Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, Member of Parliament from Ladakh, sent a representation to the Human Resource Development Ministry. He requested it to collect data, feedback and information from the private Buddhist institutions and associations about courses, scholars and conferences related to the religion.
This particular issue has been raised by the MP after the Ministry of Education decided to prepare a list including Buddhism related courses taught by various institutions within India. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked the universities to make the process easy by providing relevant information on Buddhism-related programmes offered by them.
Rajnish Jain, UGC secretary, wrote a letter to Vice-Chancellors of universities asking them to submit details of the courses, name, number of students, the number of research scholars, among other information.
The BJP MP requested the HRD Minister Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on behalf of the Buddhist people of India, Himalayan Buddhist Monastic private Institutions and Buddhist Associations, to ask the Ministry to collect data, from the non-governmental Buddhist institutions and associations across India from Ladakh to Tawang.
He said that since there are hundreds of NGO’s Buddhist institutions across India which provide higher Buddhist studies for thousands of Himalayan Buddhist aspirant monks and nun students and these non-government monastic institutions provide the ancient Nalanda Tradition Buddhist studies and create hundreds of highly learned scholars. He also suggested that it would greatly help if the high ranked Rinpoches, Lamas as well as highly qualified scholars from the Nalanda tradition institutions based in India are asked to share their feedback.
The BJP leader said the government is working hard to revive Buddhist culture with the help of many initiatives like starting courses related to Buddhism and courses supplementing tourism studies, promoting of Pali language, etc.