The South Asia Initiative's Goals and Mission

• Facilitate scholarly exchanges among Harvard faculty and students, the best South Asia specialists from the US and other countries, and visiting academics and prominent public figures from South Asia .
• Sponsor lectures at Harvard by distinguished academic, governmental, and business leaders whose work contributes to a better understanding of the challenges facing the region.
• Support faculty from various Harvard Schools traveling to South Asia to work with academic and governmental leaders on key strategic, economic, environmental, and political issues.
• Provide grants for language study and other kinds of research conducted by undergraduates preparing honors theses, and graduate and professional students working on an array of short-term projects, including preliminary dissertation research.
• Fund international exchange programs that will send Harvard students to India , Pakistan , and other South Asian countries and bring students from South Asia to Harvard.

  Mahatma Gandhi (center) and Sarat Chandra Bose (right) with unidentified boy, in May 1947, in India. (Courtesy the archives of the Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta.)

• Underwrite the use of new technologies to foster intellectual and academic linkages between Harvard and partnering institutions in South Asia.e.g. the South Asia Polyphonic History website and the RISEPAK website for earthquake relief in Pakistan .
• Organize art and photographic exhibitions, film shows, and music concerts showcasing the cultures of the region.
• Help fashion an interdisciplinary South Asian Studies concentration and create a master of arts degree in South Asian Regional Studies.