Chamu Krishna Shastry

Chamu Krishna Shastry(ಚಕ್ರಕೋಡಿ ಮೂಡಂಬೈಲು ಕೃಷ್ಣಶಾಸ್ತ್ರಿ)(Devanagari: चमू कृष्ण शास्त्री) is co-founder of the Samskrita Bharati movement, which is aiming to make Sanskrit popular across the world. He is secretary of Samskrit Promotion FoundationOn 25 January 2017, Government of India announced "Padma Shri" award for his contribution towards Literature and education.

Shastry was born on January 23rd 1956 in Kedila village near Mangalore. (Bantwala Taluk), As a teenager RSS worker he was underground during Emergency. It was in this period that he first read V.D. Savarkar and Swami Vivekananda's writings on Sanskrit. He learnt Samskrit from Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati.

Shastry along with some of his friends, went on to start the ‘Speak Sanskrit’ Movement in 1981.The movement has evolved into the not-for-profit organisation Samskrita Bharati, which is active all over India and in 13 countries including USA, Canada, UK and UAE. His method of teaching Sanskrit is to learn it in the same language rather than through other language by translation. The "Ten-day Sanskrit Speaking Course", which Shastry has been implementing through a network of 130 full-time workers and 3,000 Sanskrit Bharati volunteers, has a conversation-based syllabus. Learning Sanskrit can be a forbidding exercise because it is being taught through translation. To make it easier for the students Shastry's method is not to learn the language through grammar and teach Sanskrit as it is spoken unlike it was done earlier. The students thus do not have to wrestle with the nuances of an arcane syntactics. It's then easier to master the language, so much so that even semi-literate people can opt for the course. It also helps that the course is for free. His organization which is a voluntary body committed to the cause of Sanskrit, has evolved a simple method that Samskrita Bharati has enabled nearly 1 crore people to learn the language, one lakh of whom have decided to use Sanskrit at home in true ancient style. Sastry spends most of his time on teacher training, workshops, making of learning material and discussing Samskrit education with policy makers. He believes that not just Samskrit as language, but modern subjects like chemistry, maths, history etc should also be taught through Samskrit. The organisation is credited with the revival of Sanskrit in Gujarat

Vision

Shastry sees Sanskrit as being India's lingua franca. He says, “Till now Samskrit has only been seen from a spiritual or religious perspective; it is high time Samskrit is approached from a scientific point of view as well.” He opines that Sanskrit would be a unifying factor in India.

Achievements

ChamuKrishna Shastry’s efforts led to the development of the very popular 10 day Spoken Sanskrit Camps of Samskrita Bharati. These camps have now trained more than 90 lakhs of people in Conversational Sanskrit. His efforts have also led many universities and colleges to adopt the communicative teaching method for Sanskrit. Few unique experiments like “Samskrit Homes” and “Samskrit mother tongue Children” are popular. He has inspired a dedicated work force for Samskrit across the country which is leading the propagation work at various states. Thousands of people learn Samskrit through various courses offered through SamskritaBharati. In USA, SAFL(Samskrit as a Foreign Language) is a popular course among the children of Indian origin.

He has authored 13 books in Samskrit. “SaraswatiSeva” is project through which hundreds of books from other Indian & foreign Languages are translated in to Samskrit. To promote young authors and modern books in Samskrit he had conceived events like “Samskrit Book Fair”, &“Sahityotsava”.

His extensive experience in education and teaching methods has led to his being on the Board of Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and many other universities. He was also a member of the Central Government constituted Sanskrit Committee that developed the “Road Map for the Development of Sanskrit – Ten Year Perspective Plan” document in 2016.

Chamu Krishna Shastry is a sought-after speaker and he is very well known for his impressive and fiery oratory in Samskrit. He believes in the dictum of the Bhagavadgita to work towards a goal without expectations and has taken a personal vow of not accepting honors and awards. He is a prolific writer and has written a dozen books and numerous articles in Samskritam.

Awards

• Saraswata Sudhakara in 1984 from Kashi Pandit Parishat
• Rashtriya Yuva Puraskar in 1985 from ABVP
• Padma Shri Award in 2017

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