By ROBERT E. NELSON

The expanding presence and growing influence of South Asian students and professionals in American society is presenting American higher education institutions with both challenges and opportunities. Over the past five years, Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has taken a leading role in calling for greater engagement between American universities and the South Asian region. Meanwhile, Indian American students and visiting students from South Asia have flourished at Harvard, establishing perhaps the most visible and influential presence on campus of any cultural or international group. For example, the South Asian Association's "Ghungroo," an annual, springtime, cultural show nearing its 20th anniversary, is one of the most highly anticipated artistic events at the university. Yet, Harvard's administration is struggling to keep up with soaring demand among students for greater resources devoted to South Asia related activities.

In a speech at the Harvard South Asia Conference in September 2003, the university's then-president, Lawrence Summers, pronounced a bold call to action, not only for Harvard but for universities nationwide. "There is an enormous opportunity to fill a gap," he observed. "There is an enormous need for us as a nation to enhance our understanding of contemporary South Asia."

A region on the rise, he said, "commands the attention of a great university." For Summers, Harvard's role would be to lead the way toward filling that gap:
"The development and enhancement of our capacity to study South Asia," he proclaimed, will be "our major inter-national affairs and regional priority in the years ahead." While calling for improvements, Summers also paid special tribute to two South Asian scholars already established on Harvard's campus: Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History, and Amartya Sen, the Nobel Laureate in Economics.

An ambitious proposal
Summers followed up on his speech a few years later with a visit to India in 2006. Inspired by the experience, upon returning he made the ambitious proposal that "every American should visit the country that may be our most important ally two decades from now." Since Summers' resignation from the presidency last year, leadership of the university has been handed over to Drew G. Faust, a professor of American history. She will encounter increasing demand from a vociferous contingent among the undergraduate student body to revamp and reorganize the school's resources in order to fulfill Summers' South Asian mission.

Harvard, America's oldest university, has a long history of South Asian scholarship, though it has been devoted chiefly to philology, the study of language. Sanskrit was first taught at Harvard in 1872 by James Bradstreet Greenough, a Latin grammarian. A Sanskrit Reader, published in 1888, by Charles Lanman, head of the department of Indo-Iranian languages, continues to serve as Harvard's standard introductory text for the language. By 1902, interest among students had grown to the extent that a Department of Indic Philology was formed. Its modern incarnation, the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, has held strongly to its linguistic center. Today, a Harvard student can choose from courses offered in Sanskrit, Vedic, Pali, Urdu-Hindi, Tibetan, Bengali, Nepali, Sindhi and Gujarati.

Historic roots and modern shortcomings
Today's undergraduates, though, are no longer satisfied with Harvard's historic tradition of scholarship in South Asian philology. In recent years the demand for broader regional studies has come especially from Indian American students and scholars from South Asia, who have formed a South Asia Studies Initiative. In March of this year, two leaders of the movement raised the profile of the issue with an opinion piece in the Harvard Crimson daily newspaper. Vinita Andrapalliyal and Shreya Vora insisted that South Asian studies must break out of the constraints of tradition and be elevated above the status of a mere "special interest issue." Writing at a time of simmering inter-faculty battles over the undergraduate curriculum, they argued that the study of South Asia has become "absolutely essential to any curriculum that seeks to make global citizens of its students."

Academic interest rising
Andrapalliyal and Vora contended that Harvard has not adequately met growing demand for South Asia related study opportunities. Supporting their case was the Initiative's 2005 survey that found academic interest in the region among undergraduates on the rise, and found present resources inadequate in comparison to peer universities. Lack of resources and opportunities may be a deterrent to devoting one's studies to the region, they argued, noting that fewer than 12 percent of students who were initially interested in concentrating on South Asia studies actually followed through. Moreover, of 59 students who said they were interested in going to the region to study, only three eventually signed up.

Students said they are seeking greater breadth and depth in course offerings, especially in contemporary South Asian politics, culture and society.

The recently formed South Asia Initiative is a serious attempt by faculty across disciplines to compensate for the narrow focus of the Sans­krit department. The Initiative, housed at Harvard's Weather­head Center for International Affairs, supports faculty and student exchanges and research in South Asia, and conducts a broad range of seminars, lectures and conferences across academic disciplines. In 2005 and 2006, a group from the Initiative, led by Assistant Director Rena Fonseca, traveled to Tamil Nadu to assist with tsunami reconstruction projects. Des­pite these steps toward Summers' vision, though, the Initiative has yet to become a heavyweight among Harvard's legions of institutions and faculties. It has not been granted the power to appoint faculty or grant degrees, and has limited resources.

Looking ahead, Harvard has much work to do to satisfy the demands of the students and turn the opportunities envisioned by her predecessor into realities on campus. In order for South Asian studies to enjoy enhanced com­parative prestige among other regional studies programs and insti­tutes at Harvard, the South Asia Initiative will need to attract greater funding and build its capabilities. Faust could persuade the Sanskrit depart­ment to modernize its curri­culum to match under­graduate interests, and could lead a university-wide effort to recruit leading pro­fessors to Harvard depart­ments lacking in South Asian spe­cialists. Given Harvard's stature and influence in the United States, if the university can succeed in meeting those chal­lenges, South Asian students and enthusiasts can expect to find the coming years among the most exciting in the history of American higher education.

Robert Nelson, a 2007 graduate of Harvard University, wrote this article while working as a Public Affairs intern at the American Center, New Delhi.

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South Asian Programs at U.S. Universities

* The Committee on South Asian Studies, Harvard University, Massachusetts
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/sastudies.html
* Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, Massachusetts
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/index.html
* South Asia Program, Cornell University, New York
http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/SouthAsia/
* Southern Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York
http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/REGIONAL/SAI/
* India Studies Program, Indiana University, Bloomington
http://www.indiana.edu/~isp/
* Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University, East Lansing
http://asianstudies.msu.edu/
* South Asia Center, Syracuse University, New York
http://www.maxwell.syr.edu/moynihan/programs/sac/
* Center for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley
http://www.ias.berkeley.edu/southasia/
* South Asia at Chicago, University of Chicago
http://southasia.uchicago.edu/
* Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
http://www.umich-cseas.org/
* Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
http://www.southasia.upenn.edu/
* Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania
http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/
* Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin
http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/index.html
* Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://www.southasia.wisc.edu/
* Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University, Connecticut
http://www.yale.edu/seas/

Courtesy: SPAN Magazine