Harming Harvard; harvesting Harvard

It is deeply unfortunate that efforts are being made by the current US administration to control Harvard. Harvard is pushing back, including by litigating in the courts, against undue interference. It understands only too well, that to control Harvard, is, in effect, to kill it.

- RAJESH TALWAR

More than a thousand years ago, sometime in the 8th century, a barbaric invader by the name of Muhammad Bakhtiar Khilji destroyed one of the great universities of the time: Nalanda University. It is said that the books from the library that were destroyed kept burning for many days. Whereas Nalanda was destroyed by a foreign invader, Harvard is under siege by forces within the United States, notably the current administration.

Can Nalanda be compared with Harvard? In the ancient world, no global ranking system existed for measuring and comparing the attainment of different institutes of higher learning, though students must certainly have discussed such issues between themselves. Had a global ranking system existed, the geographical space that India occupies (since nation states did not exist at the time) would have figured prominently as a region where the best universities flourished. Besides Nalanda, prominent institutions in that bygone era included Takshashila (Taxila), Vikramshila, Valabhi, Pushpagiri, Odantapuri and Sumapura universities.

In modern times, eight US presidents have graduated from Harvard, most recently Barack Obama. Not only presidents: by some calculations Harvard has also produced the most CEOs among Fortune 500 companies. Of the University of Oxford, it has been said that its alumni include twenty-eight UK prime ministers, twenty Archbishops of Canterbury, twelve saints, and fifty Nobel Prize winners. Similarly, in ancient times, famous Indian thinkers such as Chanakya, author of the classic economic treatise Arthashastra, studied at Taxila. The Ayurvedic physician and master Charaka also studied at Taxila. Were Taxila and Nalanda the Harvard and Oxford of their times? Numerous other distinguished personages were graduates of those ancient universities.