Academic Associations, researchers demand withdrawal of NOS Policy change

The Scholarship policy change states that one need not go abroad to study India.

Over 20 international academic associations, research centres and diasporic organisations and 350 scholars have issued an open letter to the Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Virendra Kumar outlining objections to the recent policy changes to the guidelines for the National Overseas Scholarship (NOS).

In the letter, they have demanded immediate withdrawal of the new policy clause that allegedly excludes students from marginalised communities intending to pursue further education and research abroad from working on “[t]opics/courses concerning Indian c]ulture/heritage/[h]istory/[s]ocial studies on India''.

As per the letter, the guideline is a regressive step for academic exchange, an unwarranted restriction of the academic freedom of scholars studying abroad on government bursaries, as well as an unjustifiable attempt to restrict international scholarship in India.

The letter argues that the amendments attest to a lack of understanding of how interdisciplinary research is conducted today, where scholarship cannot be restricted by national boundaries. It stresses that for universities around the world with thriving South Asian departments and research centres, it is vital that scholars and researchers from marginalised backgrounds in India contribute to and participate in these international networks and research centres without conditions attached.

'Female applicants will suffer'

The letter points out that female applicants, already disproportionately under-represented in scientific and technological disciplines, will be most severely affected by the policy changes by being denied eligibility for research in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

Among the signatories are the American Anthropological Association and the American Sociological Association, the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, UK, the Centre for Modern Indian Studies at the University of Göttingen, Germany, academic unions in Scotland and Ireland and, nearly 20 civil society diasporic and national organisations and associations. Prominent individual signatories include international scholars of India such as David Hardiman, Barbara Harriss-White and Jens Lerche and Indian academics in universities around the world.

“It is crucial that scholarship on India retains an international character, not least because Indian migrants have travelled across and settled in all the continents, and the study of Indian languages, cultures, histories, art forms, societal and political developments can never be territorially cut off from India’s interactions with other parts of the world,” reads the letter.

The letter states that the National Overseas Scholarship offers India’s most brilliant minds the opportunities to produce the critiques that are vital for establishing a just and inclusive society in India, one that in fact would raise our international prestige, rather than lower it.

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