Sanskrit got lion's share of language promotion funds: RTI data

The central government spent ₹2532.59 crore on the promotion of Sanskrit between 2014-15 and 2024-25, 17 times the combined spending of ₹147.56 crore on the other five classical Indian languages — Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia, according to the data obtained by Hindustan Times through a Right to Information (RTI) application and from public records.

- Sanjay Maurya

NEW DELHI:

That works out to ₹230.24 crore every year (on average) for Sanskrit and ₹13.41 crore every year for the other five.

Tamil, the highest-funded among the five classical Indian languages, received less than 5% of Sanskrit's total funding, Kannada and Telugu each received less than 0.5%, and Odia and Malayalam each received under 0.2% of Sanskrit's total allocation.

Tamil, the first language to be designated as a "classical" language in 2004 received ₹113.48 crore under Grants for Promotion of Indian Languages (GPIL) scheme, 22 times less than the amount spent on promotion of Sanskrit which was given the same status in 2005. The combined funding of the remaining four Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, and Odia which received classical language status between 2008 and 2014, was ₹34.08 crore.

To be sure, the spending on Sanskrit exceeded that on Urdu, Hindi, and Sindhi too (although none of these is recognised as a classical language). The combined funding for Hindi, Urdu and Sindhi between 2014-15 and 2024-25 was ₹1,317.96 crore, roughly 52.04% of the amount spent on Sanskrit. In this period, Urdu individually received ₹837.94 crore, Hindi, ₹426.99 crore, and Sindhi, ₹53.03 crore.