Varanasi: “Hinduism & Brahmanism,” “Hindu of Foreign Origin” and “The antiquity and the meaning of the term Hindu.” These are subjects of some of the lectures to be attended by students in the inaugural week of the launch of a new course, M. A Hindu Studies, by the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). This was the first such postgraduate program offered by any university in the country, the central varsity said.
In the first batch of the course, the university admitted 45 students, including a foreign student.
The “interdisciplinary program” course was in line with the New Education Policy 2020, said rector V.K Shukla. The course would make the world aware of many unknown aspects of Hindu Dharma and help in taking its teachings to more people, he said.
Vijay Shankar Shukla, director, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, underlined the need to have such a course and said that the idea behind this went back to 18th-century scholar Ganganath Jha and “travels through time to Mahamana [Madan Mohan Malviya].”
“However, the link was broken for some reasons. But, with the initiation of this course the goal appears to have been achieved,” he said.
The course under the Faculty of Arts would be conducted in collaboration with the varsity’s Department of Philosophy and Religion, Department of Sanskrit, and Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture, and Archaeology.
