Eye on China, govt to bar universities from pacts with India’s neighbours

While the ministry of external affairs was initially hesitant in mandating approvals for such partnerships with institutions from friendly countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal that share land borders with India, HT learns that South Block now has no objections to the education ministry’s plan.

Updated on: Oct 21, 2020, 12:30:58 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The education ministry, after consultation with the Ministry of External Affairs, is considering making it mandatory for Indian universities to obtain prior permission from the government before signing any memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with educational institutions of countries that share land borders with India.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the BRICS Summit in Xiamen, southeastern China's Fujian Province, China in September 2017. (Reuters File Photo)

The proposal was mooted by the education ministry after an August 9 review of China-funded Confucius Centres attached to universities here and also MoUs signed between Indian and Chinese universities. The Confucius program is financed by the Office of Chinese Language Council International which has been linked to China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) now headed by President Xi Jinping. Ostensibly meant to teach Chinese language and culture, the Confucius program has been accused of promoting China’s viewpoint and act as a vehicle for propaganda. Several countries including Australia and the US have previously had issues with the institutes.

The Confucius Institute had tied up with seven universities in India: Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University has an MoU; and the centres attached to the University of Mumbai and the School of Chinese Language, Ballygunge, Kolkatta are already active. As of April 1, 54 MoUs have been signed between Indian and Chinese educational institutions including for the exchange of students and faculty.

While the ministry of external affairs was initially hesitant in mandating approvals for such partnerships with institutions from friendly countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal that share land borders with India, HT learns that South Block now has no objections to the education ministry’s plan. “ We have discussed the matter with the education ministry. They will now have to implement this through an order,” said a senior South Block official who asked not to be named.

This is a change from the past where universities signed MoUs with institutions in foreign countries without informing either the education or foreign ministries . The education ministry has also asked both the Mumbai University and Kolkata School of Chinese Languages to submit documentation pertaining to their partnership and details of their exchange activities with Confucius Headquarters in China for review.

JNU has signed 12 MoUs with Chinese universities but there has been no activity on eight of the agreements. IIT Kharagpur has signed four MoUs, IIT Bombay has two, IIT Madras has four, IIT Delhi has four, IIT Guwahati has five, IIT Gandhinagar has one, IIT Roorkee has two and IIT Bhubaneswar has three MoUs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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