Clash between Smriti Irani's adviser and country's only Sanskrit newspaper over language quality

NEW DELHI: While the Centre is making special efforts for the promotion of Sanskrit, a spat has broken out between Human Resources Minister Smriti Irani’s adviser on the language, Chamu Krishna Shastry, and Sajal Sandesh, said to be the country’s only regularly published Sanskrit newspaper.

So much so that complaint letters against Shastry have been shot off by the newspaper’s editors to PM Narendra Modi as well as the I&B and HRD ministries.

Shastry is a Sanskrit scholar and cofounder and organising secretary of the Samskrita Bharti, an RSS-affiliated movement to popularise Sanskrit in the country. Shastry has been engaged as a consultant/adviser to the HRD ministry on honorary basis.

Sajal Sandesh – edited by Rakesh Mishra – is registered as a Sanskrit weekly with the Registrar of Newspapers, is published from Delhi and claims a circulation of 27,000. Incidentally, it was set up two years back when the Kendriya Vidyalayas had decided to remove Sanskrit from the list of optional subjects.

At the centre of the conflict is the quality of the ancient language used in the newspaper. While Shastry is said to have raised certain points about the quality of the language used, the newspaper management has not taken to the advice kindly and has alleged that the adviser to Irani has threatened them with closure.

Shastry and the HRD ministry denied the allegation. "There is no such issue there. We should work unitedly for the cause of Sanskrit. They are also good people. I have no personal issues against them. Opinion of quality can differ and it was an exchange at a personal level - not for the public," Shastry told ET.

The HRD ministry on the other hand alleged that a representative of the weekly was even attempting to "extort financial support" from the ministry.

"The representative of Sajal Sandesh was using pressurising tactics to extort financial support from the ministry and threatened else to lodge complaints," Ghanshyam Goel, spokesperson for the HRD ministry, told ET.

Sajal Sandesh editor Mishra denied the ministry’s claims.

"These are absolutely baseless and we reject these allegations. Chamu Shastry is trying to divide the Sanskrit community into north and south," he told ET.