Rajnish Singh
New Delhi
The use of regional languages during Rajya Sabha proceedings has increased more than five times and parliamentarians spoke in 10 of the 22 scheduled languages for the first time during 2018-20 with Sanskrit emerging as the fifth most widely used Indian language in the Upper House. With 12 interventions in Sanskrit, all during 2019-20, it has emerged as the fifth most widely used language in the Rajya Sabha among the 22 scheduled languages after Hindi, Telugu, Urdu and Tamil.
During 2018-20 with 163 sittings, regional languages were used 135 times, including 66 interventions in debates, 62 Zero Hour and seven Special Mentions. Four of the 22 scheduled languages such as Dogri, Kashmiri, Konkani and Santhali were used for the first time in the Upper House since 1952, further to the introduction of Simultaneous Interpretation Service in these four languages and Sindhi language at the behest of Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu in 2018.
If you order 'Mashavadakam' in Mani's tea shop at Karamana in Thiruvananthapuram, you will get a discount of Re1 from the the actual price of Rs5 for the popular snack 'Uzhunnuvada'. Mashavadakam is the Sanskrit name for Uzhunnuvada and this is Mani's small contribution to the development of Sanskrit language in this hamlet of Karamana. Vishwa Samskrita Pratishthanam and Samskrita Bharathi have joined together to promote the ancient language in this area. 2,000 people live here, and half can understand Sanskrit while a major chunk can communicate in Sanskrit.
