The guidelines issued by the ministry of human resource development to all central universities on the rules they must abide by when inviting international scholars for seminars or foreign guest lectureships deserves to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. According to the guidelines, central universities can enter into agreements with other universities only after approval from the ministry. Similarly, individual foreign scholars invited to attend seminars or work here must also gain ‘security clearances’ from the home ministry. It is utterly ridiculous that in the age of free information, of the internet, and of free travel, the government is seeking so pathetically to regulate academic freedom. Union HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi should remember that Indian civilisation was known in the ancient period for universities such as Nalanda and Taxila that attracted scholars like Huien Tsang, I-Tsing and Fa-Hien who have left behind valuable accounts of their travels. Varanasi, centre of Hinduism has, through the ages, welcomed religious scholars to its shores. To restrict the flow of academics into Indian universities by subjecting them to government monitoring is a principle that is not just anti-democratic, it runs counter to the deep strains of intellectual interaction for which this country has always been renowned.As if the government’s undue interference in liberal arts institutions like the ICHR and the ICSSR was not enough, as if it was not enough that there is precious little financial support available to researchers, these shocking tenets now sought to be imposed only indicate the determination of Joshi to convert all education into a battleground between the puerile categories of “swadeshi” and “videshi”, unmindful that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen recently argued that India has a two thousand year history of global interaction.In the field of history for example, a great deal of exciting new work, such as research proving that the 18th century was not a century of permanent “decline”, that religious communities have never been uniform monoliths, is in process abroad. And foreign scholarship on India, be it Gascoigne’s The Great Moguls or Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus have acquired the status of classic works. To seek to deprive Indians of the wealth of expertise now available abroad and the stimulation of international contact reveals a terribly retrograde mentality.
