The project for the revival of Nalanda University near the original one in Bihar in India should serve as a case study on how to render places of advantage to your perennial adversaries. The plan to revive Nalanda was conceptualised far back in 2006 by the erstwhile President of India, Shri Abdul Kalam and since then the progress in the supposed, dream project of the Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been a big zero. The University was supposed to serve as a high point in the Buddhist diplomacy and complement our Look East policy.
The slow implementation of the project served as an opportunity for China which has come up with its own Nalanda to serve as a seat of Buddhist learning.
To complement it, it has integrated the University with its one belt one road initiative. It has made the Nanhai Buddhist College in Hainan Province. The admission process for the first academic session for a batch strength of 220 students has started. On the other hand, India could not start its campus at Nalanda even after 11 years of conceptualising it. Recently it started its first school with a batch strength of mere 15 students at Rajgir in the premises of a guest house operated by the Bihar Tourism Board.
China in fact was on board of an international team that had promised to support the project at Nalanda. However, it started at a similar project on its own to deny India any strategic advantage that could have accrued to it in the East and South East Asian due to this Nalanda University acting as an epitome of Buddhist diplomacy.
China is now offering courses in 3 languages namely Pali, Tibetian and Chinese in a sprawling 619 acres of campus spread across the beautiful Nanshan mountains. The university offers courses in 6 departments. China has appointed monk Yin Shun as the dean of the University who is currently the chief abbot of Zhong Hua Buddhist temple in Lumbini to make it at par with Gaya and Sarnath which are the centres of attraction for the tourists from all over the world. It appears as an attempt to sidetrack the rising Indian soft diplomacy in Nepal by asking an abbot from the Lumbini based monastery to head a University.
China also aims to link Lumbini, Wuxi and Hainan as a part of OBOR initiative to get a tighter grip on Nepal. Wuxi near Shanghai already serves as the permanent venue for the World Buddhist Forum. So it appears a well thought move to attract Nepal towards China using its soft power.
The University will offer courses in Tibetian Buddhism and this will serve as a meaty blow to the Tibetian Movement currently operational in India. China has tried to take the steam off the movement.
India on the other hand is stuck up with the 455 acre of dead space that the state government had procured from the farmers. Apart from that failure to attract investments from Japan despite its commitment, lacklustre contribution of just 12 crore Rupees from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia have reduced the project to a dead rubber.
There have been charges of funds embezzlement by the chairman of the Governing Board, Amartya Sen and charges of sexual harassment of students by the VC which do not augur well for the University.
India it seems has lost all its prime movers’ advantage and the vaccum has been successfully tapped by the Chinese this time.