>>From the Chronicle of Higher Education, <font size="-1">Thursday, December 11, 2008</font><br><br>
<h1>Mumbai Attacks Could Derail New University in India</h1>
<p class="byline"><a href="mailto:shailajan@gmail.com">By SHAILAJA NEELAKANTAN </a></p>
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<p class="dateline">New Delhi</p>
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<p>The terror attacks in Mumbai last month, believed to have been carried out by Pakistani militants, have imperiled the development of a new university that was supposed to help promote peace in the fractious region. South Asian University, scheduled to open here in 2010, was to bring together students from across the region and also offer a significant boost to India's weak efforts to internationalize its higher-education system. Supported by the governments of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and with an initial commitment of $2-million from India, the university's development has been an important regional confidence-building measure, designed to ensure that India and Pakistan do not return to the nuclear confrontation they faced in 2002.</p>
<p>Now, although Pakistan says it has arrested some terrorists, India is accusing Pakistan of not acting strongly enough, so the university will quite likely die a high-profile death, according to some educators and political analysts. The university's supporters say it will proceed on schedule. The police in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, said they had recovered fake identity cards from Indian universities from the 10 terrorists who carried out the attacks, which killed nearly 200 people on November 26, a day people here have christened "India's 9/11." Nine of the terrorists died.</p>
<p>Indian intelligence officials believe that coordinated bomb blasts in October in the eastern Indian city of Guwahati, which killed 77 people, were carried out with the help of Islamist militant university students from Bangladesh. That means India will make it very tough for students and professors with ties to Bangladesh and Pakistan to get visas, say independent observers from all three countries. "I think it is going to be exceedingly difficult in the light of what happened in Bombay that anyone in the [Indian] foreign ministry will be inclined to run the risk of letting people [from Pakistan or Bangladesh] in," said Sumit Ganguly, a political-science professor at Indiana University at Bloomington.</p>
<p>That sentiment was echoed by Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary. "We need some strict restrictions so the wrong people don't enter," he said. Yet for the university to become a reality, the governments of all the countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation had agreed that students selected for the university would be guaranteed visas, Gowher Rizvi, who prepared the concept plan for the university, told <i>The Chronicle</i> last year. "Without this agreement between the countries, the university couldn't have happened," said Mr. Rizvi, vice provost for international programs at the University of Virginia. Now that agreement will most likely be snatched from the table—fast.</p>
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<h4>Setback to Relations</h4>
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<p>India has already put on hold all official talks to increase trade with Pakistan, and both countries have ruled out playing cricket against each other—the subcontinent's primary passion—in the immediate future. The shared university "will be scuttled if this is not resolved," said Praful Bidwai, an Indian political commentator. If that happens, it would set back what were increasingly warming relations between the intellectuals of the three rival nations—often seen, perhaps optimistically, as a sign that rationality might prevail over jealousy and distrust.</p>
<p>Mr. Rizvi believes the attacks make the argument for the university even stronger now, as do some other academics. "It would be a blow to not just the South Asian University, but [would] also strengthen those who want enmity, not peace, between Pakistan and India," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor at Quaid-i-Azam University, in Islamabad, Pakistan. G.K. Chadha, South Asian University's Indian vice chancellor, who went to Dhaka, Bangladesh, days after the attacks for a scheduled meeting with the university's representatives from other regional countries, is optimistic the institution will go on.</p>
<p>"The meeting was very cordial, and the Bombay attacks didn't figure remotely in the talks," said Mr. Chadha on his return. "There was no element of hostility." How that optimistic outlook will fare remains to be seen, given the growing skepticism among some academics. "I'm a firm believer in student exchanges," said Indiana University's Mr. Ganguly. "But not when national governments are perfectly prepared to use student exchanges for potential purposes of espionage or intelligence gathering or acts of terror."</p>
<div class="info" align="center"> </div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br>Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br>Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>
University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------<br></p></p>