12th-century Nalanda varsity blueprint to be ready next year

The blueprint for reviving one of the most ancient educational institutions of the world "" the 1197 AD Nalanda University in Bihar "" is expected to be ready early next year.

This was disclosed at the end of the second meeting of the Nalanda Mentor Group (NMG), headed by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, recently at Tokyo.

The NMG, which was set up by the Indian government to establish an international university at the ancient Buddhist seat of learning, is being supported by Singapore, China and Japan.

New Delhi's proposal to take the East-Asian countries with huge Buddhists population on board for the proposed university is also aimed at exploring India's traditional relations with such countries through the Buddhist route.

At Tokyo, the NMG decided that the university would have schools of Buddhist studies, philosophy and comparative religions; historical studies; international relations & peace studies; business management and development studies; languages and literature; and ecology and environmental studies.

The NMG members include Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo, government officials from China and Japan, Lord Meghnad Desai and Sugata Bose, a grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who teaches at Harvard University.

Experts from Thailand, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Korea, China and India are working on the curriculum and the academic structure of the proposed university.

Though the idea of the university was first mooted in the late 1990s, it was former president APJ Abdul Kalam's initiative in early 2006 that gave shape to the project. Kalam has already been offered a post in the proposed university.

The government has already started acquiring some 500 acres of land for the fully residential university, which would have 46 foreign faculty members and over 400 Indian academics.

At Tokyo, the NMG resolved that the vision of the Nalanda university would be based on "a global philosophy while maintaining local relevance.''

Nalanda University is proposed to be an autonomous and a secular academic institution which would come into effect with the signing of an inter-governmental agreement between the participating countries.

The next meeting of the NMG would be held in China and later in India. The project has to be finalised before the East-Asia Summit in 2008, where it would be placed for formal approval.