We might soon be in a queer situation, where two institutions, placed under as many union ministries, would claim to be the remake of the ancient Nalanda university without any contact between them though located in the same district. This is the strange story of the Nalanda university, being established by the ministry of external affairs (MEA), and the extant Nava Nalanda Mahavihara (in Nalanda district of Bihar), under the ministry of culture (MoC), asserted as being a replication of the ancient Nalanda university. The existing one, touching 60 years, is alive and kicking as an internationally known centre for Buddhist learning. The proposed one exploits the brand equity of Nalanda, but treats its soul – Buddhism – merely as an excess baggage. It is not coincidental that the re-inventors of Nalanda, led by Amartya Sen, never looked at Nava Nalanda.

The MoC’s annual report 2006-07 describes its origin lucidly, “In the early 1950s, in order to revive the lost glory and the heritage of ancient Nalanda Mahavihara, his excellency Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first president of the republic of India, declared that the ancient seat of Buddhist learning at Nalanda would be revived. At the request of Ven. Bhikkhu Jagdish Kashyap and with the objective of reviving heritage of Nalanda, the government of Bihar established ‘Magadh Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Pali and Allied Languages and Buddhist Learning’ at Nalanda in 1951. It later came to be known as Nava Nalanda Mahavihara”.

We find in a letter dated May 19, 1955 Dr Rajendra Prasad writing to Dr S Radhakrishnan, the then vice president of India, that ‘Nalanda Institute’ had a colony of 50 scholars drawn from different ‘Buddhist countries’ including India. It has a fine library containing a rich collection of Buddhist learning. “The governments of Ceylon, Tibet, Thailand, Japan and other countries have donated books to its library.” The president also supported the establishment of a department of Indo-Tibetan studies and publications at the institute in 1955 at recurring cost of Rs 24,000 per annum. The institute was keen to edit and publish “a large number of works which were formerly written at the ancient Nalanda university and later taken to Tibet and have been brought to India by Rahul Sankrityayan”. 

The resurrection of Nalanda is not such a novel idea as MEA claims. The only new thing is the hype of ‘internationalism’, which was turned into an excuse to splurge money on the footloose group of mentors who want to secure jobs for their protégés. Statistics can vouch for Nava Nalanda’s international character. According to the MoC annual report 2008-09, there were 397 students there out of which 95 were drawn from countries like Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In fact, when senior general Than Shwe, chairman of Myanmar’s State Peace and Development Council, visited India during July 25-29, 2010, one of the agreements he signed with prime minister Manmohan Singh pertained to cooperation between Myanmar’s ministry of religious affairs and Nava Nalanda Mahavihara. An MEA press release dated July 27 made a slightly exaggerated claim, “several hundred Myanmar Buddhist scholars and monks are currently studying in this university in various disciplines”. The panegyric of Nava Nalanda by the MEA seems curious because otherwise the institution does not exist for the ministry. What is also notable is the two leaders never broached the issue of the latest Nalanda.

The foundation stone of Nava Nalanda’s first building was laid by Dr Rajendra Prasad on November 20, 1951. On completion, it was inaugurated in March 1956 by vice president Dr S Radhakrishnan. In its premises on January 12, 1957 prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru received the relics of Xuanzang (Hieun Tsian) from the Dalai Lama, who had then come as an official representative of the Chinese government. The Chinese prime minister had also sent a fat donation towards constructing a memorial hall in the name of Xuanzang. Curiously, it took 50 years for the memorial hall to be constructed. On February 12, 2007 Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing inaugurated the Xuanzang memorial hall to the public. He was accompanied by a 100-strong delegation including Buddhist monks from China. The event received wide publicity in the media.

Yet, all these were lost upon the Nalanda Mentor Group (NMG), to which the MEA had outsourced the task of developing the idea of the Nalanda university. The MEA or the mentor group never took cognizance of Nava Nalanda. The MoC took over the institution from the government of Bihar in February 1990, whereas in November 2006 it was accorded the deemed university status by the ministry of human resource development. But ironically, the MoC never presented these facts before the MEA or the mentor group. A grander Nalanda could have used the Nava Nalanda as its nucleus, rather than bypassing it thoroughly. But it is a question that MoC prefers to ignore. It is actually a classic case that the left hand of the government does not know what the right hand is doing.

The NMG, now transformed into a governing council, was arbitrarily composed of expatriate Indians of the Harvard-Oxbridge brand and non-Indians with near-zero appreciation of Nalanda traditions. Amartya Sen’s group held a total of five meetings in Singapore, Tokyo, New York, New Delhi and Gaya between July 2007 and February 2009 at an exponential cost of Rs 1,71,11,303 as the reply to an RTI enquiry reveals. But strangely the stakeholders like accredited Buddhist and Tibetan institutions, heirs to Nalanda tradition, were never consulted. The Dalai Lama was clinically avoided ostensibly to keep China in good humour.

Non-transparency is perhaps the biggest blemish on MEA’s Nalanda project. It is a project formulated behind the back of the nation. The revival of iconic heritage warranted wide public participation. At a time when CIC is pitching for proactive disclosure, it is a pity that no website was developed to keep the public abreast of Nalanda affairs. The report of the third meeting of the NMG held in New York on May 2-3, 2008 (obtained through RTI request) informs about expected launching of a website by August, 2008. Two-and-half years later, let alone the website launch, not even a domain address has been registered. The information searched from the MEA website tends to be sketchy and disjointed. By contrast, Nava Nalanda Mahavihara has a website that is fairly updated.

The ‘international’ status of the Nalanda university is actually a hoax.  This is media hype with no legal or diplomatic underpinning. The only legislative mandate the university enjoys is as under the Nalanda University Bill, 2010 (not yet an Act) which makes it a central university. The MEA annual report 2007-08 referred to a “proposal to establish an international university at Nalanda through intergovernmental agreement”. The report of the second meeting of the mentor group held in Tokyo between December 14 and 16, 2007 notes that a draft inter-governmental treaty was presented to the group. We might assume it was presented by the MEA. It was decided that a revised draft would be ‘expeditiously’ prepared by the NMG by taking into account the views expressed.

In the third meeting of NMG at New York during May 2-3, 2008, we learn that the mentor group had made certain “amendments and modifications” to the draft international agreement and “sought that the amended draft could be circulated to the member countries of the East Asia Summit (EAS)”. However, it was never placed before the EAS.

The government had pinned its entire hope on the EAS as the forum for the Nalanda project. But the joint statement of the Fourth EAS (October 25, 2009) stopped short of advocating any legally binding commitment. It only supported the establishment of Nalanda as a “non-state, non-profit, secular and self-governing international institution”. EAS “encouraged appropriate funding arrangements on voluntary basis from governments and other sources”. India ended up “looking for specific commitments and support from member countries for the project” as an MEA press release in October 2010 apprises. At the Fifth EAS (Hanoi, October 30, 2010), despite MEA’s assurances, the issue of Nalanda did not surface at all. The balloon of Nalanda’s ‘internationalism’ was thus punctured. Even the member countries for the project were not identified.

Interestingly, only a couple of months before the NMG was commissioned, the MEA had begun the process of establishing its only other international university, that is, the South Asia University to cater to the SAARC region. The then external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, signed an inter-ministerial agreement with six other foreign ministers, on April 4, 2007. Thus the inter-ministerial agreement preceded the passage of the South Asia University Bill in parliament. But in the hyped case of Nalanda, the bill has been passed, but no inter-governmental agreement is expected in the foreseeable future.
The gap between NMG’s precepts and practice was also obvious on the issue of selecting a vice chancellor. The mentor group at Tokyo had “strongly recommended” the constitution of a search committee as soon as possible, to identify a suitable candidate for rectorship. The search committee was to be drawn from the mentor group itself. Meeting in New York in May 2008, NMG decided that the inaugural rector should be a person of “international eminence, who would be welcomed by the participating countries”. There were some probable names for that position, although none of them were divulged.

In August 2010 Amartya Sen sprang a surprise by announcing Dr Gopa Sabharwal, who taught sociology in Delhi University, as the inaugural vice chancellor. Let alone international, her national eminence is also limited and definitely not in anything that relates to Nalanda. She is a reader of sociology in the Lady Shri Ram College. She has written books on sociology and modern Indian history. The closest she gets to Nalanda is mentioning it once on page 37 of her book “The Indian Millennium: AD 1000-2000” (Penguin; 2000).

The latest UGC regulations (with effect from June 30, 2010) decree “the vice chancellor to be appointed should be a distinguished academician, with a minimum of 10 years of experience as professor in a university system or 10 years of experience in a reputed research and/or academic administrative organisation”. This clearly disqualifies Sabharwal from that position in a university established under the central act. The same UGC regulations lay down that the selection of vice chancellor should be “through a proper identification of a panel of three-five names by a search committee through a public notification or nomination or a talent search process or in combination. The members of the above search committee shall be persons of eminence in the field of higher education and shall not be connected in any manner with the university concerned or its colleges” (UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education, 2010).

Another RTI query reveals there were no public notification and Dr Gopa Sabharwal was appointed on the basis of the recommendation of the NMG. The NMG, doubling up as the search committee, clearly violated the UGC regulations. The entire exercise is prima facie devious, which smacks of favouritism. It is hard to believe that we could not have found a more suitable candidate on whom the ancient mantle of Arya Deva, Dharmapala, Chandra Gomin, Shilbhadra, Shantarakshita, Padmasambhava and Buddhakirti would have suited better. Even for the South Asia University veteran Prof G K Chadha, former vice chancellor of JNU, has been appointed as CEO and not vice chancellor. And Nalanda, which is a pet project of MEA, the vice chancellor is not even a professor.

Nalanda Sriwijaya Centre, established within the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore as a pilot project for the Nalanda university, hosted a lecture by Sabharwal on January 17, 2011. The pamphlet published identified her as ‘professor’, a breach of academic etiquette. When I asked for a text/transcript of the lecture by email I was told there was none. I was only given the abstract that was already circulated with the pamphlet. It says “Nalanda thus in its original avatar was by far the oldest university of the world”. When I reminded them that the university of Taxila (now in Punjab) and university of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt had flourished much earlier, in the pre-Christian period, than Nalanda established in 5th century AD, there was no reply from the centre.  I believe the vice chancellor, as well as Amartya Sen, needed to know more. Pope Julius III, who said “Do you know my son, with what little understanding the world is being ruled”, would have turned in his grave at the satisfaction of being vindicated.

This first appeared in the April 16-30 issue of the Governance Now magazine (vol. 02, issue 06).