Sanskrit mottos: Kerala Police

[Nityānanda Miśra]

namo vaḥ

The motto of Kerala Police is the Sanskrit phrase मृदु भावे दृढ़ः कृत्ये [sic], often translated as “soft in temperament, firm in action”. The motto is written in the Devanagari script and not in the Malayalam script. A Devanagari-only motto of a state government agency would be unimaginable in Karnataka or Tamil Nadu (where some even equate Devanagari script with Hindi), but not in Kerala which seems much more open to Devanagari and Sanskrit (and also Hindi).

The motto is well-thought of, but it has two mistakes which Sanskrit scholars can easily spot. Firstly the motto uses ढ़ with a dot below, which is wrong as this represents the aspirated retroflex flap, present in Hindi and several other modern Indian languages but not in Sanskrit. Sanskrit has ढ, the aspirated voiced retroflex stop written without the dot below. The second mistake is grammatical. The word मृदु, as used in the motto, is the neuter gender form, whereas दृढः (the correct spelling), as used in the motto, is the masculine gender form. As both the adjectives qualify the same agency (police), they both need to be in the same gender. The state police can be thought of as a बल (“a force”), which is neuter in Sanskrit. Or it may be thought of as a सेना (“a body of [police]men”, the word also means “an army”), which is feminine in Sanskrit. Or it may be thought of as विभाग (“a department”), which is masculine in Sanskrit. In either case, the gender of the adjectives मृदु and दृढ should match. So the correct version of the motto would be—

1) मृदुः भावे दृढः कृत्ये (with a ‘visarga’ after मृदु, or with ‘sandhi’ as मृदुर्भावे दृढः कृत्ये) in the masculine gender

2) मृद्वी भावे दृढा कृत्ये or मृदुः भावे दृढा कृत्ये (with with ‘sandhi’ as मृदुर्भावे दृढा कृत्ये) in the feminine gender. Both मृदुः and मृद्वी are valid feminine forms.

3) मृदु भावे दृढं कृत्ये in the neuter gender, with an ‘anusvāra’ and not ‘visarga’ after दृढ

For any student or lover of Sanskrit, such mistakes in mottos of government institutions are unacceptable. It is surprising that this happened in Kerala, home to many Vedic and Sanskrit scholars. Makes me quite sad.

[Manish Modi]

Superbly explained, Nityānanda ji. 

M

On Mon, 30 May, 2022, 9:21 am , <sams...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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Sanskrit mottos: Kerala Police

"Nityānanda Miśra" <nmi...@gmail.com>: May 30 08:23AM +0530

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[Sri Raghava Kiran Mukku]

Namah Śrī Nityānanda,

This reminds me of the motto of IIM Ranchi which was "बहिर्मुखी विकास् गन्तव्यम्" before I got it changed to "बहुमुखविकासो गन्तव्यः".

Warm regards

Raghava

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[Dr Sri KRS Murthy]

Pandita Mishra: 

You should directly write this to the Kerala government leadership, not in this forum, as this forum has now powers. 

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[Sadagopan V]

Sir,

Thank you for the note.

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[P S Ramachandran]

Misraji, It is also possible that if one writes to the Kerala Police Department, it may totally change the motto itself, now that the Police force is full of publicly accepted Jihadis with their own Pachha Vilakku Whatsup Group, and the Govt. itself is propped by the Jihadis, and the Pinarayi Govt. is totally spineless and helpless against them!

Rāmu

संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं

सं वो मनांसि जानताम्

देवा भागं यथा पूर्वे

सञ्जानाना उपासते ||

saṃgacchadhwaṃ saṃvadadhwaṃ

saṃ vo manāṃsi jānatām

devā bhāgaṃ yathā pūrve

sañjānānā upāsate ||

May you move in harmony, speak in one voice; let your minds be in agreement; just as the ancient gods shared their portion of sacrifice.

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