can’t Sanskrit be official language?’

First India Bureau Nagpur: Former Chief Justice of India Sharad Bobde on Friday batted for Sanskrit as the country’s official language, including for use in courts.

Even the architect of the Constitution and eminent jurist BR Ambedkar had proposed it, as per media reports from 1949, he said at an event in Nagpur.

“Hindi and English are used as official languages in governance and courts as per law, while every chief justice receives representa- tions seeking nod to introduce respective regional languages, which is now a reality in the district level judiciary and some high courts,” said Bobde. He was speaking at the Akhil Bharatiya Chhatra Sammelan organized by Sanskrit Bharti.

At the level of the high court, the official language is English, though many HCs have had to allow applications, petitions and even documents in regional languages, he said. “Newspapers of September 11, 1949 have reported that Dr Ambed-

Acknowledgement

kar initiated the move to have Sanskrit as the official language of the Union of India. Sanskrit vocabulary is common to a lot of our languages.

The language will have to be taught as a language without any religious connotation.

Like English is taught in professional courses. A vocabulary (will need to be) created and the language added to the Official Languages Act.

I ask myself this question as to why Sanskrit cannot be the official language as Dr Ambedkar had proposed,” said the former CJI.

Bobde said introducing Sanskrit would not amount to introducing any religion, as 95% of the language has nothing to do with any religion. It deals with issues related to philosophy, law, science, literature, phonetics, architecture, astronomy etc.

Citing a research paper by a NASA scientist, Bobde also stated that Sanskrit was found to be most suited for computers.

He further said that Sanskrit is possibly the only language which can co-exist with our regional languages.