New Delhi, Sept. 29 -- Within 10 days of taking the oath as Prime Minister for the third time in the summer of 2024, Narendra Modi inaugurated the new campus of the resurrected Nalanda University. His commitment to rekindling institutions and symbols that had defined civilisational India in the past was undiminished and undiluted.
The resurrection of Nalanda University in a new form was also deeply symbolic. It was not the resurrection of a mere physical structure; it signified the reawakening of the Nalanda Spirit. It was one of the finest moments in Narendra Modi's 25-year-long tenure as an elected head of government.
The Nalanda Spirit was a worldview, a stream and tradition of wisdom, education, dialogue and dissemination that had defined civilisational India in the past. In the civilisational era, it was also the Nalanda Spirit that distinguished Bharat as a knowledge society.
Thinkers, philosophers, students and seekers of the ancient world converged upon Nalanda to replenish their stocks of wisdom and knowledge. A rekindled Nalanda today will eventually grow and stand as a radiant lighthouse for the Asian century.
Nalanda University is also an example of how Prime Minister Modi leads India towards emerging as a pre-eminent Kalyana-Mitra globally. It represents a force for good and creative effort, eventually becoming a centre of convergence of global ideas and positive aspirations. The Nalanda of the past was such a node of the ancient world; the new Nalanda aspires to regain that pre-eminence.
The "Nalanda Spirit" is central to the Nalanda effort today. That spirit is sought to be brought to the fore through the "Nalanda Spirit course" - a first-of-its-kind pan-university course on decolonisation. The objective is to enable students to absorb Nalanda's intellectual heritage and India's knowledge traditions through archaeology, inscriptions, classical texts and competing historiographical interpretations.
The intellectual and experiential rigour that had defined and shaped Nalanda, and had become "brand Nalanda" in the ancient world, is being nurtured and brought back to the surface. Vāda, Samvāda, intense intellectual debates and critical examination of positions were the Nalanda approach of the past. That habit and training are being reintroduced through the new Nalanda's "Nalanda Spirit" course.
New and refreshing academic programmes extend the decolonisation approach into the curriculum. Interestingly, Sāstrārtha, the classical Indian method of vibrant debate, has been revived at the new Nalanda, emerging as a platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue. The Nalanda Tradition and Languages series aims to engage with India's textual, linguistic and intellectual traditions through various Indian languages.
Traditions and the traditional are being woven into, and are driving, the modern quest for addressing emerging challenges, while engendering new thought and perspectives shaped by Eastern thought.
Among the plethora of activities and projects that the revived Nalanda has initiated is also the "Nalanda Development Dialogue", which positions India in the global development discourse. It seeks to place a "Global South" vantage point in the development discourse, anchored by India, by diving deep into her civilisational wisdom and by making Nalanda the field for such a discourse to take root. Similarly, the Kautilya Global Centre for State Capacity is working to ground governance models and approaches in indigenous thought.
The Nalanda of today negates the naysayers who have argued that India is incapable of thinking in terms of civilisations and thinking long-term. Some who have tried to find fault, or have tried to pick holes in the Nalanda project and its imagination, have forgotten the dark days into which the project had fallen during the Congress-led UPA era.
An inflated Governing Board, presided over by the economist Amartya Sen, displayed a most callous attitude while claiming to incubate the project. The Congress's favourite mediocre academics, who were also favourites of Prof Sen, were selected to lead it, bypassing all norms.
Rajgir, where the Nalanda campus was designated to come up, was completely ignored. The Governing Board held its meetings all across the world, while discussion and action on the campus site, the proposed structures and courses remained stunted.
Prof Sen and his academic coterie on the Board never felt that they were accountable to the people of India, to India's civilisational commitment and, above all, to the Nalanda Spirit. Their flourishing talk, sweeping promises and tall claims of being the sole arbiters and repositories of what a revived Nalanda would mean and express came to nought. It was left to Modi to re-energise this crucial civilisational project and to see it through.
While looking back at Narendra Modi's 12 years at the national helm, among the many dimensions that are striking is the revival of Nalanda University. It stands and grows as a civilisational knowledge lighthouse of the modern world. It is also growing as a defining pillar of the emerging Asian century.
In the growth and radiance of the Nalanda Spirit also lies India's national and global good.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is member NEC, BJP & Chairman, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.