Government plans Sanskrit push ahead of Lok Sabha elections

NEW DELHI: The Centre is looking at a big push for Sanskrit by according central university status for three deemed-to-be universities, with months to go before the Lok Sabha elections.

The HRD ministry is preparing to move Cabinet to accord the status to Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, both based in Delhi, besides Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, which is located in Tirupati. Minister Prakash Javadekar is learnt to have approved the plan, ET has learnt.

India has 41 central universities.


The coveted status, conferred by an Act of Parliament, brings considerable prestige and a degree of autonomy. The government has made a strong pitch for Sanskrit in the education system since 2014 when it took charge. Former HRD minister Smriti Irani even had Kendriya Vidyalayas drop German for Sanskrit and proposed the language as an elective at the IITs. She had also floated the idea of elevating the Sanskrit institutes to central university status.

The move is being justified on the grounds that while there are already two language-specific central universities — the English and Foreign Language University (EFLU) and the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU), both in Hyderabad — there isn’t a single Sanskrit-based central university.

Delhi’s Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan has expanded in major fashion with affiliates numbering over 60 institutions.

An exception had been made for the Sansthan under this government, which waived clauses in the deemed university regulations in 2015 to allow the institute to set up more than the permitted number of off-campus centres.