Dear Shri Mohan Bhagwat Ji,

I write this letter to you not just to congratulate you but also to reflect on an honest admission you made recently—an admission that, whether you realise it or not, lays bare some deep contradictions at the heart of our nation's current language policy.

While inaugurating a new building at the Kavi Kulguru Kalidas Sanskrit University, you stated that it is not enough to simply understand Sanskrit; one must also be able to speak it. You further admitted, with rare candour, that despite your lifelong association with Sanskrit through the RSS—where even your designation 'Sarsanghchalak' is in Sanskrit—you cannot speak the language fluently. This struck me deeply.

Here is a leader who has spent decades leading an organisation that has built its cultural and ideological narrative on the primacy of Sanskrit—an organisation that promotes Sanskrit as the language of India's soul and spirit—yet he himself struggles to speak it. I do not mean to mock you; on the contrary, I appreciate the humility of your admission. But I must ask: if a lifelong proponent of Sanskrit cannot speak it fluently, what hope is there for the ordinary citizen?

I, too, have a rudimentary understanding of Sanskrit. I can make out perhaps a quarter of the Sanskrit news bulletin on All India Radio and guess another quarter through context. This is enough to give me the gist of the newsreader's intent. In that sense, I suppose I'm better off than most—but still far behind those who can wield the language with fluency.

And yet, I love Sanskrit. I love it as I love Malayalam, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, and even Latin and Greek. My love is not based on utility but on appreciation. But love does not mean blind reverence. And it certainly does not mean propaganda. Which brings me to my central argument: Sanskrit is not, and has never been, the "mother of all Indian languages," as you claimed.

India's linguistic heritage is far too diverse, far too complex, and far too ancient to be traced back to a single source. In fact, many of India's languages—spoken by tribal and Adivasi communities—have no linguistic roots in Sanskrit whatsoever. Just the other day, I spoke to a friend's wife from Jharkhand who spoke in her native tongue. I could not understand a single word. Was that my failure—or the failure of those who want to label Sanskrit as the "mother" of her language?

Such blanket statements are not only inaccurate; they are dangerous. They distort the richness of our linguistic fabric by placing one language—Sanskrit—on an artificially elevated pedestal.

There was a time when Sanskrit was considered the language of the gods. Indeed, in the mythic court of Indra, Sanskrit is supposed to be the lingua franca. I will not question your belief if that is what you hold dear. But let's be honest—no one has returned from 'Indralok' to confirm this.

What we do know is this: Sanskrit was historically the language of a small elite, not of the people. The masses, particularly the lower castes and women, were denied access to Sanskrit learning. When the British decided to support Sanskrit education, social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy opposed it. They did not want a Sanskrit education. They wanted children to learn mathematics, science, social studies, etc. They did not want students to recite Sanskrit verses without knowing their meaning.

This isn't ancient history. Just two decades ago, a Shankaracharya scolded a group of women who recited Sanskrit shlokas to welcome him. Why? Because they were not "qualified"—in other words, not male, not upper-caste, and not Brahmin.

We laud institutions like Gita Press, which recently received a national honour from the government. But for decades, they did not publish the Vedas—not because of a lack of demand but because they believed these texts should not be accessible to all. It took Max Müller, a European scholar who never stepped foot in India, to translate and publish the Vedas in the 19th century.

A German philologist, he was instrumental in introducing Indian scriptures to the Western world. He edited and translated the Rigveda and initiated the monumental 'Sacred Books of the East' series, making texts like the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Dhammapada accessible, promoting global interest in Indian philosophy.

I was stunned when I saw a whole shelf of his works in the library of Aligarh Muslim University—an institution many of your colleagues vilify. Müller, with his limited access and foreign lens, still contributed more to the dissemination of Sanskrit texts than many homegrown scholars, who today are more interested in obtaining grants from the Central and state governments.

Let's not forget: the first comprehensive biography of the RSS—the very organisation you lead—was written by an American, Walter Andersen. That, too, should give you pause.

And what of Germany, a country that holds Sanskrit in high esteem? During the period of German unification, I visited the Goethe Institute in Berlin, where I found that the scholars there valued Sanskrit far more than many Indian universities. A journalist who was in our group and is now a Member of Parliament admitted that the Goethe Institute had done more for Sanskrit than any government department in India.

Sanskrit has global admirers. TS Eliot, in his seminal poem 'The Waste Land,' ends with the Sanskrit phrase "Shantih, Shantih, Shantih." And when the United States tested its first nuclear weapon in the Nevada desert, the project leader, J. Robert Oppenheimer, allegedly quoted the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

The Austrian Robert Jungk wrote the history of the bomb project titled 'Brighter than a Thousand Suns.' He claims that Oppenheimer was referring to the moment Lord Krishna reveals his divine form to Arjuna—one of the most powerful and terrifying passages in the Gita. There is a similar incident in the Old Testament when God appears to Moses. The light was so bright that he could not see God.

You take pride in the construction of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. But that was not made possible by Sanskrit. For centuries, the Ramayana remained locked in the Sanskrit language, inaccessible to the masses. It was Tulsidas, a Brahmin poet during the reign of Akbar, who wrote 'Ramcharitmanas' in Awadhi, thus bringing Rama and Sita into the homes and hearts of ordinary Indians.

Yet, for this act of democratising the divine, he was ostracised by his fellow Brahmins. My friend and neighbour in Patna, Prof RCP Sinha, gifted me a copy of his translation of Tulsidas's work in poetic form in English and Hindi. That is how I could read the Ramayana. Later, I read 'Adhyatma Ramayana,' which I found tougher than Sinha's lucid poetry.

He was not alone. As mentioned, Thunchath Ezhuthachan did the same in Malayalam. Kambar in Tamil. Krittibas Ojha in Bengali. In the 20th century, Ramanand Sagar's television adaptation reached tens of millions—not because of Sanskrit but because it used accessible Hindi. If anything, Sanskrit was a barrier to the mass appeal of Rama's story.

In contrast, consider the Bible. It is the world's best-selling book, not because Jesus spoke Aramaic, but because the Bible was translated into every major language. Translation is the oxygen of religion. Without it, even the gods are silenced.

Sadly, instead of translating Sanskrit's wisdom into the people's languages, the BJP government has spent over ?2,532 crore promoting Sanskrit in the last 10 years—an amount far greater than the ?147 crore spent on Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Marathi, Pali, Prakrit, Assamese, and Bengali, which are the other Indian classical languages.

Where is the impact? How many people speak Sanskrit today? Even in villages like Mahishi in Bihar—once home to the great Mandan Mishra—Sanskrit is neither spoken nor understood by the locals, as I learned when I visited the place in the late eighties.

While Sanskrit is being propped up with massive state support, Urdu is being systematically dismantled. This, more than anything else, exposes the ideological agenda behind your linguistic politics. Let me recount an incident from the 1991 Lok Sabha elections. While covering Malappuram district in Kerala for 'The Hindustan Times,' I found stacks of unopened Congress manifestos gathering dust. All were printed in Urdu. The party high command, assuming that Malappuram's Muslim-majority meant Urdu readers, didn't realise that Malayalam is the language of the region—spoken by all communities, including Muslims.

Such ignorance is bad enough. But the deliberate marginalisation of Urdu today is far worse. Urdu is not a "Muslim" language. It never was. Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims contributed equally to its development. It was born in the Indian subcontinent. And it gave India its finest poetry, its sweetest songs, and its most refined literature.

The famous line from 'Chaudhvin Ka Chand'—

"Chaudhvin ka chaand ho, ya aftaab ho, 
Jo bhi ho tum, khuda ki kasam lajawab ho."

—is etched in the hearts of Indians regardless of religion. Bollywood, our greatest cultural export, was built on the pens of Urdu poets like Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi, and Majrooh Sultanpuri. Last week, I met 88-year-old British-born Jane Caleb at her cottage in Dalhousie. Wife of the late Bishop Maqbul Caleb, she was more comfortable with Urdu than Hindi, as her husband's mother tongue was Urdu.

Yet today, the BJP-led governments are purging Urdu from public discourse. In Rajasthan, common administrative terms like muzrim (criminal), waqeel (lawyer), gawah (witness), and kachcheri (court) are being replaced with awkward "pure" Hindi equivalents. Most people don't even realise these are Urdu words—because they are so deeply embedded in our speech. Even Malayalam has adopted many of these words.

Language cannot be purified like water. Its strength lies in its syncretism. English became a global language not by remaining "pure" but by absorbing words from across cultures—including Indian ones. In fact, English has more Indian-origin words than any other foreign language.

Even Tulsidas, that revered icon of Hindu tradition, used over a thousand Persian and Arabic words in his Awadhi verses. Words like "bazar, dil, zindagi," and "taaza" flowed seamlessly in his text. He was not translating Vyasa's Ramayana—he was adapting it for his time and his people. That is the essence of living culture.

Unfortunately, we are witnessing not a cultural revival but a cultural purge. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who once claimed he prefers Hindi over Gujarati—his mother tongue—refuses to accept files written in English, even though it is one of our two official languages. This rigidness does not reflect pride—it reflects insecurity.

Contrast that with Malayalam poet Vallathol Narayana Menon, who proudly declared: "Ente bhasha Malayalam aanu" (My language is Malayalam). That's what linguistic pride should sound like—rooted in love, not hate.

You and your organisation are trying to promote Sanskrit while systematically erasing Urdu. This is not just bad policy—it is unjust and un-Indian. The national anthem 'Jana Gana Mana' is in Sanskritised Bengali, yet most Indians don't know its meaning. The Gayatri Mantra is recited in schools, but children don't understand it. However, songs like "Saare Jahan Se Achha", written in Urdu, are loved and understood across North India.

Let me conclude by stating unequivocally: your policy of aggressively promoting Sanskrit while marginalising Urdu is fundamentally flawed, culturally myopic, and morally unacceptable. It does not elevate one language; it diminishes all. It does not unite the nation; it fragments it. Languages belong to the people—not to any ideology, party, or religion. In celebrating all our languages, we celebrate India itself.

Yours etc,