‘Ignorance’ of our ‘leftist intellectuals’

“BLIND LED BY THE BLIND!!”- LETTER TO SUNDAY EXPRESS

DEAR SIR,

In the column “Dead men talking” (TNSE-MAGAZINE-08 APR),Jyoti Sanyal wrote:”No,it goes way back to our Sanskrit pathashalas.Brahmin pupils were made to memorise Panini’s grammar,and quotable quotes.That left no room for spontaneous expressions;nor originality”.

Our wise Rishis and Munis probably had  anticipated the arrival on the Indian scene of the teeming ‘Maccaulay-Putras/Putris’,thousands of years ago,when they stated in the Katha Upanishad:

 “Living in the midst of ignorance,considering themselves to be wise,the deluded wander confused,like the blind led  by the blind”.

The writer talks of ‘no room for spontaneous expressions’.What would he term Kalidasa’s ‘Shakuntalam’? Or for that matter the various treatises in Mathematics-the Sulabasutras- Astronomy, Ayurveda etc? Were they not original thoughts of that period in History?

In an exquisite essay in an American Science Journal a year ago, and entitled ‘Sanskrit and Technology’, Vyaas Houston,a white American, who teaches Sanskrit at the Columbia University  wrote:

“The extraordinary thing about Sanskrit is that it offers direct accessibility to anyone to that elevated plane where the two —mathematics and music, brain and heart, analytical and intuitive, scientific and spiritual— become one”.

No originality/ No spontaneous expression? Wonder what is music then?And,a matter of small detail. The UNESCO has placed the ‘chanting’ of Vedic Mantras on the ‘World Heritage Map’!!  

One pities the ‘ignorance’ of our ‘leftist intellectuals’!!

VANDE MATARAM