Foreigners distorted Indian way: RSS chief

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Friday said foreigners perceived the Indian way of life, its languages and customs from their own narrow perspective, promoted whatever interpretations suited them and subdued those who opposed it in the past.

Speaking at the launch of Sanskrit Non-Translatables: The Importance of Sanskritizing English, a book by Rajiv Malhotra and Satyanarayana Dasa Babaji, Mr. Bhagwat said the use of an incorrect word could lead to erroneous communication and wrong consequences.

The book was released by Swami Govind Dev Giri, trustee and treasurer of the Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra.

The RSS chief said foreigners drew conclusions based on their experience and understanding, and not from the Indian perspective, and imposed them on Indians to always “keep them confused” about their own languages and terminologies.

Indians who failed to counter the adverse outside influence even started becoming a tool for the attempts to dismantle the country’s “dharma-sanskriti”, he said.

Mr. Bhagwat said Indians themselves had become disconnected from their roots, which helped foreigners create confusion. Owing to all this, what had the potential to become a “vishwa-dharma” got reduced to a mere “religion” for Indians. “Dharma” did not mean “religion”, but it became so “as foreigners could not grasp the profoundness of its purport”, he said.

The RSS chief said the book probed into such fundamental issues and would convey to the world the exact and deep meaning of the 54 Sanskrit words discussed therein. It would dispel confusion, correct distortions and help overcome the “colonisation of mind”.

Terming “Sanskrit non-translatables” a revolutionary idea, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy said it was “a new way of Sanskritising English, which is now an international language”. In this context, Dr. Swamy said, the authors were advocating what they called “loaning Sanskrit words to English without a translation”. “[Sanskrit] words acquire a false meaning if brought through translation,” he said.

“We have today a Sanskritisation process which Mr. Malhotra and Babaji want to accelerate,” said Dr. Swamy, adding that there were now “schools of thought that made people learn Sanskrit by memorisation, without knowing the meaning, as mere repetition of words helped develop the brain faster than in any other language”. He gave the example of a London-based school which had made Sanskrit a second compulsory language.

“We are having today a situation where Sanskrit may become an international language. It is already now accepted as the sole international language for artificial intelligence,” he added.

Among the other speakers were Vijay Bhatkar, Chancellor of Nalanda University, and Madhu Kishwar, Subhash Kak, Kapil Kapoor, Chamu Krishna Shastry, Nikunj Trivedi and Arnav Kejriwal.

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