India's new government focus on Sanskrit has sparked a fresh debate over the role language plays in the lives of the country's religious and linguistic minorities.
Inside a brightly lit classroom at Delhi's Laxman Public school, a group of students sing a Sanskrit hymn.
Across the corridor, in another classroom, a group of grade eight students are being taught Vedic Mathematics, which dates back to a time in ancient India when Sanskrit was the main language used by scholars.
It is all part of Sanskrit week - a celebration of the classical language across hundreds of schools mandated by India's new federal right-wing government.
"It's our mother language, the root of all our languages," says Usha Ram, the school principal.
"All over the world people try to preserve their traditions. Why not in India?"
Sanskrit is a language which belongs to the Indo-Aryan group and is the root of many, but not all Indian languages.
"If you know Sanskrit, you can easily understand many Indian languages such as Hindi, Bengali and Marathi," says Vaishnav, a grade 11 student at Laxman Public School.
But Sanskrit is now spoken by less than 1% of Indians and is mostly used by Hindu priests during religious ceremonies.
It's one of the official languages in only one Indian state, Uttarakhand in the north, which is dotted with historical Hindu temple towns.
According to the last census, 14,000 people described Sanskrit as their primary language, with almost no speakers in the country's north-east, Orissa, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and even Gujarat.tes
Courtesy:BBC News
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