O.P. Jindal Global University sets up new Jindal India Institute; Know Details

JII is led by the Vice Chancellor of JGU, Dr C. Raj Kumar, who is JII’s President, and the Dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs, Dr. Sreeram Chaulia, who is JII’s Director General.

O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), based in Sonipat, Haryana, has launched the Jindal India Institute (JII). It is a strategic think tank housed within a private university for ideationally and intellectually enabling India’s rise in the world by building and disseminating a transnational, intellectually rigorous, evidence-based, multidisciplinary corpus of knowledge that promotes the positive aspects and achievements of India.

On the occasion of JII’s establishment, the Vice Chancellor of JGU and the President of the Jindal India Institute (JII), Professor (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar said, “The task of offering the true picture of India to the world cannot be left to governments or Public Relations agencies. Only a top non-partisan private university like JGU with over 1200 research-oriented faculty members from multiple disciplines can do justice to this cause. Higher educational institutions in India have a special responsibility to uphold the image and raise the stature of our country in the world. India’s aspiration to build a Viksit Bharat in 2047 is only possible when its own universities generate knowledge about India in a systematic and strategic way that impresses and influences international audiences. JII is an ambitious effort to increase global support and appreciation for India’s accomplishments and potential in a range of issue areas and fields. We intend to transform perceptions about India through eye-opening and pioneering research, teaching, policy advocacy and training initiatives.”

JII’s goal is to intellectually decolonise the study and depiction of India and spread global awareness about India’s extraordinary accomplishments and potential in the 21st century. 

Until now, only international educational institutions such as King’s College London, the University of Birmingham, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania have been known to have set up reputed India Institutes or Centres that cover diverse aspects of the Indian story through their in-house scholars and transnational networks and their own ideological lenses. 

The tagline of JII is ‘Propelling the Indian Century’, by which the Institute means working toward fulfilling national objectives for the centenary of India’s independence in 2047, such as Viksit Bharat or developed India and ‘leading power’, and also to develop an imagination and roadmap for long-term strategising on how India can be a world leader for the entire 21st century. 

JII aims to break the intellectual hegemony of India being other-defined and usher in a culture and practice of high-quality research, analysis, policy advocacy and training that enable a self-defined and self-confident India to emerge as a world leader.

The issue areas which will be covered under JII include India’s democracy, economy, society, culture, spirituality, science and technology, entrepreneurship, inclusiveness, rule-of-law, human rights, education, healthcare provision, environmental conservation, foreign policy etc. The bulk of the JII’s intellectual output will come from JGU’s existing faculty members who have outstanding publication and research credentials. They will be simultaneously accredited to JII as Fellows and Senior Fellows and will co-author and co-ideate alongside the foreign scholars-in-residence who will be selected to come to JGU under the aegis of a Global India Visiting Fellowship. 

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