of the characteristics of our country is that we take note of our
rich talents and traditions only after they are recognized in the West.
The same happened with Sanskrit.
A news manuscript for the evening bulletin. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint
“In
the 1960s, when a group of Parliament members toured Germany, they
discovered a radio station there regularly broadcast programmes in
Sanskrit. They returned to Delhi and demanded something similar in the
home-land of Sanskrit. The AIR bulletin began after seven years of
lobbying in Parliament.”
In
fact, Sanskrit was the last language to be taken up by AIR’s news
service division. It followed Sindhi in 1967, and Nepali in 1971. Today,
according to its website, AIR, which reaches 92% of the area and 99.19%
of the population, broadcasts 647 bulletins daily, or more than 57
hours, in 90 languages and dialects. Of these, 178 bulletins are
transmitted daily from Delhi in 33 languages. Sanskrit is broadcast from
the new Akashvani building on Sansad Marg.
“Our Sanskrit news is called sanskritvartaha, not samachar,” says Jha, “which is a Sanskrit word often used to describe Hindi news, but which actually means ‘good behaviour’.”
The
Sanskrit broadcast follows the AIR news format for other “language
bulletins”. There are usually two people in each shift; one translates
the English news text sent in by an editor to all the language desks,
and another reads the script on air. The total strength of the Sanskrit
desk is 10; all the staff members are casual
newsreaders-cum-translators, from young people in their 20s to scholars
in their 60s.
Sagar was the last regular reader of the Sanskrit news bulletin. His name is spoken in hushed tones among the “casuals”. A shastri
(graduate) from the Varanasi Sanskrit University, he was one of the
first three Sanskrit speakers recruited as permanent employees by AIR.
Post-retirement, he was appointed director of the Kalidasa Akademi in
Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, but he is still invited to read Akashvani
bulletins every time he is in Delhi to visit his family.
A
Gujarati Brahmin, he says, “The perception of Sanskrit is that it
belongs only to upper-caste Hindus, especially the Brahmins.” As it
happens, every person I talked to for this story happened to be a
Brahmin. Sagar, however, says “The AIR bulletins are taking the language
beyond such limitations.” That might be one of the biggest
accomplishments: pulling the language out of the rut of religious ritual
and making people aware of its rich intonation and phonetics, of the
sheer pleasure of speaking and hearing it.
Indeed,
Divyanand Jha, who reads the Sanskrit news three- four days a week,
claims to get “fan mail” from listeners of all backgrounds in India, and
even Australia, Germany and the US. “You will be surprised to know that
a number of people are learning Sanskrit from our bulletins,” he says.
This could be because the AIR website has not only the latest broadcasts
of its language bulletins, but also the scripts for those bulletins.
“By listening to and reading the news, you can work on your
pronunciation,” says Jha.
A
more serious student of the language can go well beyond Akashvani. The
government-funded Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, a deemed university in
west Delhi’s Janakpuri, offers courses in Sanskrit. Samskrita Bharati,
in central Delhi’s Jhandewalan, has volunteers promoting the language
across India. Both offer correspondence courses. The number of scholars
is small, but their dedication to the language is significant.
“Delhi
university has about 400 Sanskrit students, out of which about half are
reading it in post-graduation programmes,” says Prof. Mithilesh Kumar
Chaturvedi, head of the department of Sanskrit, faculty of arts. “Many
take the language at the BA level, if they cannot get admission into
other streams, since here the supply (of seats) is more than the demand.
However, the master’s students are more focused—most of them intend to
make their career in teaching Sanskrit in schools and colleges. A few
study it intently because it is a scoring subject in competitive tests,
such as the entrance exams for civil services.”
The
AIR bulletins do more than just provide psychological comfort to those
who care about Sanskrit. Pankaj K Mishra, an associate professor of
Sanskrit at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, who has been reading on the
radio for more than a decade, says, “The daily news helps us to
modernize and update this classical language.”
In
2010, AIR’s Sanskrit news desk began to maintain a register called
Nutan Shabdawali. It is a work-in-progress dictionary of words that the
team members invent while translating the new terms that crop up. It is
much the same practice as the inclusion of new words in the Oxford English Dictionary—a sign of moving with the times. “We invented antarjalam for Internet and vityadhrit vartaha for paid news,” says Jha. “One day, this dictionary might become museum material.”
The sanskritvartaha on
AIR is one of many efforts under the radar of popular culture to make
the language contemporary. In 1994, Doordarshan started Sanskrit
bulletins on its national channel. India has at least three Sanskrit
newspapers, both print and online. Sudharma has been published from Mysore for over 40 years, while Sanskrit Vartman Patram and Vishwasya Vrittantam
were started in Gujarat over the last five years. “We also have 90
weeklies, fortnightlies and quarterlies,” says Sagar, “offering
political commentaries, literary
criticism and stories and poetry in Sanskrit.”
In
a way, the people behind Akashvani’s Sanskrit news are battling to make
the language relevant today. And they are not the moth-eaten pandits
one might associate with ancient languages. Jha, for instance, is in
his late 20s, a guitarist who composes songs in Sanskrit. His elder
brother Parmanand, who also reads the news on AIR, is an award-winning
poet, his Sanskrit verses touching on themes such as the Kashmir
conflict and urban life. Both have day jobs as Sanskrit teachers; the
money they earn from a 2-hour shift at the AIR is a paltry Rs.340.
“We don’t read the bulletin to pay our bills,” says Divyanand. “We do
it because this work at AIR has taken us to the forefront of how
Sanskrit is being shaped and spread in today’s world.” Parmanand adds,
“This gives us immense satisfaction.”
Some of us might feel similarly, every day at 6.55am and 7.10pm.
mayank.s@livemint.com
