Government To Set Up Three Sanskrit Universities, Lok Sabha Told

New Delhi: Union minister Smrti Irani announced in Lok Sabha that three new Sanskrit Universities will be set up in the country - a decision that's expected to fuel the debate over saffronisation of education.

In a report submitted to the Lok Sabha, the ministry said the government is funding three Sanskrit Deemed Universities. Two of them will be in Delhi, the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha and one in Tirupati, the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha.

The ministry also said in 2015, it formed a committee to suggest a roadmap for the "development of Sanskrit" after the Second Sanskrit Commission, set up in 2014, failed to submit a report before its term expired.

Earlier, the ministry's decisions to popularize the language had generated controversies. In April, the Lok Sabha was told that the IITs have been asked to teach Sanskrit for facilitating the study of science and technology as reflected in literature.

Last year, the decision to replace German with Sanskrit as the third language in some 500 Central government-run Kendriya Vidyalayas had drawn criticism.

Ms Irani, however, has turned down the demand to make Sanskrit compulsory. To her critics, she had said, "Those who accuse me of being a RSS mascot or RSS representative possibly want to deflect the attention from the good work that we have done... this agenda will be flagged and I will be whipped for as long as there is a need to keep attention diverted away from the good work."