Persian literature has played a pivotal role in the evolution and promotion of Islamic culture and civilization in India, thus strengthening cultural relations between Iran and India, an Indian scholar said in the New Delhi university, Jamia Millia Islamia.

According to a report by the Islamic Republic News Agency, Prof. Sayed Amir Hasan Abidi, a reputed scholar of Persian language and literature, who was giving a memorial lecture on the late Prof. Muhammad Mujeeb, former vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, said that through Persian translations of Indian religious scriptures and basic texts of Sanskrit prose and poetry, as well as Indian translations of Persian literary and religious texts, during the medieval ages a golden era of cultural synthesis started that found expression in almost all aspects of the Indian cultural life, including painting, music and architecture.

Analyzing the promotion of the Persian language and literature through the ages in different parts of the country by both Muslims and non-Muslim scholars, Prof. Abidi observed that Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, the father of prominent socio-religious reformer, R. N. Tagore was so fond of the Ghazaliat (sonnets) by Hafez that even in the agony of death he requested someone to recite them.