CNN Central News & Network-ITDC India Epress/ITDC News Bhopal: To understand India, it is not enough to read only its political history. India has another history too – the history of universities, gurukuls, libraries, journeys, languages, folk memories, arts and cultural contacts through which one geography has remained connected with another. It is the history of the movement of ideas, the exchange of knowledge and the human curiosity that seeks to understand worlds different from its own. Nalanda is an important site of this history, where the wider Asian dimension of Indian intellectual and cultural consciousness becomes visible.
That is why organising ‘Vishwarang’ on the soil of Nalanda is not merely about taking a cultural event to another city. Here, the place itself becomes part of the idea. On one side is Nalanda’s historical memory, where students and scholars came from far and wide for study and dialogue; on the other is Vishwarang’s contemporary vision, which brings creators, artists and academics from different languages, literary traditions and cultural regions on one platform for dialogue. In this sense, the event is not a repetition of history, but its contemporary echo.
At a time when education faces challenges such as artificial intelligence, technological change, employment, skills, environment and social inequality, the memory of Nalanda cannot mean restoring the past exactly as it was. It means asking how open, multidisciplinary, dialogue-oriented and socially connected our present knowledge institutions are. Will universities function only within the boundaries of their respective disciplines, or will they also create space for new dialogues between language, literature, art, technology and society? The deliberations of Vishwarang in Nalanda give this question a contemporary context.
An important objective of Vishwarang’s cultural journey is to bring Indian languages and cultures closer to one another and to view India in its wider Asian context. Nalanda gives this objective a historical background. Here, cultural dialogue does not appear as a new requirement, but as a continuously evolving process of Indian history.
Indian languages – from diversity to dialogue – India’s linguistic diversity cannot be seen merely as an example of plurality. Languages preserve not only identity, but also different ways of looking at the world. Their literature, folk memories, idioms, myths and lived experiences shape the collective consciousness of a society. Therefore, the question of Indian languages is not only one of preservation, but also of cultural self-awareness.
The purpose of bringing writers from different Indian languages together at Vishwarang is not to place one language at the centre and position other languages around it, but to create an equal dialogue among languages. In this context, it is important to give the languages and literature of Northeast India a place in the wider Indian discourse. This is less about bringing a region unilaterally into the ‘mainstream’ and more about expanding the definition of India’s cultural landscape.
Art and Tagore: the wider vision of culture – In the nature of Vishwarang, literature is not seen separately from art. Culture is also expressed in music, theatre, painting, cinema and dance. The plurality of Indian artistic traditions shows that culture is not a static entity. Culture develops through continuous dialogue between the classical and the folk, tradition and modernity, the regional and the global. Therefore, it is also necessary to take cultural dialogue beyond discussions and into its creative expressions.
The cultural journey from Nalanda to Patna and from there to Rabindranath Tagore is also natural. Nalanda is a symbol of the historic cultural dialogue between India and Asia, while Tagore, in modern times, developed a humane and global vision of dialogue with other cultures while remaining connected to his roots. In this sense, the discussion on Tagore becomes a modern extension of Nalanda’s historical consciousness.
An important aspect of Nalanda’s legacy is also its Asian spread. The influence of knowledge and intellectual traditions reached South and Southeast Asia. Therefore, the current cultural discourse linked to Nalanda naturally travels beyond India to Asia. These historical contacts need to be understood today in the new contexts of education, culture, trade and sustainable development.
Culture and sustainable development – Culture is connected not only with heritage, but also with the future. A society’s cultural knowledge is linked to its natural resources, traditional crafts, agricultural practices, local knowledge and community life. Therefore, including cultural contexts in discussions on sustainable development can make development more humane and local.
For Vishwarang, this expansion is important because culture should not be seen only as a legacy of the past, but as an active element in the imagination of the future. The question also is what kind of development present-day India wants, and what place human beings, nature, society and cultural diversity will have in it.
It would not be appropriate to understand India’s cultural unity as uniformity. Its strength lies in the fact that many languages, traditions and ways of life can retain their distinctiveness while also engaging in dialogue with one another. The Vishwarang platform tries to turn this plurality into dialogue. Its objective is not to regard one cultural form as the sole representative of ‘Indian culture’, but to create an opportunity to understand the interrelationships among Indian cultures.
Dialogue with the past, preparation for the future – Holding all these dimensions together, a broader vision of India emerges: a vision that is familiar with its heritage but not confined to the past; that accepts diversity but does not close the possibilities of dialogue; that embraces modernity but does not leave its languages and cultural memories behind; and that engages with the world while drawing confidence for that engagement from its cultural roots.
Along with economic and technological progress, India also needs to transform its cultural and intellectual diversity into new dialogues. The role of universities, literary institutions and cultural organisations becomes important here. They must not remain merely platforms that organise programmes, but must develop into spaces where language, literature, knowledge, art, technology, the economy and society can converse with one another.
Nalanda is an extraordinary symbol of this effort. Its greatest legacy perhaps lies not in its buildings, but in the idea that knowledge travels, cultures engage in dialogue and human beings expand themselves by understanding worlds different from their own.
Therefore, Vishwarang on the historic soil of Nalanda does not mean merely returning to the past, but moving towards the future while engaging in dialogue with the past. This dialogue can also become an opportunity to understand India’s multilingualism, multiculturalism and its wider Asian consciousness in a contemporary context.
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