New Delhi, April 3: Union Human resource Development Minister Smriti Irani has despatched an advisory to the premier Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) to consider offering elective courses in ancient Indian languages to their students. The advisory was sent on Thursday and requests the IITs to create posts and appoint teachers for the courses, with the approval of their respective Board of Governors, reported the Indian Express. The advisory is based on a report by an expert panel headed by former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami.
The Express report said that the panel had economist and NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy, PM Narendra Modi’s yoga guru H R Nagendra and UGC chairman Ved Prakash as members, and was given the job of preparing a radmap for the promotion of Sanskrit. The report suggested setting up of Sanskrit cells in IITs, NITs, IISERs and central universities, across the country. Also Read: Indian-American couple donate $3.5 million to further Sanskrit studies at University of Chicago
The cells would serve the purpose of facilitating “the student of science and technology in Sanskrit literature and inter-disciplinary study of various modern subjects and its corresponding subjects in Sanskrit literature”, said the report. Explaining the purpose of such cells, it further said, “Atharavaveda, Vaisheshika Darshana etc. are, it is acknowledged, the treasure house of scientific concepts which are hitherto studied from Science point of view… The proposed cell should also offer various types of Sanskrit Courses for the students in the campus for credits.” Also Read: Hindu students are in majority in this Madrasa; Learn Sanskrit, Arabic with Muslim students
This is however, not the first time that the HRD Ministry has sent such an advisory. According to the Express report, in July 2000, the Ministry had issued a notification to consider introducing Sanskrit courses in 40 institutes, including IITs and IISCs, under the government of NDA-1. Since then, several IITs did ,ake efforts to integrate knowledge of ancient Indian texts in mainstream engineering curriculum.