New Delhi, February 01: It was their love for India and their long academic association with the country that assured them a place in the list of Padma awardees this year.
Prof Tan Chung, an Indian citizen of Chinese descent was awarded the Padma Bhushan in the Literature and Education category while Prof Sheldon Pollock, Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Columbia, and German Indologist Prof Hermann Kulke were awarded the Padma Shri in the same category.
Prof Tan Chung who is now at the University of Chicago’s East Asian Studies Department, is currently busy writing a book on ‘Tagore and China’ to commemorate the 150th year of Tagore’s birth. Few are aware that he was christened by Tagore himself.
“Tagore and my father were the pioneers of China studies in India. My father helped Tagore to establish Visva Bharati Cheena Bhavana in 1937 with Chinese donation…
He passed on this mission to me as a heritage,” Prof Chung said. Prof Chung played a pivotal role in establishment of the Chinese study programme of Delhi University in the 1960s, starting the Centre for Chinese Studies in 1964, became Head of Department of Chinese Studies from 1971 to 1978, after which he moved to JNU where from 1978 to 1994, he helped build up a vigorous Chinese language programme.
From 1994 to 1999, he was Professor-Consultant at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts and started a section of East Asian Studies there besides publishing three books for IGNCA.
“My career as an academic promoter of India-Chinese friendship and understanding has never been that of choice. I was predestined to undertake it because of the special relationship between my father and Tagore,” he said.
He has authored ten books in English and six in Chinese. Many of these serve as history textbooks in India and outside. In fact, Dunhuang Art Through the Eyes of Duan Wenjie, translated from Chinese to English by him, is a reference book for art courses on US and other campuses.
Prof Sheldon Pollock, who was in the news recently for instituting a Sanskrit scholarship for Dalits at the University of Columbia, has already been awarded the Government of India’s President’s Award in Sanskrit, 2009. Sheldon specialises in Sanskrit philology and Indian intellectual and literary history and comparative intellectual history.
It was in an effort to invert traditional notions about Dalits and Sanskrit (regarded as the preserve of upper castes) that Pollock, the William B Ransford Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Columbia, announced three fellowships each year in Sanskrit for Columbia.
Pollock is among the best known voices emphasising the importance of studying literary culture, “both for aspects of civilization and barbarism” and after a series of articles in the 1980’s and 1990’s, became known as one of the most innovative theorists in the discipline of Indian intellectual history.
The other Padma Shri awardee is German Indologist Prof Hermann Kulke who is Professor Emeritus of Asian History, Kiel University, Germany. Also a founding member of the Orissa Research Project of the South Asia Institute in the 1970s, Kulke has been a Visiting Professor at Bhubaneswar’s Utkal University, Asiatic Society, Calcutta and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.
He has written extensively on the Oriya identity, the Jagannatha Cult of Orissa and the naval might of the Cholas and is credited with publications like Cidambaramahatmya, The Cult of Jagannath and Regional Tradition of Orissa.
—-Agencies