Thousands of secondary and primary schools across the country will observe Sanskrit week in August this year. The HRD Ministry-controlled Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has issued a circular to its affiliated schools asking them to promote Sanskrit in various ways, including screening of films on Bhagavad Gita,
Adi Shankaracharya, etc, on their premises. The CBSE has said it is committed towards promoting the teaching and learning of Sanskrit, the mother of all languages, through the use of technology. The board has directed schools to record Sanskrit-related activities and upload them on the CBSE website. They have also been asked to screen Sanskrit films on Adi Shankaracharya and Bhagavad Gita and play songs on Mudraraksasa, etc, in school auditoriums.
“Schools affiliated to CBSE may celebrate Sanskrit week on an experimental basis by conducting activities connected to the real world. The objective of celebrating the week may be to provide an opportunity to schools, teachers and students to come out, share their knowledge of Sanskrit and learn it from each other,” says the CBSE circular dated June 30.
The module will have activities structured for teachers and schools and programmes like laghubhashnam (short speech), Kavita Rachna, (writing poems), essay competitions, Sanskrit Shlokas Antakshri, Yuva Sansad, etc, will be for the students who may upload clippings of their activities on WhatsApp on a dedicated mobile number provided by the CBSE.
“The celebration of Sanskrit week would be a medium for popularising Sanskrit and other languages and cultural heritages of India. The schools will have to encourage the students to use their computing skills in association with Sanskrit to develop Apps/Games based on the ancient language. Sanskrit and Indian culture are entwined as most of the indigenous knowledge is available in this language,” said the circular asking the schools to commence the programme in the second week of August and then prepare for a national-level competition.
For the teachers, guidelines have been provided for establishing links of Sanskrit with modern Indian languages and international languages. Teachers may be asked to carry out research on establishing links/genesis of any of the above mentioned languages with Sanskrit, says the circular.