Lok Sabha Question No. 3154 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2018-08-06
Subject: World Sanskrit Conference
Ministry: HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
Asked by: SUDHEER GUPTA, ASHOK SHANKARRAO CHAVAN, KUNWAR HARIBANSH SINGH, BIDYUT BARAN MAHATO, S. RAJENDRAN, T. RADHAKRISHNAN

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

## DEPARTMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO.3154 TO BE ANSWERED ON 06.08.2018

## World Sanskrit Conference

3154 .     Shri Sudheer Gupta

Shri Ashok Shankarrao Chavan

Shri Kunwar Haribansh Singh

Shri Bidyut Baran Mahato

Shri S. Rajendran

Shri T. Radhakrishnan

Will the Minister of HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT be pleased to state:

- (a)    whether  the  Government  has  inaugurated  the  Seventeenth  World  Sanskrit Conference which was held at Vancouver, Canada recently;
- (b) if so, the details thereof along with the aims and objectives of the said Conference;
- (c) the number of participants participated in the above Conference, country-wise;
- (d) the financial expenditure incurred in organizing this Conference; and
- (e) whether research is being conducted on Sanskrit computational linguistics in the
- country and if so, the details thereof along with the significant progress made in this regard?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

## (DR. SATYA PAL SINGH)

(a) to (d): The World Sanskrit Conference is organized by International Association of Sanskrit Studies (IASS) which is held once in three years at various at different places across  the  world.  This  year  17 th   World  Sanskrit  Conference  was  organized  at Vancouver (Canada) in the month of July. Minister of Human Resource Development was invited as Guest of Honour at the inaugural session of the conference.

The major objectives of the conference are to propagate the contribution of the various regions of the world to the Sanskrit studies and its advancement of knowledge at  different  places  of  the  world.  In  this  conference,  the  scholars  from  around  40 countries including India participated and around  500  papers are presented. Expenditure on account of organizing this conference is made by IASS.

(e):      Yes,  Madam.  The  following  institutions  are  engaged  in  the  area  of  research  on Sanskrit Computational Linguistics:-

- 1) Centre of Sanskrit Studies, Jawahar Lal Nehru University, Delhi
- 2) Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Mumbai
- 3) Department of CSE, IIT, Kharagpur
- 4) Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha, Tirupati
- 5) LTRC, IIT, Hyderabad
- 6) Poornaprajna Vidyapeetham, Bangalore
- 7) Sanskrit Academy, Hyderabad
- 8) Karnataka Sanskrit University, Bangalore

There  has  been  significant  progress  in  the  last  decade.   The  current  research outcomes are available in the form of web services at the web sites 'sanskrit.uohyd.ac.in/scl'  and  'scl.samsaadhanii.in'  of  University  of  Hyderabad.  A Master  Program  is  run  in  Sabdabodha  Systems  and  Computational  Linguistics  in Rashtriya  Sanskrit  Vidyapeeth  (RSV),  Tirupati.  Seminars  and  Workshops  have  been conducted with respect to various Sabdabodha Systems.  Deptt. of Vyakarana, RSV in collaboration  with  IIT  Kanpur  and  Akshar  Bharati  has  published  a  text  'Natural Language  Processing  with  a  Paninian  Perspective'.   There  are  5  PhDs  registered  in Delhi  University  from  2014  in  Sanskrit  Computational  Linguistics  and  2  M.Phils already completed.

****