In an attempt to preserve and promote the 3500-year-old ancient Indian heritage, Union HRD Minister, Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ Thursday confirmed that at least two Sanskrit-speaking villages must be developed near the central institutes.

Chairing a meeting with heads of central language institutions, the HRD minister said these language institutions must be fundamentally strong and efficient and all vacancies need to be filled to promote all Indian vernaculars effectively.

He directed ministry officials to meet heads of these institutions on a regular basis.

Pokhriyal said highly qualified Sanskrit teachers/professors should be engaged to give new dimensions to the language.

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Furthering that the ministry will establish ‘Bhasha Bhawan’, in which all the major Indian languages will have their representative offices and that more and more literature in various Indian languages must be translated into foreign languages so as to create a global base of readers, the former Uttrakhand CM also stressed on the importance of creating at least two Sanskrit-speaking villages near institutions promoting and preserving the language in the country and abroad.

As of now the only three central institutes promoting the more than 3500-year-old language are the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan, Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha in Delhi and the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha in Tirupati.

The Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan has 13 campuses while state governments have their respective institutes.

In the meeting with vice-chancellors, which was also attended by Secretary of Higher Education R Subrahmanyam, Pokhriyal reviewed the current practices at the universities, infrastructure, maintenance and human resource related matters.

Expressing concern over vacancies, Pokhriyal directed the UGC to develop a mechanism to fill them quickly, so that the young generation may get a quality education.

The Union Minister, who will be on a two-day Uttarakhand visit from Friday, stressed that the universities should focus on skill-based and job-oriented education to overcome the challenge of unemployment in the country.

In a similar attempt, the Uttar Pradesh government in February 2019, while presenting the state budget had given special emphasis on promoting the Sanskrit language. It had allocated Rs 242 crores for grants to Sanskrit Pathshalas in the state. Another 30 crores had been allotted to provide a grant to aided Sanskrit schools and degree colleges.

The Kashi Vidyapeeth received Rs 21 crores for promoting education in Sanskrit while Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya got an amount of Rs 21.51 crores. The Vedic Vigyan Centre at Banaras Hindu University was granted Rs 16 crores. This was the biggest allotment to any research centre by the state government in a decade.