INDIA, April 29, 2017 (The Hindu): In early March, the Madras Sanskrit College (MSC) unveiled a digital campus to expand the reach of Sanskrit through online courses, live books and live podcasts. “Students can register any time for the online courses, but they start only in certain batches, every two weeks. The fourth batch started on April 29, and the fifth will start on May 13,” says Ramesh Mahalingam, trustee of the college’s parent body, and great grandson of V. Krishnaswami Iyer, college founder.
Each batch lasts about four months, offering 30 modules at the beginner’s level. The first 10 modules provide a general overview, starting with lessons on the Sanskrit alphabet. Though the physical campus is a Sanskrit-only zone with daily conversations taking place in the language, the digital one has some of the teaching done in English, to ease beginners into the course. In the few weeks since the inception of the course, the four batches that started have already amassed about 590 students globally, from Australia, the Middle-East and the U.S, besides India. “In the first 23 days, we registered about 20 a day. My target for the year is about 3000. We are well on the way to that number,” says Ramesh.