Looking West to India

Asian education, intra-Asian renaissance, and the Nalanda revival

Bibliographic Data

ID3629629
AuthorsAndrea Marion Pinkney (McGill University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume49
Issue1
Pages111-149
Publication date2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x13000310
OpenAlexW2050519381
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited13

More than 800 years ago-at approximately the same time as the founding of the first European universities-the renowned monastic institution known as the Nālandā Mahāvihāra disappeared from historical records. Since 2006, a transnational Asian initiative to revive ancient Nalanda as 'Nalanda University' in Bihar, India, has been embraced at the highest government and philanthropic levels by a consortium of South, Southeast, and East Asian nations. Nalanda, described as an 'icon of Asian renaissance', and the issues surrounding its revival raise important questions about how a new interest in 'pan-Indo-Asianism' and a newly imagined vision of 'Asian' education are seen as converging to promote Asian interests. First, I consider the ambivalent relationship of the revival and its pre-modern namesake against the Nālandā Mahāvihāra's known history. Then I characterize two kinds of discourse on the contemporary project: one that is 'pan-Indo-Asian' and frames the revival as serving transnational Asian goals; and another that is Indic and imagines Nalanda as advancing Indian national concerns. While, for the various stakeholders, serious fissures are evident in the symbolic values of Nalanda-as an exemplar of Asia and of India-both types of discourse, taken together, reveal important insights into the development of an alternative model of education that is both modern and 'Asian

Ambivalence · Ancient history · Art history · Asian studies · China · East Asia · Economic growth · Geography · Government (linguistics · Political science · Sociology · South asia · The Renaissance · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Gender Studies · Global Education and Multiculturalism · History · Law · Religious Education and Schools

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