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From: Arun
For immediate Release
Samskrita-Ganga floods USA
When three and a half year old Keshav Rangan and seventy-three year old Karnam Rameshwar Rao stayed for 4 days in a residential camp in Edison New Jersey, there was only one motive that brought them together– that of learning, speaking, and preserving Sanskrit. While the residential Sanskrit camp Jaahnavii-2007 marked the culmination of a series of activities that Samskrita-Bharati USA initiated in summer this year, it has also triggered an expansive list of actions for the near and distant future.
For Samskrita-Bharati USA, the non-profit voluntary organization that spearheads the "SpeakSanskrit" movement, summer activities commenced with workshops in Florida and Chicago. The end of June saw Shraddhaa-2007, the first four- day spoken Sanskrit residential camp exclusively for teenagers, taught by Indian-American youth and conducted at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Pennsylvania. Participant feedback was so overwhelmingly positive that Samskrita-Bharati is now considering organizing similar weeklong camps in both the eastern and western coasts of the United States next year.
Among other activities held in July, a new project called Campus Samskritam Network was launched on the auspicious day of Guru Poornima. Sanskrit enthusiasts and groups from MIT, University of Maryland, Purdue and Stanford have collaborated and launched a webzine named Vishvavani. Mythili Vutukuru, one of the coordinators explains that they plan to not only strengthen the existing groups on various campuses, but to also actively engage additional university campuses in participating in such activities.
A two-day national meeting of Samskrita-Bharati volunteers was held August 18-19 in Seattle. At this meeting, six main centers of Sanskrit activity in the United States were identified – San Jose, Fremont, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Boston and the greater Washington metropolitan area. Additionally, nine locations were identified as having immediate growth potential based on volunteer presence and current activities. The national conclave was followed by a 10-day US tour by Sri Chamu Krishna Shastry (one of the founders of Samskrita-Bharati) and Sowmya Joisa, the first American-born youngster to volunteer full time for Samskrita-Bharati. Their tour encompassed various meetings and Vishva-Samskrita-Dinam (World Sanskrit Day) programs in numerous cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles, Houston and Austin.
Finally, the last holiday weekend of summer brought together a record number of participants (117) and teachers (10) who attended Jaahnavii-2007, says Vidya Ramanathan, joint coordinator for the annual Samskrita-Bharati residential family camp. Camp this year was held August 31 to Sep 3 in Edison New Jersey. For four days the participants engaged in a variety of activities like attending classes, listening to talks, contributing to discussions, playing outdoor games, participating in campfire celebrations, performing skits and songs on stage, and an indoor game of jeopardy – everything conducted in Sanskrit. Whether it was meal time or break time, conversations flowed freely in the Sanskrit. A brief visit to this camp was sufficient to convince the most ardent skeptics that the language that they have dubbed as "dead" is actually on an upward trajectory of revival.
Diversity at the camp was evident everywhere -people representing different regions of the United States and Canada, people who spoke diverse Indian languages at home, people of non-Indian origin, people representing varied professions, and as alluded to in the beginning, people of all ages. As evident from commitments made to speak Sanskrit and promote its revival, it is obvious that Jaahnavii (another name for Ganga) has become another fountainhead for Sanskrit revival!
3 comments:
Hats-off to Arun for his efforts in popularizing spoken Sanskrit, the language of the Gods. Keep it up!
Kapidhwaja
its not just me, its the entire samskritabharati team... i just try to fit in wherever i can help with press releases etc
and thanks, rajeev for the post and everyone else on the blog for the support
-arun
Rajeev Sreenivasan mahodaya,
Dhanyavaadah.
I sincerely thank you for promoting the cause of Sanskrit in your blog and writings.
All of us are like the little squirrel which helped in building the Ramasetu.
When the present day mighty 'asuras' are hell bent on destroying the Ramasetu and anything Bharatiiya, it is little squirrels like us who can bridge the gulf between the various communities and revive the ancient glory of Bharatam
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