New Delhi: From helping students pick up computer and app innovation skills, to exploring tourism as a course — the Central Sanskrit University (CSU), the Union government’s nodal agency for the implementation of Sanskrit-related policies & schemes, is working to make its students more eligible for the modern job market.
Currently, the employability options available to students passing out of such institutions is limited, with many going on to become astrologers or teachers.
CSU, located in Delhi’s Janakpuri area, was set up in 1970 as the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. Back then, it was a deemed university. It was recognised as a central university in 2020, when the Central Sanskrit Universities Act, 2020 was passed, with two other institutes earning the same status.
With 8 schools and 29 departments, CSU Janakpuri has over 7,000 students enrolled for various programmes. It is the leading institution among the 12 Sanskrit higher education institutions in India.
According to CSU Vice-Chancellor Shrinivasa Varakhedi, the focus of the university is to ensure that students pursuing Sanskrit should not feel left out of the contemporary mainstream job and skilling ecosystem.
The initiative to broaden the horizons for students was thus started last year.
“This is being done in order to overcome the previous perception that Sanskrit students can only pursue the profession of being Sanskrit teachers or pandits,” he added.
According to the V-C, of the 2,500 students who graduate every year, approximately 500-700 turn to careers in jyotish vidya (astrology) and vastu (a system that claims to offer architectural tips for peace and prosperity).
With higher education regulator University Grants Commission’s (UGC’s) focus on the ‘Indian Knowledge System’, the perception of Sanskrit is changing, he said.
“Sanskrit is one of the most ancient languages the world over and many languages find origins of their base vocabulary in Sanskrit. Now, it is our job to make our students skilled enough to fit into the contemporary job market,” he added.
“Just as all English literature graduates don’t become English professors, similarly we want to diversify the bouquet of job options for our graduates as well,” he said.
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The skilling endeavour
As part of the employment initiative, students of various language and Vedic departments at CSU are collaborating with the departments of computer science and natural languages to develop Sanskrit apps, including for language tutorials, and websites.
According to Kalyani Phagre, a student at Delhi’s CSU who finished her Master’s in Sanskrit in 2017 and is currently involved with the institute’s skilling endeavour, the “jyotish (astrology) branch students are also working with tech experts on developing an app which has the Hindu calendar, also known as the panchang”.
She said “many universities the world over have started exploring the use of Sanskrit as a language for coding”.
“Similar studies on trying to develop a coding language that is based on Sanskrit are also being done by the students of the computer science department in our university,” Phagre added.
Students are also being encouraged to enrol for the computer literacy programme offered by the university.
The programme has three levels — basic computer literacy and tech skills, advanced courses on app and website development, and futuristic tech including topics like machine translation and other technology that can be used for developing translation softwares for different languages.
In addition to this, the university is exploring opportunities for tie-ups with Indian language publishers to have students work with them. Another avenue of exploration is tourism and hotel management, and the possibility of adding the fields as possible skilling courses from the upcoming academic session.
Then, there is theatre, which is another key focus area of the skilling initiative. Earlier this year, a team of 10 Sanskrit theatre performers — including from CSU — travelled to London and Dublin in 2023 to perform a comedy play.
“It was rather reassuring to perform in front of an international audience who appreciated the language and the emotions it embodies,” said Phagre, who was part of the team.
As a trained Odissi dancer and theatre artiste, she added, “I conduct workshops on body movement, acting and stage design”. “It has opened up an entirely new vocation for me,” she added.
Efforts underway at other universities too
Similar efforts have been made at other colleges as well, for example, Ujjain’s Maharshi Panini Sanskrit Evam Vedic Vishwavidyalaya.
A professor at the university, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint, “We have diploma courses in computers and other contemporary subjects, and students who wish to expand their scope of work often sign up for these courses.
“However, joining their gurus, setting up their own centres for jyotish vidya or vastu, along with becoming a purohit (pandit), continue to remain the most popular career options,” the professor added.
Ayush Dixit, an assistant professor in the Department of Sanskrit Literature at the university, said it was very difficult to break the general perception that all Sanskrit students wish to pursue religious vocations.
“Our course material goes much beyond reading Karamkand vidya (performance of rituals by pandits),” he said.
As a literature student, he added, he had “read texts by Kalidasa, other poems and stories”.
“It is just like how an English literature student would read Shakespeare and other writers. Sanskrit has multiple schools of philosophies and several subsets within them,” he said.
Dixit said he had always been clear that he wanted to become a professor. However, “it is true that a huge percentage of the students in the classroom come from families that are traditionally pujaris and wish to continue the family profession”, he added.
Speaking about the initiatives under way at his university, he said, “With Bollywood now looking at historical content and the coming of films like Baahubali etc, there is a growing need for Sanskrit experts in the industry. India is the only country in the world with a detailed book (Bharatiya Natyashastra) on theatre and its rasa and bhava.”
The university, he added, “has also been tasked with making 10-minute-long short films that will be a part of the course content being used in [lessons on] the Indian Knowledge System, soon to be implemented in universities across the country”.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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