After banning 59 Chinese Mobile Applications, there is a review by the Education Ministry to look up the association of seven local colleges and universities with Confucius Institution. The security agencies have alerted them as due to the growing Chinese influence in higher education in India.
The Confucius Institutes are straight funded by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China with the manifest aim to promote Chinese Language and Culture. And the Ministry is also planning to review 54 MOUs signed between the educational institutions and Chinese institutions.
These institutions include IITs, BHU, JNU and NITs. The matter is already notified to the Ministry of External Affairs and the University Grants Commission.
The conflict between the countries arises many questions whether agreements between universities and the institute have broken anti-foreign interfaces laws. Even several universities have shut down the programme commanded by the Institute of Confucius in all around the world.
According to the Ranking Member of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo Standing Committee, the Confucius Institutes are a part of the overseas promotion to protrude Beijing’s Soft power.
The Confucius Institutes in India to be reconsidered are at: the University of Mumbai; Vellore Institute of Technology; Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar; O P Jindal Global University, Sonepat; School of Chinese Language, Kolkata; Bharathiar University, Coimbatore; and KR Mangalam University, Gurugram. Even there is speculation that Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University also has an MoU with the institute through no centre has been set up yet due to some discrepancies over the constitution of the board.
Well, this is not the first time the education minister is taking this consideration. In 2019 the UGC issued a circular asking the universities to get the permissions from the central government before granting a course in correlation with any Chinese institutions.
Article Written by Dikhya Mohanty
Image Source: Google
