Dr K B S Rajan, Judicial member of the Central Administrative Tribunal, Ernakulam bench, on Sunday said that determination and perseverance can help one learn any language, even if the person happens to be from an alien land.

Dr Rajan was speaking at the 38th anniversary celebrations of the Sanskrit daily ‘Sudharma’ in the city. Dr Rajan said German linguist Sir William Jones had endured a lot of pain to learn Sanskrit, even in the midst of stiff opposition to an alien learning the language. Jones, who learnt the language from a barber went on to write a dictionary in Sanskrit.

He heaped praises on ‘Sudharma’ - the only Sanskrit daily in the world - reading which for the last three months, he had vastly improved his knowledge of the language, primarily gained through a Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan course.

Principal Secretary in the State department of agriculture, A Ramaswamy, regretted that while Macaulay’s system of education sounded the death-knell of Sanskrit learning in the country, the ‘grammar-first’ approach to the present day Sanskrit teaching was scaring students away from the language.