He is a playwright and actor, theatre director, music producer – and a professor of folklore at the University of Srinagar in Kashmir. Data Ram Purohit recently lectured for a semester at Heidelberg University's South Asia Institute on the cultural wealth of his homeland: with lectures on the folk drama of the Garhwal region, a language course and interpretations of the ancient Mahabharata epic, a holy scripture for Hindus.
Purohit had a “rotating chair”. It works as follows: The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) sends an experienced professor to intensify Indian studies in Germany. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) provides a scientific member of staff and pays a teaching fee. The host university is responsible for providing a supportive working environment and appropriate accommodation. The German universities can suggest visiting professors, but the final decision on who will be sent lies with the ICCR. The aim in the future is for the visitors' programme to also “rotate” in the opposite direction, says Dorothea Jecht, head of the DAAD's South Asia Unit.
There is nothing coincidental about who is chosen for the rotating chair, as the example of Mr Purohit shows. He had already been known in Heidelberg as a respected expert for years, taking part, for example, in a research project on “Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual”. This cooperation yielded, for example, joint scientific publications with William S. Sax, Director of the South Asia Institute, and a play by the two authors in Hindi. For Purohit, the theory and practice of culture form one living – and occasionally spectacular – whole. For example, in the autumn of 2008 he opened an international conference in Heidelberg with pop singer Pritam Barthwan by singing a song to summon the assistance of the gods. The audience included 260 scholars from all over the world representing more than a dozen disciplines. Rarely before a ritual performance from the Garhwal region had such a global impact as at the Heidelberg congress.
The sciences, particularly experimental sciences, are generally regarded as the driving force of our time. Consequently, they are also at the forefront of scientific exchange. Alluding to this, the German sociologist Wolf Lepenies defines the cultural sciences as an “experiment in understanding” cultural peculiarities and differences. In this sense the “rotating chairs” are a fitting addition to a wide range of collaborations, for example between the Indian Institutes of Technology and the technical universities in Germany.
Another representative and communicator of cultural tradition came to Germany along with Purohit: the linguist and Sanskrit expert Gaya Charan Tripathi from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts in Delhi. During his guest semester he lectured and researched in Marburg, where Indology has been studied since 1845. It was during this period that the subject of “Indo-European studies”, the mother of all comparative linguistics, was born in the land of Humboldt. After studying the ancient languages Veda and Sanskrit in his home town of Agra, Tripathi first came to the University of Freiburg in 1962. He stayed, thanks to a postdoctoral scholarship, until 1967. During this time he also completed his German PhD with the highest distinction. Since then, the bi-national scholar has spoken German as if it were his mother tongue. At the age of 38 he became director of the internationally renowned Sanskrit Research Institute in Allahabad. Since then, he has returned to Germany several times as a visiting professor, for example in 2000/01 as acting professor of Indology at the University of Leipzig. “I always consider intellectual exchanges with German students and colleagues stimulating and rewarding, and still do, of course, even at the age of 69,” says Tripathi.
Under the motto “A New Passage to India”, the German Research and Academic Relations Initiative plans to reinforce exchange in all disciplines. “Both sides can only benefit from mutual mobility,” says Ms Annette Schavan, Federal Minister of Education and Research. In fact, however, there are currently about 36,000 Indians studying in the USA, 8000 in Australia and 6000 at British universities – but not many more than 4000 in Germany. Conversely, only about 500 German guest students are registered in India. The aim is that new centres for contemporary Indology in Germany will boost interest in the subcontinent.
“We are currently building up such an India Centre,” explains Stephan Klasen, Professor of Development Economics at the University of Göttingen. “I am sure that our guest Sunil Kanwar from the University of Delhi can play an important role in this.” In the summer of 2009 Kanwar lectured in Göttingen on the “Labor Markets in Developing Countries”. At the same time, his colleague Ramprasad Sengupta from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, was at the Hamburg Asia-Africa Institute lecturing on “Sustainable Development in India”, i.e. the relationship between economics and ecology.
The fifth in the first round of Indian guest lecturers was geographer Surinder Aggarwal. He had been a postdoctoral scholarship holder in Bonn in 2000 and knows German academia as a partner in projects of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the German Research Foundation. He is currently studying urbanization in developing countries together with his Cologne-based colleague Frauke Kraas.
With subjects such as the city, the countryside and the environment, the profile of the “rotating chairs” is proving to be a remarkably socially critical. The study of ancient languages and traditions will also help prevent cultural diversity in the world falling victim to the triumphant advance of modern technology.
