Thumbs down to Sanskrit Week

Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, August 25

Most of the heads are confused about the Sanskrit Week to be celebrated in CBSE schools. The Board has instructed the schools to celebrate the week starting from August 26 to September 1.

The Board has instructed schools to organise activities like poem writing, Shloka Antakshari, essay writing, screening of Sanskrit film, etc. Confusion also prevailed about how the week would be celebrated in true spirit as students in most of the city schools do not understand the language.

Mona Singh, principal, Guru Nanak Public School, said would not be celebrated the week as Sanskrit was not taught in our school and the students do not understand the language.

Harmeet Kaur Waraich, principal, Nankana Sahib Public School, said it was impractical to celebrate the week as students have no knowledge about the language. “It is mandatory for the schools to implement the state language as the third language when the Board issues NOC to schools. So, after English and national language Hindi, Punjabi is taught as the third language in most of the schools, it is not possible to teach the fourth language in the school, which is why Sanskrit is not taught in most of the schools. However, celebrating the week in schools where Sanskrit is a subject is still appropriate,” she added.

Anu Verma from Police DAV School said they won’t be celebrating the week, as the school was opened recently. However, students will be apprised of the relation between Hindi and Sanskrit, she added.

“It won’t be possible to organise all the activities mentioned by the Board because students don’t know how to read, write or speak the language. But we will at least organise an essay-writing activity on the importance of Sanskrit for a couple of days,” said another school principal.