In 2015, I spent one-month in the village of Jhirī, Rajgarh District, Madhya Pradesh. I went there to verify the claims in the media that 'everyone in this village speaks only fluent Sanskrit'. As part of a cathartic outreach project, I have been working on a low-budget short-film series about the village, which seeks to balance showcasing interesting facets of quotidian life with instances of Sanskrit's vitality as a living, albeit 2nd-language. I have also published several articles as well. All are available, below. There are more articles and films available here. 

FILMS

Episode 1: imagining sanskrit land
This is the first episode of several short films I am making about the 'Sanskrit village' Jhiri, which is located in Madhya Pradesh, India. This ethnographic documentary series is titled 'Imagining Sanskrit Land'. Across India there are rumours of rural communities where 'everyone speaks fluent Sanskrit'. I spent one month in Jhiri during the summer of 2015 documenting the linguistic vitality of vernacular Sanskrit and the aspirations of this community to transition to only speaking Sanskrit. This film is about the effort it took to actually find the village and includes some of the original audio/video of the first mention I came across that inspired this project. There are several villages called 'Jhiri' in this district of MP. We drove around for several hours, sometimes in circles, while my driver pleaded with me to just turn around and go home. Finally, around dusk we found it.Above is Episode 1 of Imagining Sanskrit Land

Episode 2: Total-am 
This film is about how Sanskrit lives alongside other languages like Malvi, Hindi and English. In this film I joined some of the young men from Jhiri, a famous 'Sanskrit village' in Madhya Pradesh on a trip to a neighbouring village to collect 300kgs of wheat. In the latter part of film a conversation occurs regarding the total-am weight of the wheat. '-am' is a particle used in spoken Sanskrit to turn a Hindi or English word into a Sanskrit word. This film shows a short example of code mixing and switching in Sanskrit.

episode 3: chillum ≠ jalam
This video is about Jhiri. It is famous in India for being a 'Sanskrit village'. I spent 1-month in Jhiri in April/May 2015. I went there to put into proper perspective the amount of Sanskrit spoken and the level of fluency. The people in this village are first-language Malvi speakers who aspire as a community to transition to the Target Language of Sanskrit. It was a 47c day when this was filmed. The village has no running water or electricity. In Sanskrit 'water' is 'jalam'. When I asked for some water to drink the woman in the film thought I asked for a 'chillum', which is a type of traditional clay pipe used for smoking, typically marijuana. This is why we all burst into laughter when we realise the momentary break down in communication. In this film we are speaking a combination of Sanskrit, Malvi and Hindi. There is a more serious aspect to this film. Over summer, across India, 1000s of people die from the extreme heat. This includes young children who are responsible for collecting water. This might negate an opportunity to get an education. I wanted to include footage that shows how endless the task of acquiring water is in a place where it isn't as simple as turning on a tap.

Episode 4: it's time to get married
In Episode 4  we catch a glimpse of some of the culture surrounding life and weddings in Jhiri. I have tried to capture some of the joy, sadness and mayhem involved through showing aspects of a few weddings that occurred during my time in Jhiri during April-May 2015. Because the music was so loud during a lot of the wedding processions this film does not have much dialogue. This was because it was impossible to hear what was spoken a lot of the time. The music was so loud that even on some occasions I recall my teeth hurt. One important socio-linguistic aspect is that the annual exodus of women from the village means that this particular Sanskrit language nest 'leaks'. Viable Sanskrit-speaking women might move 50 kms away to their in-laws home; which is what happens to one woman in the film who moves to Dungri. No Sanskrit is spoken there and there is also a language change as well. In Dungri people speak Hindi and not Malvi, which is the first language of Jhiri. It is a mutually intelligible variant of the Western branch of the Hindi family. However, unlike Hindi, which is one of India's two Official Languages and the state language of Madhya Pradesh, Malvi suffers from a perceived lack of prestige and is disparagingly referred to by those who do not speak it as a 'kheti bhāṣā' or 'farmer's language'. This is one reason that the residents of Jhiri seek to transition to Sanskrit as it is considered to be more prestigious. It is also believed that Sanskrit will facilitate a cultural and moral renaissance. Simply by hearing it spoken it is believed by the promoters of spoken Sanskrit that this will help bring about a cultural, linguistic and political shift towards creating a theological state otherwise known as the Hindu nation. This is part an explicit utopian aspiration to create a pan-global Hindu world and have Sanskrit replace English as the next global lingua franca. I hope you enjoy this latest instalment of Imagining Sanskrit Land.

episode 5: where the buffalo roam
Coming Soon! But, for now, a short teaser.

the utopian aspirations of sanskrit land

​
This short film is an excerpt taken from a speech by the founder of the Sanskrit revival organisation. In November, 2015 CK Shastry gave a long speech in Sanskrit in San Francisco. This 5-min excerpt sums up the attitude of Samskrita Bharati regarding the role of Sanskrit and yoga in creating a utopian world through a cultural and moral reformation. With the help of Andrey Klebanov, I have added subtitles to this speech. 

અમારા આશ્રમમાં એક દિવસ 
A DAY IN OUR ASHRAM
This is an ethnographic film shot over several months in the Shanti Mandir ashram in Gujarat, India (www.shantimandir.com). Between 2009 and 2013, I visited several times, and spent  1.5 years in the ashram. This is where I conducted fieldwork for my MA in linguistic anthropology (University of Adelaide, 2010) and my PhD in anthropology (Australian National University, 2016). My research focused, first, on code-switching between spoken Sanskrit and Hindi (please scroll down to Article 7 - Spoken Sanskrit in a Gujarat Ashram), while the PhD looked more at Shanti Mandir's position, as an epistemic community and provider of knowledge, within the transglobal yoga industry. This link will take you to a brief overview of my PhD thesis.


​This is a recording of my presentation at the CALA 2019 conference in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The talk focuses on my intersecting interests of spoken Sanskrit and global yoga; with a closer look at the 2011 Indian census results.

articles

article 1 - The Sanitising power of spoken sanskrit - Himāl southasian 2014



article 2 - imagining sanskrit land - utne reader 2017




article 3 - spoken sanskrit in a gujarat ashram 
journal of the oriental society of australia (josa) 2011 (43) pp 61-82

​

Article 4 - ​Reflections on the Imagining Sanskrit Land Project