This man has grown up chanting Sanskrit shlokas. Not only he loves this ancient Indian language, but since 1998, he has been conducting Sanskrit classes at a school.
But will it make any difference if we tell you that the person belongs to a Muslim community?
Maybe it will for some. Maybe not! But the 46-year-old teacher, Aabid Saiyad, an MA in Sanskrit and English from Vallabh Vidyanagar-based Sardar Patel University believes that religion or faith cannot be an obstacle when it comes to education or learning a language.
Every morning in the dingy lanes of the Yakutpura area, several Muslim students chant Sanskrit shlokas and Saiyad also ensures that they enjoy learning this language as well.
A teacher in MES Boys’ High School, he has been teaching for the last 22 years. How amazing it is that he has never faced resistance from his own community nor from the Hindu community.
In an interview with TOI, he said, “Knowledge can be imparted by anybody and who teaches is not important until it is imparted in the right way. A non-Muslim too should be able to teach Arabic and vice-versa. Language is to be taught as a language.”
His own daughter Izma Banu, who is a first-year student of MBBS at Baroda Medical College, topped her Class X exam in 2017 and scored 98%, the highest in Sanskrit.
Saiyad believes that moral teachings are imbibed in the language and therefore, one must learn to enrich their lives. Further, he mentioned to the media outlet that in class IX, he has 166 students who are learning Sanskrit.