Shri Chamu Krishna Shastry, All India Prashikshana Pramukh of Samskrita Bharati is awarded Padma Shri award -2017 in the field of literary and education.
About Shri Chamu Krishna Shastry
Sri. Chamu Krishna Shastry is an ardent educationist with a unique and path-breaking mission to practice and propagate Sanskrit as a language to restore India’s civilizational status in the comity of nations. He believes that Sanskrit is also the unique glue for social harmony in the society. Chamu Krishna Shastry is a trailblazer in teaching Sanskrit as an active conversational language rather than a grammatical language of the past. Chamu Krishna Shastry and friends started an organization more than three decades ago to promote Samskrit as a spoken language and now “Samskrita Bharati” spans all corners of the country and has presence in many major countries such as the USA, Canada, UK, Australia and West Asia.
Chamu Krishna Shastry’s efforts led to the development of the very popular 10 day Spoken Sanskrit Camps of Samskrita Bharati. These camps have now trained more than 90 lakhs of people in Conversational Sanskrit. His efforts have also led many universities and colleges to adopt the communicative teaching method for Sanskrit. Few unique experiments like “Samskrit Homes” and “Samskrit mother tongue Children” are popular. He has inspired a dedicated work force for Samskrit across the country which is leading the propagation work at various states. Thousands of people learn Samskrit through various courses offered through Samskrita Bharati. In USA, SAFL (Samskrit as a Foreign Language) is a popular course among the children of Indian origin.
He has authored 13 books in Samskrit. “Saraswati Seva” is project through which hundreds of books from other Indian & foreign Languages are translated in to Samskrit. To promote young authors and modern books in Samskrit he had conceived events like “Samskrit Book Fair”, and “Sahityotsava”. Chamu Krishna Sastry sees Samskritam as a tool to remove social differences (linguistic, class, caste, sect etc)
His extensive experience in education and teaching methods has led to his being on the Board of Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and many other universities. He was also a member of the Central Government constituted Sanskrit Committee that developed the “Road Map for the Development of Sanskrit – Ten Year Perspective Plan” document in 2016.
Chamu Krishna Shastry is a sought-after speaker and he is very well known for his impressive and fiery oratory in Samskrit. He believes in the dictum of the Bhagavad Gita to work towards a goal without expectations and has taken a personal vow of not accepting honors and awards. He is a prolific writer and has written a dozen books and numerous articles in Samskritam.