Why can’t a Muslim teach Sanskrit?

IN PERSPECTIVE

We seem to be rapidly sinking into a cesspool of rabid differences, discrimination and diabolical political designs. The latest row over a Muslim scholar’s appointment as a Sanskrit professor at the famed Benaras Hindu University mirrors the times we’re living in when languages are castigated, categorized and compartmentalized into “ours and theirs.” Instead of lauding Prof. Firoz Khan for learning Sanskrit so well that today the man is entitled to teach the language at a prestigious Indian university, students are protesting and boycotting classes! This is indeed pitiable, nay, reprehensible.

First of all, a language does not belong to any particular religion or ethnic group of people. It is not the preserve of a certain community. Had Urdu belonged only to Muslims, there would never have been a Munshi Premchand or Raghupati Sahay ‘Firaq’ Gorakhpuri; a Sikh Sampooran Singh Kalra, known to us by his pen name ‘Gulzar’, would have been barred from learning Urdu and writing in that language; a Brahmin Pandit Brij Narayan Sharma ‘Chakbast’ from Lucknow, or the Kashmiri Brahmin and the ultimate authority on Allama Iqbal, poet Dr Jagannath Azad, and his distinguished father Trilokchand ‘Mahroom’ would never have learnt and mastered Urdu, had they thought that it was a language of Muslims.

The benighted Hindu students of BHU are screaming and claiming that its founder Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya never wanted a Muslim to teach Sanskrit and Hindu Dharm. They should have done their homework. Do they know, it was Pt. Malviya who himself went to Lahore to request Maulavi Mahesh Prasad (yes, he was called a Maulavi by scholars of Islam) to come and teach Islamic theology, Urdu, Arabi and Persian at BHU? Maulavi Mahesh Prasad was the HoD of Islamic Studies at Lahore University at the time!

The latitudinarian Malviya never discriminated on the basis of one’s religion or caste. The spirit of BHU has always been all-inclusive and encompassing. The religion of its students and professors had never been an issue. Alas, the times have changed. We’ve begun to associate a language to a specific ethnic group or religion. This has created wedges. Now, the most important question is: Why Sanskrit remains linguistically aloof, supercilious and over-exclusive?

Historically, two languages have always been over-exclusive and over-sensitive regarding their linguistic purity (Vishuddh in Sanskrit/Nikhalis in Arabic) and so-called ‘sacredness’: Arabic and Sanskrit. Muslims have always believed that Arabic is the language their Allah converses in and the Al-Furqan (Holy Quran) has been written in Arabic. Hindus believe that Sanskrit is Dev Bhasha (a divine tongue), spoken by the Supreme Brahman (the Almighty) and his earthly representatives, a position that the Brahmins have claimed exclusively for themselves. Even our mythological legends and traditions buttress this point and therefore, Lord Ram killing Shambook (an untouchable who dared to study the Vedas) is justified by a section of people who never wanted any kind of adulteration and put utmost emphasis on racial and communal purity.

Those ethnically surcharged people still constitute a big chunk of society and have the political and religious wherewithal with them to influence the whole system and bend universal perceptions of equality and egalitarianism to their brand of selective paradigms. They’re the people and their descendants who are clamouring for the removal of Prof. Firoz Khan. These people fallaciously believe that if Khan teaches Sanskrit, that ‘sacrosanct linguistic ethnocentrism’ will be affected, nay desecrated.

Moreover, Sanskrit is not just seen as a mere ancient language in ‘modern’ India of the BJP, it’s a wheel of renewed ritualistic juggernaut for today’s over-conscious and ambitious Hindus, ready to take umbrage at the drop of a hat. Since times are polarised, the morbid attitude of ‘ours and theirs’ rules the roost. Why just Muslims? Upper-class Hindus (read Brahmins) still frown upon when ‘other’ Hindus dare to venture into the forbidden realm of Sanskrit and their Dharma! As the greatest living western scholar of Sanskrit, Sheldon Pollock at Columbia University (US), said, it’s this ghettoisation of Sanskrit by its ‘custodians’ that hampered its march.

Lastly, those who are shouting and screaming from the rooftops are unaware that Sanskrit and Persian (jolly well call it a language of Muslims!) are grammatically very similar. More than 38,000 words in Sanskrit and Persian have identical etymological roots with very slight changes in the orthography. Sanskrit’s ‘trishna’ (thirst) is ‘tishnagi’ in Persian; ‘tan’ (body in Sanskrit) is ‘tanam’ in Persian; ‘abhra’ (cloud in Sanskrit) is ‘abra’ in Persian; ‘vyom’ (sky, vayum and al, ambience in Sanskrit) is ‘vaaham’ in Pahlavi (the precursor to modern Persian); ‘ksheer’ (milk in Sanskrit) is ‘sheer’ in Persian; ‘shigaal’ (fox in Persian) becomes‘ shrigaal’ in Sanskrit; ‘ashva’ (horse in Sanskrit) is Asp in Persian, and so on.

When you get to the roots of languages, au fond, all are same. So, why this unnecessary controversy over a Muslim scholar teaching Sanskrit? Languages transcend religions. We should rather be proud of India’s composite culture and those enterprising individuals who don’t care for such barriers and go on to learn and understand the languages of ‘others.’ Hats off to them.

(The writer is a scholar of Sanskrit and Semitic languages, civilizations and literature)