ACTS OF KINDNESS AND CARING, BIG AND SMALL: HOW THE CENTER CAME TO BE
S. N. Sridhar, Founding Director
The journey we celebrate today started in January 1995 when officers of the student
organization Club India asked why there were no courses on India at Stony Brook. We
had been asking ourselves the same question. There were occasional special topics courses,
but no regular India-related courses, let alone a program. We offered to help the
students if they could prove there was a strong student demand for courses on India.
We helped them draft a petition, and, to our amazement, they collected some 700 signatures
and submitted the petition to Stony Brook President Shirley Strum Kenny, who had
recently joined Stony Brook, and was a champion.
Word of this student-initiated movement reached Long Island Newsday, and Somini Sen
Gupta, who later became the New Delhi bureau chief for The New York Times, wrote a
detailed story in Newsday on April 19,1995, titled "India Studies mulled at SUNY."
We announced the India Studies Program with two courses in Fall 1995, as overload:
Introduction to Indian Civilization, taught by S.N. Sridhar, and Elementary Hindi
taught by Kamal (Meena) Sridhar, with about 75 and 50 students respectively.
The students got busy, spreading the word and mobilizing their cohort. We organized
our colleagues in various departments who were interested in India, and involved the
India Society at Stony Brook. The members spontaneously pledged some $2,000 to help
the students realize their dream –- our first fundraising!
The students demanded more courses and we added Hindi II and Indian Literature, again
taught as overload. As we thought about the demand and the needs of a basic India
Studies program, it was clear that a program could not be sustained by two professors
teaching courses as overload.
But those were lean times for the university (the situation has not changed!) and
we feared the fledgling program would be shot down if we asked for money. So, we formed
a campus committee with Professors Viswanath Prasad (Associate Dean of Engineering),
Farley Richmond (chair of the Department of Theatre), Prateek Mishra (assistant professor
of Computer Science), Subir Maitra (research faculty in Emergency Medicine) and N.S.
Ramamurthy (professor of Oral Biology). We met with the President and explained our
goals.
I made a cold call on Dr. Azad Anand, who was active in the India Association of Long
Island. He was excited to hear about the program and invited us to discuss the proposal.
Faculty and community leaders met several times with President Kenny and the then
Associate Provost Robert McGrath. The idea of a Center for India Studies began to
take shape. We enlisted then Consul General of India in New York, Hon. Harsh Bhasin,
who met with the president and the community leaders and pledged the support of the
Government of India.
Dr. Anand and friends at the Shanti Fund, Drs. Anoop and Urvashi Kapoor, Mr. Sudesh
and Dr. Sudha Mukhi, Mr. Surinder Rametra and, especially Mr. Arvind Vora, organized
an elegant breakfast at the Hamlet Club in May 1996 to inform the larger community
of the India Studies Program at Stony Brook. President Kenny and Consul General Bhasin
were the main guests. We invited deans and senior faculty from many disciplines. Although
it was not intended as a fundraiser, the attendees were so excited about the vision,
energy, and momentum of the movement that Dr. Anand collected spontaneous pledges
totaling nearly $100,000. It was an electrifying moment.
Realizing the symbolic and real importance of a local habitation and a name, and realizing
that the Dean had the authority to approve Centers without any investment of funds
from the university, we sought his approval to establish a Center for India Studies
for coordinating India related activities. It was approved by the Dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences. The President and her administration allotted a suite of rooms
in the library, in the heart of the campus, and the Center was inaugurated on April
26, 1997.
Dr. V.S. Arunachalam, Scientific Advisor to three Prime Ministers of India, was the
keynote speaker. He wished the Center a future as bright and distinguished as that
of the great world- class universities of ancient India, Nalanda and Takshashila.
The event in the Staller Center was attended by over 700 people and was covered in
a 2-page spread in The New York Times with the caption, Asians Making an Impact on
Long Island.
Support for the Center has only grown with time, thanks to the unfailing energy of
the members of our Executive Committee, first under the chairmanship of Dr. Azad Anand
and then under Dr. Nirmal K. Mattoo. They have advised the director on initiatives
to implement and expand its mission and raised funds year after year, through annual
benefit dinners, through sponsorships in the thematic journals and through major donations.
In 1996, we were presented with an interesting proposition by the Association of Indians
in America, the oldest national organization of this most highly educated, successful,
and influential of the groups that immigrated to the U.S. after 1965. Dr. Nirmal K.
Mattoo, then national president of the association, and Dr. Narinder Kukar, chair of the Board
of Trustees, wanted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of India's Independence by publishing
a book on India that would present the panorama of Indian civilization in an authentic
and comprehensive manner. The book was intended for a dual audience: Americans who wished
to learn about this new immigrant group; and children of Indian immigrants who wanted
to learn about their heritage. Dr. Mattoo and Dr. Kukar invited the Center to produce
the volume.
The idea fit nicely with the Center’s mission to produce authentic knowledge on India
presented in an accessible way. We accepted the challenge. Given the impossibly brief
time span and the vastness of the subject matter, there was no way any one person
could do that job.It would have to be an edited volume with many contributors. We
invited the most distinguished authorities ---authors, critics, scholars and intellectuals
-- to contribute chapters on various aspects of Indian civilization from 3500 B.C.E.
to the present. The result was Ananya: A Portrait of India, a hardcover volume with
41 chapters, edited by S.N. Sridhar and Nirmal K. Mattoo, designed and produced at
the Center with the help of Professor Kamal Sridhar and brilliant students such as
Ashu Patel. Ananya was published by the AIA and released at a glittering function
organized by the AIA at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on August 15, 1997.
Ananya, with its vast scope, stellar contributors and excellent production values
got enthusiastic reviews in India and the U.S. Ananya’s success established the reputation
of the Center as a serious player in India Studies.
We continued our strategy of authentic but publicly accessible research in our annual
thematic journals (edited with great help from Professor N.S. Ramamurthy). Each is
focused on a specific theme about India, for example, India's Contribution to World
Knowledge.
Other events that gave major exposure to the work of Center were the International
Conference on South Asian Languages (2004), the first Stony Brook Conference on India
Studies (2008), and the Symposium on Vijayanagar.
Our Study Abroad program in India, starting in 2004 was another major initiative that
proved to be tremendously popular and raised the profile of the Center.
Dr. Nirmal Mattoo became chair of the Executive Committee in 2001. Under his leadership,
the Center began to take the first steps to ensure financial security by establishing
an endowment fund. Two benefit concerts at Carnegie Hall by India's premiere Sarod
artist, Ustad Amjad Ali Kan and his sons Aman and Ayan, started the fund.
The annual fundraising model provided the minimal resources needed to teach courses
on India but it was extremely demanding and labor intensive. As the courses became
more popular and the Center’s functions expanded and our constituencies’ expectations
grew, a long-term strategy became necessary. To take the Center to a higher level,
and ensure the continuation Center’s functions in perpetuity, we launched an endowment
campaign, and through the Carnegie Hall concerts and an endowment dinner hosted by
President Kenny, created the Center’s first endowment of over $300,000, which we named the Ananya Fund.
That fund stood us in good stead in the years when we could not organize an annual
dinner. Since the creation of the Ananya Fund, we have expanded the number and range
of courses offered, mainly by recruiting part-time adjunct faculty. The success of
the Center was a catalyst in the establishment of the Department of Asian and Asian American
Studies in 2002 and the appointment of the first new tenure-track faculty in India
Studies, Professor Andrew Nicholson. The courses have grown from almost none in 1995
to about 30 a year. Now some 2000 students take India-related courses each year.
There is a minor in South Asian Studies and a major in Asian Studies with South Asia as a possible concentration.
We have just added two Masters programs, an M.A. in Contemporary Asian and Asian American
Studies and the other, led by Prof. Andrew Nicholson with the Philosophy department,
an M.A in the history of Philosophies, East and West.
Over the last six years, we have worked tirelessly to create a permanent financial
resource for the Center in the form of a second endowment fund. The successful completion
of this $5 million endowment, the largest endowment for India Studies in any public
university in the U.S. is the proud legacy of everyone who has worked for the Center
over the years. An international, multidisciplinary search culminated in the appointment
of Professor Arindam Chakrabarti, an outstanding scholar and respected authority
in India Studies as the inaugural holder of the Nirmal K. and Augustina Mattoo Chair
in Classical Indic Humanities, another major accomplishment, for the university
as well as the Center.
We have always believed that because the Center is part of a public university, we
have an obligation to make the fruits of our research and teaching available to
the public. To this end, the Center, from its inception, has sponsored a distinguished
lecture series and performing arts series. These series are described elsewhere
in this journal. The establishment of the Charles B. Wang Center gave an added boost
to our programs, and the campus calendar has numerous India-related programs. The
speakers and performers in our series are among the very best in the Indian intellectual,
artistic and cultural arena. The Center has thus enriched the intellectual and cultural
ambience of the campus and the community.
In 2004, the Center served as principal advisor to the PBS documentary, Asian Indians
in America, which has been broadcast nationwide. The program features Stony Brook,
the Center, its students and faculty.
Yet another undertaking that has received widespread appreciation has been our India
Outreach program, launched in 1995 but continued vigorously all these years, with
over 200 engagements.
Community engagement is another feature that sets the Mattoo Center apart from other
South Asian Studies programs. Our Outreach Program has served local, regional, and
national cultural, civic, social service and media organizations and schools, colleges
and universities. A listing of the institutions served and the types of programs
can be found elsewhere in the journal. In addition to schools and colleges, we have
assisted museums and public libraries; media outlets, governments, candidates for
political office, and ethnic organizations.
The Center has received recognition from the India Studies community, the Government
of India, universities in India and the U.S., community organizations, and the media.
A recent example is our selection to lead an international research team to translate
a major regional language Mahabharata into English to be published in three volumes
by Harvard University Press. Another example is the the Government of India’s gift
of a magnificent bronze bust of the great poet Rabindranath Tagore. There are numerous
others. A third example of recognition of the Center’s contribution was when Chancellor
Nancy Zympher conferred the rank of SUNY Distinguished Service Professor—the highest
rank for faculty in the country’s largest university system—on S.N. Sridhar in 2011.
The Center have been featured many times and prominently in mainstream media outlets,
such as the New York Times and PBS and in Indian American television and print media.
(A sampling is included elsewhere in this journal). The Center has become one of
the first resources that journalists and others writing on India turn to for resources
and information on India.
The work of the Center has come to be regarded as a national model. We regularly get
requests from universities across the country—for example, Harvard, Illinois, Houston,
Florida International, and Texas—to address students, faculty, administrators and
community leaders about the “Stony Brook model for a Center for India Studies.”
We have come a long way, but our job has only begun. To quote W.B. Yeats, “In dreams
begins responsibility.” We must dream big: to make our Center one of the best in
the world—a vibrant and comprehensive resource center, with the range and depth
of faculty resources worthy of the great country and civilization we represent, bustling
with graduate and undergraduate students and research scholars specializing in many
areas of India Studies, with all the necessary resources in library, staff, and
program support to sustain them. In short, we need to build an institute or a school
of India Studies at Stony Brook. Given the energy and commitment of our community,
the ambition and cooperation of the administration, and the affection and involvement
of our alumni, this is a goal we can reach in our lifetime.
