Yes - but native language in census terms do not mean mother tongue. There are few villages in India which adopted Sanskrit as first tongue - That is an experiment not akin to being part of a continuity. At the most, you can say these native speakers revived a dead language.

I know this is a very sensitive topic given the language chauvinism that is prevalent in India. There are at least two villages which speak Sanskrit (just Google it). It was definitely the case that there were more speakers of Sanskrit (Vedic+Classical) and people who have Sanskrit as their mother tongue. People sort of resort to gymnastics to deny the obvious. As long as there are people speaking a language natively and people genuinely interested in it, I don't think you can call that language dead. But I agree, Sanskrit speakers are on the decline and it is a bad thing.

http://www.mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=broadcast&b...

But surprisingly, today in Mangalore, there is one unique family where all the members are using Sanskrit as their mother tongue and they all interact with each other in this language only. Seems highly improbable but nevertheless, it is true.

I think one reason for the decline is that you need to be pretty intelligent to learn Sanskrit (vs say Tamil or English). I sort of feel that the human race itself was more smart a few thousand years ago. (See http://rt.com/usa/news/intelligence-stanford-years-fragile-5...)

I can pretty well understand Sanskrit and have learned it for 10 years. It is definitely not difficult to learn. 'Sanskrit' died several hundred years ago as a spoken language - and efforts to revive it by adopting it has yielded mixed results. (The villages you mention are adopters). A language is said to be living when 1) There are people who speak it for daily purposes 2) It continues to evolve to address needs of the present. Sanskrit passes criteria 1 with some determined followers, but fails criteria 2. Point to be noted is that characteristics that make Sanskrit orderly and strict, is an offshoot of the language being ear marked for restricted scholarly usage and not the tenet of a living breathing language. That said, there is a vast literary treasure awaiting people who are determined to learn Sanskrit and there are enough avenues available in India and abroad for the same.