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Updated on: Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Allahabad: In its endeavour to boost educational ties with India, the European Union (EU) has decided to form a joint consortium of three educational institutions of the country including the Allahabad University to promote study of various facets of contemporary India.

The consortium, to be set up at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, has Sambalpur University, Orissa and Sri Venkateshwar College, New Delhi, as other two educational institutions. In fact, a Contemporary India Study Centre Aarhus (CISCA) has been set at up at the University of Aarhus for the purpose.

In Allahabad University, the department of anthropology has been chosen to play a vital role in shaping up a study centre on studying contemporary India at Aarhus University, Denmark.

With total funding from the EU, the CISCA, besides conducting studies on contemporary India would mainly focus would on entering into Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with Indian institutions for exchange programmes in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in anthropology. The move would aim revamping anthropology courses being taught in Europe institutions. This would include faculty and student exchange programmes, restructuring educational programmes, improving language teaching through study tours etc.

To give a final shape to the project, CISCA coordinator Uwe Skoda will visit the AU in January next year. Head of anthropology department Prof Vijoy S Sahay has been nominated as one of the members of CISCA board.

"The focus is on enhancing and strengthening new teaching for disseminating advance knowledge on modern India and South Asia in the form of undergraduate and postgraduate courses,'' said Prof Sahay. Studies on India and the Indian subcontinent have suffered for long from a bias in favour of a "book-centred view" giving prominence to classic scriptures over contemporary society. CISCA wants to bring a change in this, informed Prof Sahay.

It has also been decided that scholars and representatives of partner institutions would be invited as visiting researchers to Aarhus University to design course modules and initiate joint courses. Besides, two Indian experts along with a participating European scholar and resource persons from Aarhus would jointly collect in-depth information on the four core areas of teaching and research and organise small workshops, said Sahay.

This is a welcome news as field of anthropology has always fascinated academicians in Europe and the joint consortium would throw light on different facets of contemporary India, said AU vice-chancellor Prof Rajen Harshe.

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