Chandigarh — The teaching of Sanskrit has quietly resumed in Pakistan for the first time since Partition, with Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) introducing a course in the classical language. What began as a three-month weekend workshop grew into a full four-credit university course after strong demand.
Dr Ali Usman Qasmi, director of the Gurmani Centre, says Pakistan holds one of the richest but least-studied Sanskrit archives in the Punjab University library. A significant collection of Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts was catalogued in the 1930s by J.C.R. Woolner, but no Pakistani academic has engaged with it since 1947; only foreign researchers have used the material. Training local scholars, Dr Qasmi says, could change that.
LUMS also plans courses on the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita. “Hopefully, this sets a momentum,” Dr Qasmi says, predicting Pakistan-based scholars of these texts within 10–15 years. The initial weekend programme was open to students, researchers, lawyers and academics; after seeing the response, the university turned it into a formal course. Though enrolment is still modest, officials hope it will expand, with ambitions to offer Sanskrit as a year-long course by spring 2027.
The initiative’s driving force is Dr Shahid Rasheed, an associate professor of sociology at Forman Christian College, whose interest in Sanskrit predated LUMS’s outreach. He learned the language largely through online study with scholars such as Antonia Ruppel and McComas Taylor, saying it took nearly a year to cover classical Sanskrit grammar. Dr Rasheed took a sabbatical to teach the LUMS class, focusing mainly on grammar and on “subhashitas” — classical wisdom verses.
Students have been surprised to discover how many Urdu words derive from Sanskrit, and that Sanskrit is distinct from Hindi. Initially seen as difficult, the language’s logical structure quickly engaged learners. “The pleasure of solving something difficult is immense,” Dr Rasheed notes. He adds that modern languages evolve from classical traditions and that, once crossed, the linguistic “veil” reveals shared roots.
Dr Qasmi places the Sanskrit course within LUMS’s broader language ecosystem, which includes Sindhi, Pashto, Punjabi, Balochi, Arabic and Persian. He stresses the importance of engaging a tradition that is part of the Pakistani–Indian heritage: much literature, poetry, art and philosophy trace back to the Vedic age, and many historians believe the Vedas originated in the region, making direct access to classical texts valuable.
Despite political sensitivities, both scholars sense a shifting intellectual climate. Dr Rasheed encounters frequent curiosity about his study and argues that Sanskrit is a regional cultural monument, linked to places such as Panini’s village and to writings from the Indus Valley era. He insists the language is not the monopoly of any single religion: “We need to own it. It is ours too.”
Both scholars say encouraging cross-cultural language learning could help bridge communal divides. If more Hindus and Sikhs in India learned Arabic and more Muslims in Pakistan studied Sanskrit, Dr Rasheed suggests, language could become a tool for rapprochement across South Asia rather than a barrier.
