With the current controversy over German being dropped in favour of Sanskrit in Kendriya Vidyalayas, India’s noted Persian scholar Professor Sharif Husain Qasmi laments successive governments abandoning attempts to integrate languages, encourage translations and build a better understanding between civilisations, cultures and religions. He was equally perturbed when the UPSC dropped Persian and Arabic from the civil services examination last year. How can English, barely two-and-a-half centuries old in the country, be promoted and not Persian and Arabic which flourished for over eight centuries, scholars like him asked.