IN SEPTEMBER 1803, the British forces led by Lord Lake defeated the Maratha forces and captured Delhi, ending Maratha dominance in North India and stripping Mughal rulers of whatever little political power they had. This meant the British held the real power, though a titular Mughal emperor held the throne till 1857.
To tighten their grip on the subcontinent, the British began massive civil works, such as, laying railway lines, constructing canals and building roads, which needed civil engineers and other technical staff. As only a limited number of such technical personnel could be hired from Britain, East India Company decided to establish a college to train the natives in advanced civil engineering and related works. Thus, a college was established, namely College for Civil Engineers, Roorkee, in 1847. Roorkee, a city, also spelt Rurki, is now a part of Uttarakhand but back then it was in North-Western Provinces. James Thomason (1804-1853), the then Lieutenant-Governor of North-Western Provinces — later on named United Provinces — was instrumental in founding the college that transformed technical and professional education in the subcontinent. He died in Bareilly in 1853 and to honour him the college was renamed Thomson Engineering College in 1854. It is still running under the name Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
Curiously, the medium of instruction at Thomason Engineering College Roorkee was Urdu until 1870, or for about 23 years. It is generally believed that teaching science and technology in Urdu is a pipe dream. But Urdu was the medium of instruction for teaching engineering subjects at Thomason Engineering College, right from 1848, the year the college began functioning, writes Dr Sajid Siddiq Nizami in his book Thomason Civil Engineering College, Rurki, subtitled Urdu Mein Fanni-o-Tekniki Nasr Ka Naqsh-i-Awwaleen, or the first-ever trace of technical prose in Urdu.
One of the reasons for thinking that teaching science in Urdu is not feasible is a notion about Urdu’s perceived lack of language intellectualisation, the capacity and capability of Urdu prose and the Urdu language itself: many believe Urdu lacks in technical terminology and it is too poetic and flowery a language to be used for technical subjects. But the record of scientific books penned in Urdu as well as the history of educational institutions that imparted knowledge of science in Urdu about a century and a half ago refute this impression. For instance, Nawab Shams-ul-Umara had established Dar-ut-Tarjuma, or translation bureau, in Deccan in 1843 and it translated scores of books on mathematics, physics, chemistry, pharmacology, geometry, astronomy and other sciences into Urdu, notes Dr Nizami while exploring the history of teaching science in Urdu.
Dr Nizami further says that a little earlier in Lucknow Naseeruddin Hyder had got a few books on scientific subjects translated into Urdu. Muhammad Mir Laknavi had translated 18 books on science into Urdu. About 120 books on science were translated into Urdu by Delhi College and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Scientific Society. Another institution that adopted teaching of science and technology in Urdu was Deccan’s Usmania University. Moulvi Abdul Haq’s Urdu College, Karachi (now a university), too, began teaching science subjects in Urdu in 1950s.
Rurki’s Thomason Engineering College not only taught subjects of engineering and civil works in Urdu but also got written and published at least 30 books on civil engineering in Urdu. It proves that Urdu did not lack the capability to express and discuss scientific concepts but the experts and institutions working for the promotion of Urdu lacked real interest, opines Dr Nizami. What some books had stated about Thomason Engineering College was lacking either in accuracy or details, for instance, Khwaja Hameeduddin Shahid’s Urdu Mein Sciensi Adab, Abul Lais Siddiqi’s Urdu Mein Sciensi Adab Ka Ishariya, Mirza Hamid Baig’s Urdu Mein Tarjume Ki Rivayet and Muhammad Shakeel Khan’s Urdu Mein Sciensi-o-Tekniki Adab, adds Nizami while putting the record straight with his meticulous research using the rare documents that he discovered during his post-doctoral research.
The book, published by Islamabad’s Idara-i-Farogh-i-Qaumi Zaban, proves that the language intellectualisation of Urdu — or the development of specialised vocabulary and grammatical structure to express scientific and philosophic ideas and complex technical concepts — had begun in mid-19th century and Urdu was ahead of every other native language in the subcontinent. The tragedy is that while making progress, we lost the way somewhere and today Urdu is rarely used as a medium of instruction for teaching sciences.
Sajid Siddiq Nizami is a Lahore-based scholar and teaches Urdu at Punjab University Oriental College, Lahore. He has given in-text citations, using MLA technique, a standard research methodology, though not commonly used in Urdu.
Published in Dawn, September 29th, 2026
