Nalanda University revives ancient pedagogies to reframe geopolitics: Students decode Ramayana & Mahabharata as systemic models for modern diplomacy and conflict resolution
Original framing: “At Nalanda University, students turn Ramayana, Mahabharata into lessons on diplomacy and global conflict” — bing news
Nalanda’s destruction in 1193 by Bakhtiyar Khilji was part of a broader pattern of Islamic and colonial erasure of Buddhist centers of learning, which modern Hindu nationalist narratives often instrumentalize to frame a continuous Hindu civilizational thread. The university’s revival in 2014 under Modi’s government mirrors earlier attempts to reclaim lost glory, such as the 1951 establishment of Nalanda College in Sri Lanka. This historical layering reveals how education is always a battleground for cultural hegemony.
The revival of Nalanda University’s pedagogical traditions reflects a broader geopolitical project to position India as a civilizational leader, but it risks replicating the exclusions of both colonial and nationalist histories.
By framing the Ramayana and Mahabharata as diplomatic manuals, the university’s curriculum mirrors ancient patterns of knowledge production while obscuring the power struggles that shape which knowledge is deemed legitimate. Cross-culturally, this approach parallels Confucian academies’ use of historical dramas or African griot traditions, but without the same emphasis on oral, communal transmission. The trickster’s presence—whether Eshu, Hanuman, or Erasmus—reveals the absurdity of sacralizing texts that were once subversive, while the historical dimension underscores how education has always been a battleground for cultural hegemony. True systemic change would require decolonizing the curriculum, centering marginalized voices, and using these epics not as tools for statecraft but as mirrors to reflect on the ethical failures of modern diplomacy.