Hi Kamal,

Thank you for your comment! I quoted Churchill to highlight a purely linguistic point, and later in the same sentence I cited the Indian nationalist perspective. I try to keep to linguistics as much as possible, and while that does inevitably intersect with politics, I certainly did not intend to back Churchill's views.

According to all linguistic scholarship of which I am aware, Sanskrit is part of the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is a very ancient language; the fact that its Urheimat may be outside of India does not undermine its status as an Indian language, just as Latin's analogous history does not make it un-Italian.

All that said, I do not claim to be an expert on Indian languages. I spoke to a few Indian acquaintances while researching this, but I am grateful for any insight others can offer on this fascinating field.

Thanks for reading,

Sam