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Letter to Kapil Sibal against removal of Devnagari numerals from Education

Our reader Ms. Seema Niravadhi has written to the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal against his proposal to discontinue the use of Devanagari numerals in Education as reported by the Sunday Guardian few months back.
To,
Mr. Kapil Sibal
Hon. Minister for Human Resource Development, India
[email protected], [email protected]
Dear Mr. Sibal,
Namaste, This is regarding your highly controversial and offensive
decision to intentionally dismantle the use of Devnagri numerals
and enforce English numerals in Indian schools and colleges that
has come as an utmost shock and caused grave distress to me and my
family. We came to know about your ill-advised proposal through an
article "Devanagari numbers thrown out by ministry" which
has appeared in The Sunday Guardian. The aforementioned
article is attached to this email in PDF format.
Mr. Sibal, we are appalled by the actions of your Ministry, which
rather than focusing on researching about our rich past and
heritage, is instead busy in disinheriting whatever is left of our
oldest civilization and its essence. Even other Ministries in the
current Government have similar truculent attitude. On ९ August
२००८, the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram asked college
graduates to give importance to English over Hindi. Such
misplaced priorities of our Government is of grave concern for us
Indian people. In the blind pursuit of fictitious
modernity, how can we as a nation afford to divest our tens of
thousands of years old language and its attributes. As if global
misappropriation of Roman Numerals as derivation of "Arabic
Numeral" rather than "Devnagri Numerals" is not enough, that now
MHRD wants to also deny the pride and knowledge of writing in
Devnagri to our current and future generations. We, the
Bharatvaasis, are proud of our Unity in Diversity including
different languages. But we should never forget that if there is
one common thread that ties and unites most of the Indian
languages, it is Devnagri Lipi and Sanskrit. Irrespective of what
region, religion or caste we come from, Sanskrit is considered the
mother of almost all languages. Sanskrit and Devnagri have been,
for over २०००० years, the common sutradhaar that has brought Indian
people together. Nevertheless, this does not deny equal importance
of other Bharatiya languages. In fact, Sanskrit as a sutradhaar
brings all Bharatiya languages to same par.
Your injudicious and offensive action to "throw out" Devnagri
numerals stands in complete contradiction to what our great
Republic's Founding Fathers stood for when they wrote our
constitution. I am attaching to this email as an exhibit the debate
by the Constituent Assembly of India (Volume ९) on १४ September,
१९४९ about the use of Hindi and, specifically, Devnagri numerals in
the government and as medium of instruction in schools. Following
are the excerpts from the "Directive Principles"
adopted by the Assembly:
1. It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the
spread of Hindi and to develop the language so as to
serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the
composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by
assimilating the forms, style and expressions used in the other
languages of India and drawing wherever necessary or desirable for
its vocabulary primarily on Sanskrit.
2. It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the use, of the
Devanagari script throughout the territory of India.
3. It shall also be the duty of the Union to promote the study of
Sanskrit throughout the territory of 'India as it is the source of
most of the other languages in India.'
The whole world from China to Italy, from Japan to Mexico takes
pride in home grown indigenous languages. And each country gives
primary importance to their own language, unfortunately except
Bharat. When Israel was founded, the first thing they did was to
start a University for promotion of Hebrew. Just look at २००८
Olympics in China. At the opening ceremony, the Chinese Premier
spoke in Chinese, their countdown was in Chinese numeral
characters, they displayed only Chinese culture during the
first २ out of ३ hours ceremony, and even their public service
messages including the motto "One world, One dream" were in
Chinese. An interesting fact, which allot of us don't even know, is
that unlike aboriginal languages and Devnagri Lipi from Indian
Sub-Continent, Chinese and most East Asian languages in
their traditional form do not even have indigenous linguistic
numeral characters. This is precisely why East Asians have
to use Roman numerals, for example on Korean language based TV
shows, Airports, and Stock markets. Despite the fact that Chinese
didn't inherit any autochthonous numerals, still they created their
own numeral characters based on their scripts when they reformed
traditional Chinese language. China has been aggressively promoting
the use of their own numeral system as evident from its use during
the Olympic countdown. This is how much they primarily love their
language and thereafter use English as secondary tool to take over
the world.
But unfortunately, your Ministry and Government of
India is doing the opposite by desisting and discouraging
the use of Devnagri numerals rather than censoring and
censuring the use of misnomers like Arabic numerals. Especially
when there has been extensive research and subsequently countless
BBC documentaries, which prove
that Arabs never invented the number system.
Rather, in fact, Persians learnt numerals from Bharatiya people,
morphed them into Arabic script for themselves, and British
misattributed them as Arabic numerals because British came in
contact with Persians-Arabs first.
Please see for yourself,
Devnagri: ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९
Roman: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Arabic: ۰ ۱ ۲ ۳ ۴ ۵ ۶ ۷ ۸ ۹
I can bet you that even a second grader can tell you just by
looking at aforementioned numerals as to what number system stands
a higher chance of being evolved out of another. But unfortunately
history of Devnagri Numerals is still taught incorrectly in NCERT
books as Arabic Numerals. How self-demeaning are we? Mr. Sibal, our
objection today is not based on some triviality of one language
versus the other. This is not about anti-English sentiment because
we are all mature enough to realize that it is not a zero sum game
i.e. pro-Devnagri is NOT equal to anti-English. It is only about
giving the most ancient language and script (Devnagri Lipi) in the
world its rightful place of honour in the country of its origin.
The argument that no one uses these numerals these days does not
stand because when the Government itself is choosing not to follow
what our Founding Fathers stood for and use these numerals in its
day to day correspondence, and MHRD does not encourage students to
use them, then why will the people use these indigenous numerals.
As an Indian, it is so embarrassing to watch the so called Hindi
News channels which don't even use Devnagri numerals and still have
an audacity to call themselves "the best Hindi channel". The
Government of India and MHRD have a constitutional duty to
encourage and, if necessary, enforce people to use Devnagri
numerals.
Sanskrit is deemed to be the language of future for futuristic
computers by no less than NASA. Please read these eye-opening
articles NASA to echo Sanskrit in space, website confirms its
Mission Sanskrit and Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence.
Bharat is one of the oldest and richest civilizations in the world.
It is home to the world's first planned cities, where every house
had its own bathroom and toilet five thousand years ago. The
Ancient Indians, our great ancestors, have not only given us Yog,
Meditation and Ayurvedic medicines, but they have furthered our
knowledge of science, maths - and invented
Chaturanga, which became the game of chess.
According to Albert Einstein, Ancient Indians
"taught us how to count", as they invented the numbers 1-9 and
'zero', without which there would be no computers or digital age.
Unfairly we still call this system of counting Arabic
numbers - a misplaced credit. Two thousand years ago, we,
the Indians pioneered plastic surgery, reconstructing the noses and
ears on the faces of people who had been disfigured through
punishment or warfare. Our ancestors performed eye operations such
as cataract removal and invented inoculation to protect their
population from Smallpox, saving thousands of lives.
Before I finish this letter, I would like to remind you that one
cannot build strong proud future by discounting and dismantling
ones rich heritage. Devnagri is the soul of India, please don't
scorn on it. Maharishi Shri Panini ji gave us this great language
Sanskrit and its grammar. Maharishi Shri Ved Vyas ji, also known as
Father of Ancient India, used Devnagri and Sanskrit to give us our
great scriptures, and our Republic's Founding Fathers reinforced
our aeons old nation's faith in preservation and promotion of the
use of Devnagri numerals. It is our humble request to you that
please do not deny our future generations the benefits and
knowledge of this ancient heritage, which may be tens of thousands
centuries old but is still as advanced as any other modern science
known to mankind. Please continue with the use of Devnagri numerals
in our Education system, and revise that imprudent and gratuitous
proposal of your Ministry.
Regards,
Seema
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