About the author of Romanaagarii and SARAL scripts

Virendra Pal Singh was born in April, 1940, at Khurja (Uttar Pradesh) in India. Under his father’s guidance, he learnt languages and religious scriptures in early childhood and in 1950, graduated in Hindu Religious Studies from a school for adults!

Virendra completed his education in Khurja. He passed Matriculation (tenth grade) in 1953; passed Intermediate (twelveth grade) in 1955; graduated (Bachelor of Arts) in 1957; post-graduated Master of Arts (M.A.) in Political Science in 1959 and passed Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) in 1960.

In 1962, Virendra was selected, through competitive examination, to join the Indian Foreign Service (I. F. S). Apart from India, he served at Damascus (Syria), Beirut (Lebanon), Yangoon (Myanmar), Zanzibar (Tanzania), Sydney (Australia), Conakry (Guinea and Sierra Leone), Moscow (Russia earlier U.S.S.R.), Toronto (Canada), Khartoum (Sudan), Caracas (Venezuela) and Havana (Cuba) in different capacities. He retired from the service in April, 1998.

Virendra knows Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Gujarati, Panjabi, English, Arabic, French and Spanish languages. He has been keenly interested in computers and after taking study leave in 1992, joined M. Sc. course in computer science at McMaster University, Hamilton (Ontario) in Canada. He studied linguistics and phonetics and worked to develop a simple system for writing Indian languages, particularly Hindi. His research paper “Romanaagarii – A System to Promote Literacy Through Phonetic Romanization” was published as a Technical Report by the McMaster University in 1993. Its updated version may be seen on this website at: Scientific approach to literacy.

Virendra has developed the concept of simple, alphabetic and rational approach to literacy (SARAL ) and innovated SARAL fonts for writing several languages. This is based on the code of phonetic and alphabetic scripts implied in the inner triangles of Shri Yantra or the Mandala of the Goddess of supreme knowledge (Shri Vidya). He has set up website www.svtr.org on which a text can be read in six scripts, namely, SARAL Hindi, SARAL Urdu, SARAL Roman, SARAL Ingles, SARAL Gujarati and SARAL Panjabi. In the year 2000, he published Shri Vidya Yantra Dvaara SARAL Hindi (SARAL Hindi Through Shri Vidya Yantra). He has suggested Unicode oriented Internet literacy promotion and his views may be seen here.

Virendra writes poetry in Hindi-Urdu under the pen name Ziiro. He published, in the year 1991, Ziiro Kii Shaayarii, a compilation of 140 poems in Hindi and Urdu. In 1997, he published Hindi Gita (a verse by verse poetic rendering of Bhagavad Gita in Hindi). Hindi Gita has been translated into Spanish and English languages. His poetry may be seen at www.saralhindi.com. He has also suggested to unify science, spirituality and mysticism. His views may be seen at www.science-spirituality.org

Apart from these websites, his activities on promotion of literacy through the internet may be seen at SARAL Hindi/Urdu/Roman on YouTube , Yantra and SARAL scripts on Flicker and SARAL scripts on Picasa.

Virendra is registered as advocate at the Delhi High Court. His hobbies are: yoga, spirituality, computers, golf, painting, poetry and music. In the year 2001, he set up the Shri Vidya Trust, Rishikesh (India). The Trust is devoted to activities related to Shri Vidya, science, spirituality, literacy, etc. Apart from India, he spends time with his wife in Caracas (Venezuela) and Florida (U.S.A.).

0