Samskrita Bharati

Samskrita Bharati is an organization working for Sanskrit revival. It is a tax exempt nonprofit organization with its headquarters in New Delhi, India. The International Centre, “Aksharam,” a complex located in Bangalore, India, is its international centre. It houses a research wing, a library, audio-visual lab, and staff quarters. It also has several state-units spread across the country both in the US and India. The US chapter is a registered nonprofit tax-exempt organization with its headquarters in San Jose, California.

Samskrita Bharati functions as an umbrella organization for various organizations working for promotion of Samskrita.

Origin

The Speak Samskritam Movement took off in 1981 through the Sanskrit Unit of Hindu Seva Pratishthana. The main thrust was to make Samskrit a conversational language and bring about a social change through the medium of spoken Sanskrit.

:Let service to Samskrita not stop at just praising the language -- instead of speeches about Samskrita, everyone should speak in Samskrita. Simple Samskrita should be taught, the medium of instruction has to be Samskrita and conversational Samskrita has to be taught. To achieve these objectives, Speak Samskrita camps should be organized on a large scale. Through these camps, we have to build a team of motivated, dedicated volunteers who will devote their lives to the cause of Samskrita.- This was the basic guideline of the movement.

The movement witnessed phenomenal growth from the very beginning. The contributions of organizations like Bharata Samskrita Parishad, Samskrita Unit of Vidya Bharati, Vishwa Samskrita Pratishthanam (Kerala), Swadhyayamandalam (Paaradi) have been significant help in its growth. Due to the vastness, importance and rapid spread of Samskrita work, a need is felt for a centralized institute to coordinate all the efforts for propagation of Samskrita. "Samskrita Bharati" - a national level organization was constituted at New Delhi in 1995.

Mission and architect

The mission of the organization is to engender cultural renaissance of Bharat by bringing Sanskrit back to main-stream; to propagate the great scientific truths hidden in ancient scriptures for the benefit of mankind; to attain social harmony by removing barriers of caste, creed, gender, and race; and to achieve national integration through Sanskrit.

Chamu Krishna Shastry along with his friends at Tirupati Sanskrit College came up with a unique methodology of popularising Sanskrit. Within a short span of time, Speak Samskritam Camps became a revolution in the Sanskrit World.

The key factor behind the success of the Speak Samskritam Movement is the dedicated service of the "Sevavratis", volunteers who have dedicated their life for the Sanskrit cause. Currently, more than 100 Sevavratis are spreading the message of Sanskrit in different parts of the country.

Samskrita Bharati has published various books, tapes and videos for learning Samskritam at various levels: pre-beginners, beginners, intermediate and advanced.

External links

* [http://samskrita-bharati.org Homepage]