Dehradun: Names of national highways, entrance gates, government offices and public places will be written in Sanskrit in Uttarakhand. Secretary, Program Implementation and Sanskrit Education, Deepak Kumar paid a courtesy call on Governor Lieutenant General Gurmeet Singh (retd) at Raj Bhavan on Tuesday and he informed about ongoing efforts for the preservation, promotion and propagation of Sanskrit language.
Names and information in Sanskrit on the nameplates of all government offices
Secretary Deepak Kumar informed that efforts are currently underway to inscribe names and information in Sanskrit on the nameplates of all government offices, as well as on government hoardings along national highways, state entrances, and public places. The Secretary added that initiatives are also in progress to establish more Sanskrit primary schools to promote the language. The Sanskrit Academy aims to teach conversational Sanskrit to 100,000 people by organizing camps in educational, spiritual, and religious institutions across the country.
Sanskrit got the status of second official language in Uttarakhand
In 2020, the Uttarakhand government became the first in India to designate Sanskrit as the state’s second official language. The then Chief Minister, Ramesh Pokhariyal Nishank, expressed his intention to promote Sanskrit within the state. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, the former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand and Union Human Resource Development Minister, has been a strong advocate for the promotion of Sanskrit. He has praised Sanskrit as the most usable and scientific language, even claiming it to be the “first language of the world”. Afterwards, Himachal Pradesh followed suit in 2019.
Railway authorities decided to replace Urdu with Sanskrit on railway station signboards
In January 2020, railway authorities decided to replace Urdu with Sanskrit on signboards at state railway platforms. The signboards, which previously displayed station names in Hindi, English, and Urdu, will now feature Hindi, English, and Sanskrit. According to railway officials, this decision aligns with the railway manual’s provisions, which state that station names should be written in Hindi, English, and the state’s second official language. The signboard at Dehradun and Rishikesh stations were also changed replacing Urdu with Sanskrit, but, later, Sanskrit name was removed due to some controversy.
