Shahid Rasheed, an associate professor of Sociology, found Sanskrit books at the library of Lahore’s MAO College.
When Shahid Rasheed discovered two full shelves of Sanskrit books at MAO College, Lahore, recently, all he disturbed was the dust. For, without stirring any language debates or tensions, the professor’s efforts have led to the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) introducing a four-credit course in Sanskrit — marking the first known instance since Partition of the classical language being taught in Pakistan.
The course is open to any student of the prestigious LUMS, pursuing computer science to biology majors, and has already drawn eight students for its debut semester. This was after Rasheed held a Devanagari workshop along with scholar Ali Usman Qasmi at the Gurmani Center of Languages and Literature at LUMS.
Rasheed, an associate professor of Sociology at Lahore’s Forman Christian College, set up in 1864, says his passion for Sanskrit blossomed through self-study, guided by scholars like Professor McMus Taylor of Australian National University and Antonia Rupel, author of the Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit. His meeting with Taylor was also a matter of chance, he recalls. “But he guided and encouraged me,” recalls Rasheed, who ensured he didn’t lose touch with the language by pursuing online courses and reading books such as Joy of Sanskrit and the newly acquired Reading Sanskrit.
The Sanskrit books he discovered at MAO College weren’t the first he found tucked away forgotten in libraries hit by Partition either. MAO College itself was located in Amritsar earlier, and after Partition, moved to Lahore, occupying the building that once housed Sanatana Dharma College.
Rasheed says he has found Sanskrit manuscripts in the Hindi Department library at the old campus of Punjab University, Lahore, and a rich Hindi-Sanskrit collection at Dayal Singh Library. He hopes to catalog and preserve them all, eventually. “But it’s a long journey. I still consider myself a beginner in Sanskrit because the language is a complete ocean,” Rasheed says, referring to Vedic Sanskrit, which he hopes to tackle next.
Encouraged by Rasheed, others too are hoping to encourage Sanskrit learning. At Punjab University’s Hindi Department, prof Ramesh Kumar, who says he was introduced to the language by Rasheed, is hoping to revive short courses on it.
Punjab University, which dates back to 1882, once had courses in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Gurmukhi Punjabi, with only Arabic and Persian sustaining post-1947, points out Kumar. A recent three-to-four-month introductory course focusing on Devanagari script, basic pronouns, articles, singular/plural forms, and grammar basics like “how to read Ram as Ramam or Ramaha” attracted three students, he says.