Based on popular demand on campus, the Indian Institute of Management, Indore, plans to offer a non-academic voluntary course on basic Sanskrit to its students and faculty members, in addition to ongoing yoga classes, in a bid to promote “Indian ethos”, said its director Himanshu Rai.

The initiative would run as a corollary to the on-campus campaigns to live healthily and in an environment-friendly manner, said Mr. Rai. “We were approached by students and faculty members after the International Yoga Day for the introduction of the course. Since most scriptures were in Sanskrit, they said it was difficult for them to understand them. And translations are often twice removed from the truth.” he said.

An hour of yoga could be followed by an hour of Sanskrit lessons, he said. “If there is considerable interest among students, we’ll try to look at ways to institutionalising the subject. However, we are not inflicting it on anyone, but just providing an opportunity.”

The institute offers language electives in the second year for its post-graduate programme and the third year for its graduate one. Not just to Sanskirt, the institute has given a push to other Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu and Kannada by populating its library with books in those languages.

“Indian ethos means the value systems that could be brought out from ancient wisdom,” said Mr. Rai. “I am not getting into a jingoistic mode by saying everything coming out of Indian books is important, but am not putting them down either. It’s about picking what’s good, and leaving out the unscientific. Wisdom lies in simply separating the wheat from the chaff.”

India, he said, would become a bigger market than China by 2025. “So, its cultural norms can’t be ignored. By learning about the Indian ethos, our students will become confident in a certain thought processes,” he added.

“There is a mood that if you wish to know a thought process, you need to know the language,” said Mr. Rai. “And in the management field, there is a lot of research coming from the scriptures. For instance, in the Journal of Business Ethics, the number of papers published on Indian thoughts is at least ten times more than what it was earlier. Clearly, there is a readership for the thoughts. There are books on understanding management from the Gita. ”

Mr. Rai said that during his PhD, he, besides undertaking statistical surveys, also analysed the Mahabharata to understand conflict management. “While defending my thesis, I was asked whether I considered the text historical or mythological. I replied what matters is that it’s still relevant. Whether it’s historical or mythological is a question of belief. Today, while teaching the consequential theory to students, I even talk about the Upanishads.”