Kannada activists hold tweet storm against plan for Sanskrit varsity

The decision of the Karnataka government to set up the Sanskrit University in Magadi in Ramanagara district has attracted severe criticism from Kannada activists.

A tweet storm was organised by language activists on Sunday with the hashtag #SayNoToSanskrit, urging the government to withdraw its decision and warned of protests if it went ahead with the establishment of the varsity.

T A Narayanagowda, president of Karnataka Rakshana Vedike said that they wouldn’t allow the government to set up the varsity using Kannadiga tax-payers money.

The state government has sanctioned Rs 359 crore for Sanskrit university. But the government drags its feet to sanction Rs two crore to Kannada university. How did it allocate such a huge amount (to Sanskrit varsity)?” he asked, demanding that the government roll back the decision.

If the government remains adamant, a statewide campaign will be undertaken against the varsity, he said.

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“What is the need to set up a Sanskrit University using government funds?” asked Prathap Kanagal, head of JD(S)’ IT wing.

“What is the government going to achieve with the varsity? It should rather use the resources to encourage Kannada in schools and colleges and promote state languages such as Kodava and Tulu,” he tweeted.

Goutham Ganesh M H pointed out that only 1,218 people had identified Sanskrit as their mother tongue as per the 2011 census.

“Spending 300+ crore on a language not even spoken by 1% of the population is meaningless and utter waste of taxpayers’ money,” he wrote.

The campaign garnered more than 50,000 tweets and retweets on Twitter throughout the day.

Many pointed out that the petition by Sanskrit organisations in High Court against teaching Kannada in professional courses was the trigger for the tweet storm.

Activist Ganesh Chetan said that Kannada and Sanskrit were from two different families of languages, and challenged the claim that Sanskrit was the ‘mother’ of Kannada.

“The days of emotional blackmail with Sanskrit (and) Kannada fake mother daughter sentiment and using this to exploit gullible Kannadigas are over,” he said.