Former Chief Justice of India Sharad Bobde on Friday batted for Sanskrit as the country’s official language, including for use in courts, and said even the architect of the Constitution and eminent jurist BR Ambedkar had proposed it as per media reports from 1949.
He said Hindi and English are used as official languages in governance and courts as per law, while every chief justice receives representations seeking nod to introduce respective regional languages, which is now a reality in the district level judiciary and some high courts.
Bobde was speaking at the Akhil Bhartiya Chhatra Sammellan organised by Sanskrit Bharti.
“I don’t think this issue (of official language) should remain unresolved. It has remained unresolved since 1949. There are grave dangers of miscommunication in governance and administration of justice, though this is not the place to discuss,” he said.
“Newspapers of September 11 of 1949 have reported that Dr Ambedkar initiated the move to have Sanskrit as the official language of the Union of India. Sanskrit vocabulary is common to a lot of our languages. I ask myself this question as to why Sanskrit cannot be the official language as Dr Ambedkar had proposed,” he said.
The former CJI said introducing Sanskrit would not amount to introducing any religion, as 95 per cent of the language has nothing to do with any religion but deals with issues related to philosophy, law, science, literature, phonetics, architecture, astronomy etc.
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