NEW DELHI: The Jawaharlal Nehru University Institute of Advanced Studies (JNIAS) will be renamed as Vidyaranya Institute of Knowledge and Advanced Studies (VIKAS). Vidyaranya or Madhavacharya was the 12th head of the Sringeri Sharada Peetham established by Jagadguru Shankaracharya.
JNU Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit confirmed that the executive council (EC) of the varsity took the decision unanimously on June 8 to rename the institute to provide a platform that enables collaboration and research between fellows and the university community.
Amit Kumar Sharma, the director of the institute, told this newspaper, “Jawaharlal Nehru wanted to make it a national university but after his death, it was a collective decision of Congress to name this university after Jawaharlal Nehru.”
“One of our education centres is named after Zakir Hussain while our library is named after BR Ambedkar. These are all North Indian names. We wanted some South Indian name to be there because UP, Bengal alone doesn’t make India. Also, no organization is named after a South Indian.”
“More important than changing the institute’s name is that the mission of the institute will be to become an effective academic voice of non-western, Sanatani, Dharmic and alternative narratives such as Pali, Prakrit, Tamil and Sanskrit,” he added.
The EC also approved other roles and objectives of JNIAS including that the institute should be a nucleus of Indo-Centric Studies. The director will be appointed by the V-C from among the university professors for a period of two years.
The institute will have an advisory committee with six members, chaired and constituted by the V-C with the director as the ex-officio member secretary. There will be two members from within the university and two from outside in the advisory committee.
As per the action taken by the director, the chair of the advisory committee, along with the director, the institute will be empowered to build a corpus by raising funds from Central government departments and other public and private institutions.
The objective of the institute, situated within the sprawling JNU campus, is to “create and offer a vibrant intellectual environment that supports research, inquiry and collaboration and integrates the natural and social sciences in an ideally located residential facility within the JNU”.
Mission: Sanatani, Dharmic narrative
The director of the institute says the mission will be to become an academic voice of non-Western, Sanatani, Dharmic and alternative narratives such as Pali, Prakrit, Tamil and Sanskrit.