Ref­er­ence is made to "the les­son" giv­en in Par­lia­ment to new­ly elect­ed MP for Princes Town Bar­ry Padarath by Moru­ga MP Dr Lovell Fran­cis, the Ju­nior Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. Lovell sought "to school" Padarath on his sur­name telling him he is giv­ing "a les­son" about "the San­skrit ori­gin and pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Padarath's name." The Ju­nior Min­is­ter erred in as­pects of his un­der­stand­ing of San­skrit and its rel­e­vance/im­por­tance in "nam­ing" of new­born as well as over­all in the In­di­an way of life.

Al­though thou­sands of years old and it has lost its glob­al dom­i­nance in be­ing the root of nu­mer­ous lan­guages, San­skrit still in­flu­ences In­di­an so­ci­ety and the globe through com­put­er lan­guages; tech ex­perts say San­skrit plays a key role in the func­tion­ing of com­put­ers.

The lan­guage is not wide­ly spo­ken but many In­di­ans still speak San­skrit–the moth­er of nu­mer­ous lan­guages.

It is not­ed that vir­tu­al­ly all In­di­an (Hin­du) names are San­skrit in ori­gin. Names are as­signed de­pend­ing on the cal­en­dar and time of birth and are tak­en (pre­scribed) from a San­skrit book af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with a spir­i­tu­al leader. Thus, Padarath's name has a mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance and pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the name has noth­ing to do with "finick­i­ness".

The min­is­ter is right that San­skrit was used by schol­ars, but it was/is al­so spo­ken by many in their com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Five times, I vis­it­ed the an­cient city of Ay­o­d­ha, a Hin­du King­dom where the famed Lord Ra­ma was born, lived, and ruled, ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­cause San­skrit is the lin­gua fran­ca. San­skrit is the moth­er of many In­di­an as well as Eu­ro­pean lan­guages. San­skrit was a dom­i­nant spo­ken lan­guage at one point and de­clined in im­por­tance with time, be­ing re­placed with oth­er re­gion­al lan­guages. But it has not com­plete­ly ceased to be spo­ken; it is still spo­ken in re­mote vil­lages as well as in sub­ur­ban parts of Kar­nata­ka and UP. It is al­so taught at sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ties in In­dia and the US and Ger­many. Prof MB Srinid­hi of Kar­nata­ka stat­ed in a re­port in an In­di­an news­pa­per, speak­ing in a BBC in­ter­view: "Just like the Eu­ro­pean lan­guages are spo­ken in Eu­rope, we al­so need to speak in San­skrit. The in­ter­est­ing as­pect is that San­skrit is a lan­guage that will help in un­der­stand­ing not just In­di­an lan­guages but al­so Ger­man or French or oth­er Eu­ro­pean lan­guages."

Not long ago, San­skrit was taught at City Col­lege of New York (part of CUNY) where I stud­ied and is of­fered at Co­lum­bia and Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ties. And San­skrit has rel­e­vance in com­put­er lan­guage used in pro­gram­ming. Com­put­er spe­cial­ists urge pro­gram­mers to learn San­skrit to help them mas­ter com­put­er lan­guage.

It is not clear if "Padarath" is cor­rect­ly spelt since, his­tor­i­cal­ly, In­di­an names were mis­spelt when new­borns were reg­is­tered go­ing back to ear­ly pe­ri­od of in­den­ture­ship.

In­di­an names have mean­ings and sig­nif­i­cance."Par-da-rath", as pro­nounced by Min­is­ter Lovell, is not list­ed in any dic­tio­nary. It does not mean that "Par-da-rath" does not ex­ist as a name. Bar­ry's last name could have been "Pa­da Rath" named af­ter "Pa­da ya­tra" (foot jour­ney or pil­grim­age un­der­tak­en by a promi­nent per­son like a famed politi­cian or re­li­gious leader to ed­u­cate peo­ple about so­ci­ety. The Great Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi utilised Pa­da Ya­tras (foot pil­grim­ages) to win over sup­port for In­dia's in­de­pen­dence.

Spelt as is, Padarath means spir­i­tu­al en­light­en­ment. And the Hin­du scrip­tures say there are four Padarath–Dhar­ma, Artha, Ka­ma and Mok­sha. They are the es­sen­tials a soul needs to at­tain the supreme spir­i­tu­al bliss (nir­vana) ie at­tain­ment of god­li­ness. It is a name to be proud of and that has of­fered guid­ance on how we should live.

Dr Vish­nu Bis­ram

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