Comradely revolutionary greetings to everyone. At present, election campaigning in Bihar is at its peak, and both the ruling and opposition parties are vigorously discussing the state’s backwardness. Issues like education, healthcare, and employment are being widely debated.In that context, about a thousand years ago, Nalanda University was the world’s largest center of learning. Under the leadership of the UPA government (headed by Manmohan Singh), special efforts were made for its revival, and on July 19, 2012, Amartya Sen was appointed as the first Chancellor of the new Nalanda University.However, after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014, Sen criticized Modi’s politics of communal polarization and emphasized India’s inclusive cultural heritage and its millennia-old history. Consequently, on February 20, 2015, he withdrew his candidature for a second term as Chancellor.During his 11 years in power, Narendra Modi has allegedly interfered in all constitutional institutions and, according to Sen, worked to turn India into a hierarchically structured Hindu nation aligned with the narrow ideology of his parent organization, the RSS. In this context, Amartya Sen’s opposition to such efforts is a highly commendable step.Having observed this, I have copied and shared four pages (105–109) from Amartya Sen’s memoir Home in the World: A Memoir, specifically from Chapter 8, “The Presence of the Past,” sections 8 to 10, where he reflects on Nalanda University’s history and revival. I present this information to all thoughtful readers so that they may judge with their own sense of conscience how sincere the self-proclaimed ‘Vishwaguru’ claimants truly are.
“My school’s refusal to register me as a Buddhist was particularly disappointing for me since, In ancient days, Bihar – then very prosperous – was the original Centre of Buddhist religion, culture and enlightenment. Its capital Pataliputra ( now called Patna ) also served as the capital of the early all – India empires for more than a thousand years, beginning in the third century BC. Among its greatest glories was the foundation of Nalanda, the oldest university in the world, which flourished there as a Buddhist foundation from the fifth century to the end of twelfth. For comparison, the oldest European University of Bologna in Italy – was founded in I088. Thus by the time the University of Belogna came to life, the university in Nalanda had already been functioning for more than 600 years – educating thousands of students each year from many countries in the world.
Since students had come from to Nalanda University from all over East Asia, the so-called East Asia Summit in 2009 made a strong attempt to re-establish it. ‘Ritorno a Nalanda’ headlined Corriere della Sera, the largest circulating Italian newspaper, when classes began again in September 2014 at Nalanda. It was a notable moment in the History of higher education in the world. It was also, for me personally, as the Chancellor of the newly re-establish Nalanda University, a deeply nostalgic moment. I recalled the time – nearly seventy years before – when, as an impossible child, I had wondered whether Nalanda could ever come to life again. Is it gone forever? ‘I had asked my grandfather, Kshiti Mohan.’ ‘Perhaps not, ‘ said the old man, who always generated cultural optimism, ‘it could do us a lot of good today. ‘
When classes were held at Nalanda more than 1,500 years ago, it was the only place in the world offering instruction of a kind that we now expect from universities around the globe. Nalanda broke completely new ground, and established itself as a distinguished institution offering advanced education in a great many fields, not only in Buddhist studies, but also in languages and literature, astronomy and observational sciences, architecture and sculpture, and medicine and public health care. It drew students not only from all over India, but also from China, Japan and Korea, and other countries with Buddhist connections, and by the seventh century it had 10,000 residential students. It was in fact the only institution of learning outside China to which any ancient Chinese ever went for education. The world – not just India – needed a university like that, and Nalanda went from strength to strength. As the excavations of the old ruins have revealed – both in Nalanda and in the neighboring areas all over Bihar where educational institutions were springing up, inspired by Nalanda’s example – it was contributing something of great value to the world.
Despite my personal proximity to Nalanda from a very early age, it was striking for me to see the recent excavations going on in the Telhara (near Nalanda) and process of unearthing lecture halls and studants hostels that must have been unique in the world more than a thousand years ago. The last thing we would expect to see as we excavate historical ruins now is a set of large halls, presumably used for lectures and instructions, and clusters of small bedrooms, akin to present – day hostels for students. As an institution of higher learning, where the entry qualifications were high, Nalanda was fed by a network of ancillary educational organizations. Some Chinese students including the famous Yi Jing (AD 635 – 713), who studied in Nalanda for ten years and wrote the first inter – country comparative study of medical system, comparing Chinese and Indian medical practices, first went from Guangzhou to Sumatra (then the base of the Srivijaya empire) to learn Sanskrit. After acquiring adequate Sanskrit in the schools there, Yi Jing took another boat journey, ending up in Tamralipta, not for from modern- day Calcutta, on his way to Nalanda. There were four other Buddhism – based Universities in Bihar by the seventh century, largely inspired by Nalanda, and by the tenth century one of them – Vikramshila – had emerged as a serious competitor.
After more than 700 years of successful teaching, old Nalanda was destroyed in the 1190s in a series of 0f attacks by invading armies from West Asia, which also demolish the other universities in Bihar. There are series debates about Bakhtiar Khilji, the ruthless invader whose conquering army ploughed through north India, was himself responsible for the sacking of Nalanda (as is told in popular accounts), but the fact of the violent destruction by invading armies is well established. The library, a nine- story building full of manuscripts, is reputed to have burned for three days. The destruction of Nalanda took place shortly after the development of the University of Oxford from 1167, and about a decade before the University of Cambridge was founded in 1209. The patronage of higher learning in India by well settled Muslim monarchs, Mughals in particular, would come much Letter, by which time nothing of Nalanda remained.
Nalanda is part of India’s and the world’s heritage, and attempts to revive it modern setting in contemporary world had encouragement and support from other Asian countries, particularly those participating in the East Asia Summit. The Indian government was initially very enthusiastic, but, after the political powers governing the country changed around 2014 and the priorities of Hindutva and of political Hinduism became dominant, there have been significant lapses in the plans for reviving Nalanda and its Buddhist vision.
However, the need for the classical Nalanda remains. Part of the necessity aries from Nalanda’s focus on quality education – a much neglected requirement in Indian higher education today. The specifically Buddhist features of Nalanda, including its non – sectarian view of humanity, may not appeal to those whose interests in interpreting ancient India as Hindu India is now extremely strong. It is also important to recognize that the enormous blemish of division in India’s old traditions, including caste hierarchy and untouchability, was strongly resisted by Buddha and the Buddhist tradition, and the main twentieth – century intellectual fighter against this divisiveness, Dr. B. R. Aambedkar, converted to Buddhism to establish his position. Nalanda is associated with that egalitarian vision which is extremely important for education in general, and higher education in particular.
There is also something in Nalanda’s method of pedagogy that remains relevant for the world today. Nalanda’s method of instruction, as it’s Chinese students noted, was to make plentiful use of dialogues and debates (even greater, it would appear, than in ancient Greece). This dialectical method was not only unusual, but also extremely effective. The spread of the influence of Nalanda across Asia, which the Asian Civilization Museum in Singapore Called the ‘Nalanda Trails ‘, come from talking to and learning from each other.
On the occasion when I was visiting the new campus of Nalanda and conducting a seminar on Asian history, a question came up on the impact and influence on Nalanda of the Silk Route, which extended for over 4000 miles and enabled merchandise to move between Asia and Europe. Silk was one of the principal exports of China – hence the name. Originally established between the third century BC and the third century AD, during the Han Dynasty, the Silk Route was of profound importance not only for trade and commerce, but also for the intermingling of people and ideas.
The critical question that can be asked is not about the importance of the Silk Route, nor about the crucial role of trade in linking people with each other across borders – neither is in dispute. It is, rather, about whether a persistent focus on trade and commodity exchange in human contacts, and a consequently magnified reading of the role of the Silk Route, may downplay other influence through which people have interacted with each other across frontiers and borders, including the massive civilizational interactions that the ‘Nalanda trials’ generated and sustained.
There have been some confusing attempts recently to see old Nalanda itself as a by – product of the Silk Route. That would be a huge mistake, not merely because Nalanda was not on – or even strongly linked with – the Silk Route, but also because it was central to a different avenue of interaction in which the trade of commodities was not prime mover, If trade gets people together (and it certainly does), then so does the pursuit of knowledge and enlightenment. Mathematics, science, engineering, music, and the arts, along with religious and ethical commitments, have prompted people to seek them across regions, by land and sea, over millennia. The motivation behind these journeys was not the pursuit of commercial gain, but the search for ideas – including, but not limited to, religious ideas. The huge modern popularity of seeing global connections through the prism of trade, of which the Silk Route is a leading example, should not be allowed to eclipse the fact that reflective engagements have motivated the movement of people across countries and regions for just as long. Globalization is a result not only of seeking business, but also of talking to – and learning from – each other.
Old Nalanda belonged to globally interactive tradition, the need for which remains strong today. The campus of new Nalanda, which is a old town of Rajgir, then called Rajagriha. This is exactly where the first Buddhist Council, the third, which met in Pataliputra (Patna) at the invitation of Emperor Ashoka in third century BC, has become the most famous, both because of its size and also on account of the importance of the differences that were addressed there through discussion. So Nalanda sits right next to the location of very first attempt, possibly in the world, to bring about what in the nineteenth century Walter Bagehot, following John Stuart Mill, called ‘government by discussion’. In the history of democratic thought, the past has huge presence, a history that is both inspirational and instructive in the contemporary world.
Many of us among the students at Shantinketan School went on frequent excursions to Rajgir and Nalanda late in the year. We stayed in tents and suffered a little from the cold, but the outdoor fire around which we sat and chatted until well past midnight always provided some warmth. The conversations were often far from profound (despite efforts by the teachers with us to bring in some pedagogy), and there was much irreverent humor. Sometimes mild romance developed at considerable speed – and founded equally rapidly – among the co – educational students on these trips. But none of this interfered with the diligent explanation of Buddhist trials and ancient history during the day.”
