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CIS indologists to coordinate

Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW: Meeting for the first time since the break-up of the Soviet Union, indologists from the former Soviet States have decided to set up a coordinating council in studying the modern day India.

Prof. Rostislav Rybakov, head of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, which hosted the meeting, said it was a historic decision. "Indologists have always been a close-knit family and today they are facing the task of rebuilding a single scientific environment that had been fragmented after the collapse of the Soviet Union," Prof. Rybakov said opening a two-day seminar that has drawn over 60 students from India, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Indology centres in the Confederation of Independent States (CIS) have survived despite heavy financial crunch but interaction among them had been weak, he pointed out. Counsellor Abhai Thakur, head of the Jawaharlal Nehru Cultural Centre at the Indian Embassy here, lauded the "enormous and abiding" contribution made by the CIS indologists to further their nations' relations with India.

The Indian Embassy here, which supports the event financially and organisationally, would welcome any suggestions to promote Indian studies in the CIS countries, he said, adding that the coordinating council would sponsor joint research projects by CIS indologists.

Head of the Russian Centre for Indian Studies Tatyana Shaumyan invited colleagues from other former Soviet States to take part in preparing a five-volume encyclopaedia of India that Russian indologists plan to bring out in the next few years.

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