Man earns his PhD in Sanskrit at 68

There is no age limit for pursuing higher education and it is only the zeal and interest to learn that led Anil Kumar to study, even after retirement. He now has a PhD from the premier University of Madras, which has conferred the degree of doctorate of philosophy to the 68-year-old for his thesis in Sanskrit.

Anil Kumar, though an electrical engineer by profession, was very interested in knowing more about Hindu culture and heritage values. He decided to take up Sanskrit as his subject to pursue his master's degree.

He completed his postgraduation in Sanskrit in 2005 and later decided to go further in the subject and conducted a research. Under the guidance of S Revathy of department of Sanskrit, Anil Kumar managed to complete his thesis on 'Comparative Study of Vivaha Samskara in Grihya Sutras of the Four Vedas.'

What is unusual apart from the age at which he has his done PhD, is that Anil Kumar is an electrical engineer who passed out from the National Institute of Engineering in 1964. Nearly 40 years after completing his engineering, he owned small scale industry in the field of air pollution control in Chennai. From 1973 to 2003, he managed to run his industry and later wound it up. He completed his MA in Sanskrit in 2005 at the University of Madras with first class. He is an alumnus of Mahajana High School, Jayalakshmipurm and Yuvaraja's College. After closing his firm, he shifted to Mysore. "I was very interested to know more about Hindu tradition. Hence I decided to study Sanskrit," he told TOI. He is also very interested in doing a postdoctoral fellowship, he said.

Now a resident of Mysore, Anil Kumar has set up Kalpa Heritage Trust, with the objective of collecting material on Hindu rituals, digitizing and posting them on the website he has started (Kalpa Heritage Trust). Anyone interested can download the material free of cost.

The Trust, in association with Avadhoota Datta Peetha, conducted a national seminar on Vivaha Samskara in October 2011 in Mysore, wherein traditional and academic scholars from all over India presented papers on various aspects of Vivaha. Kumar also has plans to conduct a national seminar on Shulba Sutras (dealing with the construction of Vedic Altars) in June/July 2012 in Bangalore.