For the first time since the 1947 Partition of India, a university in Pakistan has resumed the teaching of Sanskrit – initially offered as a workshop, it has now expanded into a four-credit course.
Lahore
University of Management Sciences (LUMS) is teaching Sanskrit in its classrooms due to immense student interest, with professors — Dr Ali Usman Qasmi and Dr Shahid Rasheed — at the helm of the project.
Both the academics stressed on the need to study classical languages as cultural bridges, saying Sanskrit is an integral part of Pakistani-Indian global heritage and vital for accessing ancient texts. They said the initiative aims to train local scholars to study the rich, but neglected, Sanskrit archive held at the Punjab University library and hopes to inspire future courses on works like the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita.
