New Delhi: A Right To Information (RTI) application has revealed that the central government spent a major chunk of funding to promote the Sanskrit language between 2014-2015 and 2024-25. As per the RTI data received by Hindustan Times, the government has spent a total of Rs 2532.59 cr for the promotion of Sanskrit, 17 more than the five other classical languages including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malyalam and Odia.
Every year on an average, Rs 230.24 were doled out for Sanskrit promotion, while the other five languages got a combined of Rs 13.41 cr.
Tamil is the highest funded classical language, but received less than 5 per cent of the total funding given to Sanskrit language. While Odia and Malyalam got 0.5 per cent and 0.2 per cent of Sanskrit’s total funding.
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Sanskrit gets 22 times more funds than Tamil
Tamil got the status of classical language in 2004 and got Rs 113.48 crore as part of Promotion of Indian Languages (GPIL) scheme. The amount given to Sanskrit in this case was 22 times more than allocated to Tamil. Sanskrit was given the status of classical language in 2005.
The RTI data also revealed that Hindi, Urdu and Sindhi languages, though none of them is a classical language, got less funding than the Sanskrit. As per the data, Hindi, Urdu and Sindhi received a total funding of Rs 1,317.96 cr between 2014-15 and 2024-25, which is 52 percent of the total funding Sanskrit got through these years.
Funds for Hindi, Urdu and Sindhi
The report said that Hindi, Urdu and Sindhi individually received Rs 426.99 cr, 837.94 and Rs 53.03 cr during the said period.
