Sanskrit and faith-based development: Searching for Sanskrit speakers in the Indian Census

Patrick McCartney © 2020 All rights reserved

This essay has two parts. The first discusses Sanskrit’s relative rankings within the 2011 and 2001 Indian censuses. The second is a discussion of how Sanskrit is operationalized for strategic soft power applications related to faith-based development.

Part 1: Sanskrit in the Census

As far as historical linguists and sociologists are concerned, Sanskrit became a…