GS Paper-1
Syllabus: Arts and Culture
Source: The Hindu
Direction: these are the basic facts, you should be aware of them.
Context: The Supreme Court Friday dismissed a PIL seeking directions to notify Sanskrit as the national language.
SC views:
- SC said that the issue was in the realm of policy, requiring constitutional amendments which entailed detailed discussion in the Parliament and not in the realm of judiciary.
- The petitioner’s lawyer invoked Sanskrit as a “mother language” from which other tongues took inspiration. He repeatedly invoked oriental scholar Sir William Jones and his study of the ancient language.
Is there any national language?
The Constitution of India has not given any language a national status.
What is the status of Hindi?
- Under Article 343 of the Constitution, the official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari
- English would continue to be used for a period of 15 years.
- Official Languages Act, 1963 was passed in anticipation of the expiry of the 15-year period during which the Constitution originally allowed the use of English for official purposes.
- Article 351 (Union government to promote the use of Hindi)
About William Jones
- William Jones was an SC judge as well as a linguist and proposed that there is an existence of a relationship between European and Indo-Aryan languages, which he coined Indo-European.
- Established the Asiatic Society of Bengal in the year 1784.
- Jones’ was the first to suggest that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin languages had a common root.
- He also suggested that Sanskrit ‘was introduced to India by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote age’ displacing ‘the pure Hindi’ of north India
Insta Links :
Prelims Links
Q. Who of the following had first deciphered the edicts of Emperor Ashoka? (UPSC 2016)
(a) Georg Buhier
(b) James Prinsep
(c) Max Muller
(d) William Jones
Answer: B
In 1837, James Prinsep deciphered the edicts of Ashoka.
