News

Our ambition to encourage international growth in Hindu studies has borne new fruit in agreements with universities as far apart as Baroda and Florida.

The development of Hindu Studies is now a global concern, yielding affiliations that bring together scholars, students, fresh perspectives, and new insights, in a common appreciation of Hindu culture and its importance for the world.

Trinity Term at OCHS saw two new Shivdasani fellows coming to Oxford: Prof. Shashiprabha Kumar, Professor of Sanskrit at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi, and Dr Sangeetha Menon from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. The Shivdasani Fellowship exists to enable outstanding scholars of Indian nationality to come and study and teach at Oxford University.

Academic developments at the Centre are being mirrored by organisational developments. One of these has been the first major change to the Board of Governors since its inception. The Board elected Lord Dholakia, OBE, DL, as its chair and is pleased to welcome four new members: Harish I. K. Patel, Promod Thakkar, Dr John Muddiman, and Prof. Martin Goodman, FBA.

The Academic Appointments Committee is pleased to have secured the services of Prof. Gavin Flood as Academic Director for a further five years.

Now that Prof. Flood's position as Academic Director has been secured it becomes possible to develop a number of new teaching directions. Along with Hinduism I and II, Prof. Flood intends to offer more courses within his areas of specialisation and in broader fields.

The OCHS web-team led by professional web-designer, Mr Patrick Tusler, has just completed the relaunch of our site - www.ochs.org.uk. Patrick, a longstanding Friend of the Centre, has been involved in the development of the site since its earliest days. His stated goal is 'to make an even more welcoming site to our thousands of dedicated visitors, and to show new visitors the wide range of facilities that we offer.'

At a meeting of benefactors in May, it was suggested that each member of our Benefactors Council organise one event to aid the OCHS every three years. That would mean a calendar with one event per month. This would benefit the OCHS greatly in terms of finance and profile-raising.

The first of these events was a Golf Day on Thursday 7 June 2007. Thanks to Bharat Bhundia for coming up with the idea; Rasik Varsani, Jayesh Popat, and Dinesh Hirani for inviting guests; and Mansuk Jivraj for supplying snacks during the day. We would like to see this become a regular event.

As 2006 drew to a close it became apparent that the accelerated growth of the OCHS left us with a budget shortfall for the year. OCHS Director, Shaunaka Rishi Das, said: 'Until now the OCHS has been kept financially viable thanks to the dedication of a small group of supporters. As the Centre reaches new heights, new funding sources must be found to allow us to consolidate our base and allow for further expansion.'

Comparative Theology is a fast growing field in academia, and one that the OCHS is committed to developing.

In February we hosted the 'Icon and Murti' seminars with Drs Matthew Steenberg and Kenneth Valpey. These seminars examined the issue of representation of the divine in Christian Orthodoxy and Vaishnava Hinduism. Questions were raised about how a transcendent reality can be represented, the function of such representations, and the degree to which such mediations are thought to be required by tradition.

Claire Robison, our first ever undergraduate student, has completed her degree with a First that placed her first in her year in Oxford University's Theology Faculty. She is also the recipient of the Denyer and Johnson prize, awarded on the recommendation of the examiners in the Final Honour School of Theology.

MP3 and images from the conference are available at www.ochs.org.uk/sdc07)

The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies is pleased to announce the Shivdasani Conference – Archaeology and Text: The Temple in South Asia.

This conference, to be held at Trinity College, Oxford, on the weekend of 20–21 October, is an attempt at understanding sacred spaces as they came to be defined in the archaeological record from around the latter half of the first millennium BC onwards.