The New Ancient: India’s Nalanda University Project

In the southern plains of the Indian state of Bihar there lies a sprawling complex of ruins that used to be a Buddhist monastery centuries ago. Bihar ranks amongst the poorest states in India and the closest international airport is the small Gaya airport, more than 50 km away from the ruins. Not quite an obvious site for a new, international and state-of-the-art university, some would think. Well, some in India think differently.

The place is called Nalanda and more than thousand years ago it was frequented by people coming from as far away as China. Present-day northern India and southern Nepal is where the Buddhist religion was born and where it long flourished. From here it spread across Asia. One of its main routes was the Silk Road, which the Buddhist monks would traverse, following in the steps of merchants. Thus gradually Buddhist monasteries sprang up along the route leading from northern India through Central Asia into western China.

Then Buddhism began to travel back: once the religion gained followers in the kingdoms of East Asia and Southeast Asia, many Buddhist monks hailing from these regions would embark on the arduous trek to visit holy places connected to Buddha in India and to study the traditions of their religion in the place of its birth. They somehow managed to do this without international airports, despite the fact that in the first millennium AD the roundtrip land journey could take years. The Nalanda monastery was an often-visited place. According to the Chinese travelling monk Xuanzang, who stayed at Nalanda in the 7th century AD, the monastery had thousands of students, some of them coming from countries far away from India.

Yet Buddhism in India suffered a fate somewhat similar to that of Christianity in Israel: while it was reduced to a minority religion in the place of its origin, it has many more followers in other countries. In later periods the popularity of Buddhism decreased and in the current Republic of India the Buddhist minority is a tiny one. Moreover, the majority of the religion’s followers are either Tibetan Buddhists in the Himalayas or “neo-Buddhists” who converted to Buddhism in the 20th century to free themselves from the Hindu caste system.

If you visit the holy places connected to Buddha in India and Nepal, the colorful flock of pilgrims and tourists is largely international. Places like Lumbini (Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal), Bodh Gaya (place of Buddha’s enlightenment in Bihar, India), Sarnath (the site of Buddha’s first sermon in Uttar Pradesh, India), and Kushinagar (where Buddha supposedly died, also in Uttar Pradesh) witness a constant flow of Buddhist believers from countries like Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, China, South Korea, or Japan.

While the generosity of this international community presumably helps in the upkeep of the holy sites, what about the monastery in Nalanda? Once one of the biggest learning centers of the first millennium AD, the monastery’s demise was brutally quickened by the invasion of the Turkish commander Bakhtiyar Khilji (or Khalji). His campaigns in eastern India were a part of a larger and prompt process that saw the establishment of a new Turkish state, the Delhi sultanate, in the subcontinent. An able military leader and a Muslim, Khilji is believed to have ordered the massacre of all the people staying in the monastery as well as the burning of the monastery’s vast library toward the end of the 12th century. Thus, apart from some structures you can see in Nalanda presently, the site is largely the excavated foundations of buildings. The venue is maintained, and has a pristine air of antiquity to it, but is rather barren. It may be a sad but rather adequate symbol of the situation of Buddhism in contemporary India.

A huge change is underway, though – but it is not a change toward reconstructing the ancient institutions at Nalanda. The government of Bihar state attempted a modest revival by establishing the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara (“The New Great Monastery of Nalanda”) back in 1951. But more ambitious plans have been conceived in recent years. Suggestions to establish a new university called Nalanda University have come from a few quarters, including the late president of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Singapore George Yeo. The project has received much political support in India as well as financial assistance both within the country as well from overseas. Land was purchased close to the monastery and the Nalanda University officially commenced its activities in 2014. Yet the road to make it a full-fledged institution will take more time. While beautiful visions of the future campus are available on the Internet, the first and modest batch of students is said to still be staying at a makeshift campus.

This time the idea is not to reconstruct a monastery or an exclusively Buddhist center of learning but to build a modern university that would make references to the Buddhist traditions but would otherwise be an institution following new and international standards. Its first two functional institutions are the School of Historical Studies and the School of Ecology and Environment Studies. The curriculum and the field of research is being enhanced to include Buddhist studies, philosophy and comparative religions, linguistics and literature, international relations and peace studies, but also information science and technology, economics, management, and public health.

The concept of Nalanda University is an attractive one. When asked for their first thoughts about India, people with general knowledge about that country would presumably often summarize it as a nation deeply rooted in an ancient civilization but currently facing severe problems such as poverty. Working on India’s image by highlighting the best of its past but simultaneously establishing new institutions that show India’s modernization and progress seems a wise track.

Moreover, both the ancient monastery and the new Nalanda University share the trait of internationality. Nalanda’s historical connection to much of Asia through Buddhism presumably helped to garner outside support for the new project. As mentioned before, George Yeo was one of the fathers of the idea, and the Nalanda University project was worked on during the East Asia Summit (including in Thailand and Phillipines). The university has already acquired partners across the globe and significant donors include the governments of Australia, China, Laos, Singapore, and Thailand. Four of these five states share a Buddhist heritage and representatives of the biggest donors (China, Australia, Laos, and Thailand) are part of the university’s governance board. What deserves additional attention is that China supported the project despite the Sino-Indian rivalry and the unresolved border disputes. However, Beijing’s involvement may also be seen as the Chinese government’s outreach toward its own Buddhist citizens. There are some foreigners amongst the Nalanda University staff and among the first students (including at least one from Japan) and recent open positions announcements included the search for lecturers in Korean and Tibetan.

There are certainly hurdles ahead. With that level of political backing, money hopefully will not be a problem but remote Nalanda’s connectivity will remain an issue. Building up international prestige and cooperation from such a distant location can be a challenge that needs extra resources and the development of regional infrastructure, a project which would also benefit the local community. Moreover, recent data suggests that political differences may be hurting the project. The first chancellor of the university, Amartya Sen, an Indian professor of economy and a Nobel prize laureate, chose not to pursue the position for a second term, claiming interventions on the part of the Indian government. Sen is a known critic of the Hindu nationalists that are now in power in New Delhi. The position was then taken by the previously mentioned George Yeo who, however, quit in November 201, pointing out to interventions from the same source. One is left to hope that politics will not weigh in too heavily on the university.

“Nalanda is an idea whose time has come,” Yeo said at the time of his resignation. “It is bigger and will outlast anyone of us.” Hopefully he is right.