Nalanda University- from White Elephant to RSS stronghold

The Scroll reports-

Rashmi Shetty and a classmate quit the university in early September, at the start of their second year of Buddhist Studies at Nalanda. About 40 students had enrolled in the two courses of History and Buddhist Studies in 2016. “Ours was the first batch,” she said.
Explaining her decision to quit, Shetty said: “We were short of teachers. At the time of admission we interacted with Max Deeg [from Cardiff University] and were told he would be the dean. He took a few classes but never joined full-time and left. Three new faculty members we were promised at the time of admission never joined and even an acting dean disappeared after a few weeks.”

Max Deeg is a proper Teutonic philologist with a deep love for Buddhism. I imagine, if Nalanda's promise had been kept, he'd have enjoyed interacting with East Asian savants and might well have set up an innovative new Research Program in collaboration with them.  Of course, a man of his standing could not relocate to Rajgir- but, thanks to modern technology- he would certainly have been able to shape its future for the better.
Scholars like Deeg can scarcely be blamed for the administrative shambles created by the Nalanda Mentor Group.  Consider the very different trajectories of two Govt. funded multilateral Universities- the South Asian University (S.A.U) in Delhi and Nalanda International University.

S.A.U was run by the economist and former V.C of J.N.U, G.K Chadha. It offers courses in worthwhile subjects like Maths and Bio-Technology. No scandal attaches to its name and it appears to be on track to burgeon on its new campus.
By contrast, the Nalanda Mentor Group was all 'Chiefs and no Indians'- it featured economists like Lord Desai and Amartya Sen but nobody with practical experience of institution building. Sen had a bee in his bonnet about 'autonomy' which he thought meant that the Govt. should just hand over cash without questioning how that cash was being spent.  Unfortunately, the V.C Sen chose for Nalanda- with the backing of the PMO- proved incompetent and politically controversial. Still, she can scarcely bear all, or even much, of the blame. Indeed, had the show been properly run by an experienced bureaucrat, as the nodal Ministry had suggested in 2014, she would have been free to act as a sort of roving Ambassador for Nalanda- highlighting its liberal credentials and commitment to gender equality- more especially in the context of the harm caused to India's image by the Nirbhaya atrocity which might well have put off female students from applying to study there.

Unfortunately, things worked out quite differently. Amartya Sen monopolised the media coverage of Nalanda but in a manner which harmed his own image. It turned out this 'Mother Theresa of Economics' was endorsing a White Elephant project which had grabbed land from hungry peasants. 

Still, even White Elephants have their admirers. The problem with Nalanda was that it wasn't an Elephant and wasn't particularly clean or safe- indeed, the last acting V.C, Pankaj Mohan, had to resign over charges of covering up a case of sexual assault.

For many students, Shetty explained, Nalanda had been a “risky choice”. She herself had completed a Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University and chose to study Buddhist Studies at Nalanda over job offers.
“Everyone is too tired and scared to fight now,” said the history student. “My parents are telling me to just keep my head down, finish and get out.”
Foreign students are affected worse, Shetty said. “There are students from Brazil, Sri Lanka, Peru and Japan at Nalanda who cannot simply leave,” she added. “People have left their jobs to study here.”
Still, a student from Romania did leave after “having her money stolen and being dragged by the neck on campus”.
Students have been demanding investigation into cases like the assault on the Romanian student as well as more visits by doctors and psychiatrists, speedier recruitment and clearing of scholarships, and better communication.

Will Nalanda survive? To answer this question we must consider why a student might want to go and study in such a backwater. There is only possible answer. Many students are allergic to exams. A place where you can get M.As and PhDs without passing exams can seem attractive. The problem is that Research is not univocal. What one Professor considers profound may be dismissed as puerile nonsense by another. But, turnover of Professors in a small Indian cow-town is going to be high, so the University will have to switch from Research based learning to Examination based Credentials.

several teachers have left. As a result, many specialised courses advertised by the university that students hoped to study within the disciplines offered by the School of Historical Studies and the School of Buddhist Studies, Philosophy and Comparative Religions are no longer available. Consequently, many students have had to abandon their original research plans and take up new ones. Nalanda has even reneged on the promise of running research-only master’s programmes. It has also reintroduced examinations from this year.

Once an educational institution goes down the road of 'chalk and talk' and compulsory examinations, Students are bound to exercise a countervailing influence over the curriculum so that the exams become more and more similar to those used for screening purposes by Bureaucracies.  This in turn will undercut the 'International' pretensions of the College.

I suppose one way forward is to allow Nalanda to become an RSS stronghold. No doubt, there are ideological allies for Hindutva in Korea and Japan and so forth. But this would mean the end of my own dream of getting a PhD from Nalanda based on my research into Ecological elements in Buddhist iconography in relation to the cult of Shasti- the cat god. I have already done a lot of research- which consists of sketches of cats saying nice Buddhist things to the Environment- and all I need is a Professor who will validate my Research and give me a PhD. My plan was to visit Nalanda surreptitiously and lock some Professor into the latrine till the fellow signed off on my Research. Now, because of the brutal thugs of the RSS, this dream of mine has turned to dust.