The USIEF on Monday said there was neither any change in the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowships nor are there plans to change the name or administration of the programme amid reports that the two countries have decided to sever Jawaharlal Nehru’s name from the prestigious programme.
“There has been no change to the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship Programme, and there are no plans to change the name or administration of the program. The name was written into the 2008 bi-national agreement,” Adam J Grotsky, Executive Director of US-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) on the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowships, said in a statement here.
He added “There are other programmes being developed that do not fall under Fulbright-Nehru. Because they use different funding and have different partners they may have different names, but will still reflect the strong partnership between the American and Indian people.”
The USIEF statement came amid reports that India and the US have quietly decided to drop Nehru’s name from new initiatives under Washington’s Fulbright programme.
Scholarships for India under Washington’s Fulbright programme were named the “Fulbright-Nehru” fellowships under a 2008 agreement after the then Manmohan Singh government decided to match America’s bilateral contribution.
Nehru had in February 1950 signed a pact with then US ambassador here, Loy Henderson, that has since then allowed 17,000 students of the two nations to study in each other’s universities. Former US senator James William Fulbright had piloted the initiative globally for Washington in 1946 as a vehicle for America’s post World War II soft-power push.
According to reports, the new scholarships initiated under the same financial-sharing agreement will now be called “Fulbright-India” fellowships instead.
