Even as India and Africa discuss their relations, trade and commerce at the four-day-long India-Africa Forum Summit, negligible reference has been made to the once famous African studies centres of India.
India has three African studies centres – two in the Capital at Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, and one in Mumbai University.
They were set up in the spirit of the Non-Alignment Movement, but the centres have gradually come to represent less dynamic scholarly activities due to a mix of issues. The condition of the centres prompted the Foreign Minister of Sudan to step in to revive them.
“I visited the African Studies Centre at the University of Delhi during my vice-chancellorship of the University of Khartoum and was impressed by what I saw, but I think we need to do more to revive research in African studies in India. We look at the African studies centres with great interest and would like to do whatever is needed to revive them,” said Prof. Ibrahim A. Ghandour, the Foreign Minister of Sudan.
But the main reason for the decline of the centres that once boasted of some of the big names in social sciences in the Indian academia is deliberate bureaucratic neglect, allege some scholars. Prof. Ajay Dubey of the Centre for African Studies (CAS) in JNU hold the Ministry of External Affairs responsible for monopolising research on African affairs.
“The MEA promotes African studies through the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), which follows the MEA’s policy axis. But independent centres that wish to study Africa freely are deliberately discouraged by the MEA,” Prof Dubey told The Hindu .
Over the years, the African Studies Centres have produced a long line of researchers and academics, but many of them have veered into other fields due to lack of academic opportunities.
To sustain the discipline, a separate African Studies Association was created in 2003, which has set up sub-units in Udaipur, Patiala, Chennai and Kolkata. But overall, the trend of setting up university-level centres for African studies where society, culture, politics and economics are taught in combination has begun to stall.
