SAA Pushes South Asian Studies Changes

Members of the Harvard South Asian Association (SAA) met Sunday night in Ticknor Lounge to discuss revamping Harvard’s approach to South Asian studies, including modifying South Asian language courses and formalizing the program.

Sunday’s meeting, attended by almost 30 students, was part of the South Asian Studies Initiative (SASI)—a subgroup of SAA which “aims to bring more faculty and classes focusing on South Asia to Harvard,” according to the group’s website.

Currently, undergraduates can not concentrate in South Asian Studies. However, Harvard does have a Committee on South Asian Studies—“a multi-disciplinary group of scholars appointed to coordinate teaching and research on South Asia,” according to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Course website. But the committee does not grant undergraduate degrees, instead encouraging interested students to pursue degrees in history, religion, Sanskrit and Indian Studies, or other departments.

Sunday’s discussion focused on the limitations of Harvard’s South Asian language classes and the potential implementation of a certificate program. It also addressed the lack of opportunity to study abroad and write a senior thesis in the area.

At the meeting, SASI Chair Shreya N. Vora ’06 said students should advocate for the expansion of South Asian studies, stressing “the importance of the student voice.”

Administrators are doing a great deal to improve the curriculum, she said at the meeting, but a “bottom-up thrust” is needed to meet the “top-down energy.”

Attendees also discussed the results of a recent SASI survey of 126 Harvard undergraduates that they say demonstrated limited resources—including a lack of classes in the area and the absence of a well-organized plan of study—hampering students’ ability to pursue South Asian studies.

Attendees brainstormed ways to encourage people to study South Asia and discussed the possibility of bringing more visiting professors with expertise on South Asia to Harvard. They also debated the idea of a certificate program for South Asian studies.

Vora called for the creation of “a more sustained dialogue between students and teachers.”

The discussion also focused on the state of South Asian languages at Harvard. Some attendees complained about Harvard’s policy of offering Hindi and Urdu together, noting frustrations with having to spend half a semester on a language that they weren’t interested in for the sake of another.

“I just feel like instead of spending that much time learning a language that’s not going to be that useful to me, it would be a lot more helpful if it was just Hindi by itself,” said Gaurav Banka ’06 at the meeting.

According to Vora, Sunday’s meeting is one of the first steps in SASI’s push for a greater, or at least more developed, emphasis on South Asia.

“The reason we did [this] is on the idea that especially here, it’s a shame that there’s something that you really wanted to do, and that you didn’t do because it wasn’t here or because it was too hard to make it happen,” Vora said at the meeting.