Nalanda-The ancient pan-Asian university might yet open again

NALANDA is an unlovely place in the poorest state in India. Yet, as in much of Bihar, a prosaic present belies a poetic past. It is the site of one of the first great universities which, half a millennium before the founding of Oxford, flourished with some 10,000 students and monks from all over Asia. Mango groves and lotus pools circled its halls, and an 8th-century inscription touted its “row of pagodas the spires of which touched the clouds.”

If some scholars and diplomats have their way, a new generation of students will be enrolled. A bill has just snaked through India’s parliament calling for Nalanda’s revival, at a likely cost of several hundred million dollars. The Nalanda Mentor Group, led by Amartya Sen, an economics Nobel laureate, has overseen the project since it was first proposed in 2006. The Bihar state government has agreed to provide 500 acres for a new campus and India’s Planning Commission has proffered 1 billion rupees (some $21m) to get the project started. A chancellor has also been appointed.

Nalanda could be a showpiece of regional diplomatic engagement: a declaration in support of it was signed at a 2009 summit in Thailand by 16 countries, of which Japan and Singapore have shown most interest. Even China has offered to help, says Mr Sen, who notes a Chinese former foreign minister is part of the project. George Yeo, Singapore’s foreign minister who is also on the Mentor Group, says Nalanda matters to the whole region, not least because a translation of the Lotus Sutra, a religious text, by one of its monks is the basis for Mahayana Buddhism practised in East Asia.

Whatever the university comes to symbolise, it must first be built. “There is no commitment to funds even now,” admits Mr Sen, but fund-raising is beginning. Setting up universities by inter-governmental agreement is also an unproven model, but Mr Sen points to a new one in Delhi founded by the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, as a possible guide. The Nalanda project enjoys the support of Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, which should give it a push in one of India’s most dysfunctional states. And the project’s appeal is clear: Nalanda offers both a glimpse of a glorious past and a chance of a bit of neighbourly collaboration