Back in the old days, we had skits in Sanskrit, Dixit reminisces. (Source: Express photo by Hamza Khan)
Written by Hamza Khan
| Posted: November 30, 2014 12:01 am
Hands in his pockets, a fresh saffron tilak on his forehead, and a
tuft of hair on one side, Om Narain Dixit paces the corridors of
Government Inter College in Unnao, a town 60 km from Lucknow.
It is 9 am and the first round of examinations for the day has just begun. In its abundance of trees, high ceilings, old furniture and an enormous playground, the college clings to the old world. As Dixit, in a maroon sweater, black trousers and canvas shoes, passes by a classroom, he notices an invigilator scolding a youth. “This generation is uncultured as we have forsaken our values, and Sanskrit,” says the 58-year-old.
Like other government colleges, the students here are taught Sanskrit as part of the Hindi syllabus. Dixit is one of four teachers— among a total of 27 for 817 students — who teach Sanskrit at the college. “Students are not interested in the subject, as apart from teaching, it offers no job opportunity. That means fewer Sanskrit teachers, who teach even fewer students each year,” he says grimly.
“Back in the old days,” Dixit says, his face now lighting up, “we would have plays and skits in Sanskrit. Unnao district has 2.5 lakh Brahmins. The area along the Ganga, from here till Rae Bareli, is called Baiswara. It has historically been home to seers and Sanskrit practitioners,” he says.
Dixit attributes the decline of the language to not only “uninterested students who bunk Sanskrit classes” but also “purohits (priests) who run after money, focusing not on katha or pravachan but on how to milk money from people”. He weaves spirituality and discipline with Sanskrit, saying that “reading Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit impacts the soul in ways its translation never would”.
Seeing students hurl abuses while playing cricket on the college ground, Dixit sighs, “Discipline is taught at home by parents, and it comes through Sanskrit but now parents themselves cannot compose a sentence in Sanskrit.”
Dixit practises the discipline he preaches. A resident of Kanpur, he wakes up at 4.30 am every day, goes for a 5-km walk at 5 am and meets “fellow” RSS workers in between. The next hour is devoted to snan and puja. He then goes to the railway station to catch a Kanpur-Lucknow local, Unnao falling in between the two.
The 25-km ride takes half an hour and he is usually in college an hour before classes begin at 8.50 am. For the past three decades, this has been his routine and what has kept him agile, he says.
It’s noon and the first shift of exams has ended. Dixit retires to his office — a small room with a bed, a table, a chair, a wash basin, and a fast-peeling wall plastered with pictures of Gandhi, Nehru, B R Ambedkar, and goddess Saraswati. He unpacks his tiffin for lunch.
As principal, a charge he assumed this July, Dixit’s day is spent signing some paper or the other. When not in office, he teaches Hindi and Sanskrit, taking two classes of the latter each week. In Classes XI and XII, he teaches from only one book, Sanskrit Digdarshika, which has 21 chapters on basic Sanskrit. “Only seven chapters are taught in Classes XI and XII each. The Secondary Education Department found the other chapters too tough, so they’ve been taken off.”
Dixit gets many visitors to his room. Pratap Singh, a visually challenged Sanskrit teacher, walks in and joins Dixit in lamenting the decline of the language. “First the Mughals, then the British, and now the government wants to finish Sanskrit,” he says. Crime, he says, has increased because “Sanskrit is no longer valued”. “The word sanskriti (culture) is derived from Sanskrit,” he explains.
Dr A K Dixit, the former principal and now politician, also shows up. Elections to the Legislative Council are approaching and Dr Dixit has brought voter forms to be attested by the principal. About two decades ago, he says he was among those who had protested on the streets “against the UP government’s decision to classify Sanskrit as a regional language.” As O N Dixit signs the voter forms, they all agree on the need to preserve Sanskrit. “The whole society is responsible for Sanskrit’s decline. In weddings, we hesitate to part with a few hundred rupees for the priest who does the puja, but easily give eunuchs thousands of rupees,” says Dr Dixit.
They now have some hopes for Sanskrit’s revival from PM Narendra Modi, who addressed a rally from the college in April, and whose government has replaced German with Sanskrit as the third language across Kendriya Vidyalayas. Dixit, though, feels, “the only way to revive learning Sanskrit is to make it a compulsory subject”.
Dixit agrees with the idea that “anybody who studies Sanskrit never commits suicide”, espoused by Sanskrit Shikshak Sangh, a body of Sanskrit teachers who had moved the Delhi High Court to replace German with Sanskrit in KVs. He explains, “Those who study Sanskrit take interest in our ancient knowledge, strive to live according to those ideals and thus have a reason to live.”
As the second shift of examination begins, Dixit takes another round of the college. Walking down the corridor, he says he is happy with the exam pattern where half the marks in the Hindi paper for Classes XI and XII are reserved for Sanskrit. “But the paper should go beyond asking grammatical questions,” he says.
Teaching, he says, runs in the family. “My father, my two brothers, three of my uncles, my daughter-in-law — all have been or are teachers,” he says keenly. One of his sons teaches mathematics in Unnao while the other is an Air Force sergeant posted in Chennai. He isn’t worried his sons studied Sanskrit only till Class XII. “My children are cultured, my wife and elder son wake up with me at 4.30 am, my younger son assists the priest at the temple, and my daughter-in-law reads the Ramayana regularly, all because I learnt about our culture from our books — written in Sanskrit — which I’ve passed on to them,” he says.
The exam is over at 2.30 pm, but Dixit stays back for “banter” at his office as the train to Kanpur is at 4.30 pm.
At 4.15pm, Dixit leaves for the railway station. By now, his tilak is just a smudge on his forehead. The daily commute over the years means Dixit has many friends and acquaintances on the train. At home, he says some colleagues give tuitions but not him. “Nobody wants to take tuition for Sanskrit,” he shrugs.
After catching up with news on TV, Dixit takes his dinner at 8 pm and by 9, is in his bed. “I’ve learnt my Sanskrit,” he says.
Read Comments on this
It is 9 am and the first round of examinations for the day has just begun. In its abundance of trees, high ceilings, old furniture and an enormous playground, the college clings to the old world. As Dixit, in a maroon sweater, black trousers and canvas shoes, passes by a classroom, he notices an invigilator scolding a youth. “This generation is uncultured as we have forsaken our values, and Sanskrit,” says the 58-year-old.
Like other government colleges, the students here are taught Sanskrit as part of the Hindi syllabus. Dixit is one of four teachers— among a total of 27 for 817 students — who teach Sanskrit at the college. “Students are not interested in the subject, as apart from teaching, it offers no job opportunity. That means fewer Sanskrit teachers, who teach even fewer students each year,” he says grimly.
“Back in the old days,” Dixit says, his face now lighting up, “we would have plays and skits in Sanskrit. Unnao district has 2.5 lakh Brahmins. The area along the Ganga, from here till Rae Bareli, is called Baiswara. It has historically been home to seers and Sanskrit practitioners,” he says.
Dixit attributes the decline of the language to not only “uninterested students who bunk Sanskrit classes” but also “purohits (priests) who run after money, focusing not on katha or pravachan but on how to milk money from people”. He weaves spirituality and discipline with Sanskrit, saying that “reading Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita in Sanskrit impacts the soul in ways its translation never would”.
Seeing students hurl abuses while playing cricket on the college ground, Dixit sighs, “Discipline is taught at home by parents, and it comes through Sanskrit but now parents themselves cannot compose a sentence in Sanskrit.”
Dixit practises the discipline he preaches. A resident of Kanpur, he wakes up at 4.30 am every day, goes for a 5-km walk at 5 am and meets “fellow” RSS workers in between. The next hour is devoted to snan and puja. He then goes to the railway station to catch a Kanpur-Lucknow local, Unnao falling in between the two.
The 25-km ride takes half an hour and he is usually in college an hour before classes begin at 8.50 am. For the past three decades, this has been his routine and what has kept him agile, he says.
It’s noon and the first shift of exams has ended. Dixit retires to his office — a small room with a bed, a table, a chair, a wash basin, and a fast-peeling wall plastered with pictures of Gandhi, Nehru, B R Ambedkar, and goddess Saraswati. He unpacks his tiffin for lunch.
As principal, a charge he assumed this July, Dixit’s day is spent signing some paper or the other. When not in office, he teaches Hindi and Sanskrit, taking two classes of the latter each week. In Classes XI and XII, he teaches from only one book, Sanskrit Digdarshika, which has 21 chapters on basic Sanskrit. “Only seven chapters are taught in Classes XI and XII each. The Secondary Education Department found the other chapters too tough, so they’ve been taken off.”
Dixit gets many visitors to his room. Pratap Singh, a visually challenged Sanskrit teacher, walks in and joins Dixit in lamenting the decline of the language. “First the Mughals, then the British, and now the government wants to finish Sanskrit,” he says. Crime, he says, has increased because “Sanskrit is no longer valued”. “The word sanskriti (culture) is derived from Sanskrit,” he explains.
Dr A K Dixit, the former principal and now politician, also shows up. Elections to the Legislative Council are approaching and Dr Dixit has brought voter forms to be attested by the principal. About two decades ago, he says he was among those who had protested on the streets “against the UP government’s decision to classify Sanskrit as a regional language.” As O N Dixit signs the voter forms, they all agree on the need to preserve Sanskrit. “The whole society is responsible for Sanskrit’s decline. In weddings, we hesitate to part with a few hundred rupees for the priest who does the puja, but easily give eunuchs thousands of rupees,” says Dr Dixit.
They now have some hopes for Sanskrit’s revival from PM Narendra Modi, who addressed a rally from the college in April, and whose government has replaced German with Sanskrit as the third language across Kendriya Vidyalayas. Dixit, though, feels, “the only way to revive learning Sanskrit is to make it a compulsory subject”.
Dixit agrees with the idea that “anybody who studies Sanskrit never commits suicide”, espoused by Sanskrit Shikshak Sangh, a body of Sanskrit teachers who had moved the Delhi High Court to replace German with Sanskrit in KVs. He explains, “Those who study Sanskrit take interest in our ancient knowledge, strive to live according to those ideals and thus have a reason to live.”
As the second shift of examination begins, Dixit takes another round of the college. Walking down the corridor, he says he is happy with the exam pattern where half the marks in the Hindi paper for Classes XI and XII are reserved for Sanskrit. “But the paper should go beyond asking grammatical questions,” he says.
Teaching, he says, runs in the family. “My father, my two brothers, three of my uncles, my daughter-in-law — all have been or are teachers,” he says keenly. One of his sons teaches mathematics in Unnao while the other is an Air Force sergeant posted in Chennai. He isn’t worried his sons studied Sanskrit only till Class XII. “My children are cultured, my wife and elder son wake up with me at 4.30 am, my younger son assists the priest at the temple, and my daughter-in-law reads the Ramayana regularly, all because I learnt about our culture from our books — written in Sanskrit — which I’ve passed on to them,” he says.
The exam is over at 2.30 pm, but Dixit stays back for “banter” at his office as the train to Kanpur is at 4.30 pm.
At 4.15pm, Dixit leaves for the railway station. By now, his tilak is just a smudge on his forehead. The daily commute over the years means Dixit has many friends and acquaintances on the train. At home, he says some colleagues give tuitions but not him. “Nobody wants to take tuition for Sanskrit,” he shrugs.
After catching up with news on TV, Dixit takes his dinner at 8 pm and by 9, is in his bed. “I’ve learnt my Sanskrit,” he says.
Read Comments on this
No comments:
Post a Comment