Applications open for Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University, ET Education

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New Delhi, Applications for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship for studying at the University of Oxford opened on Tuesday, officials said.The Rhodes Scholarship is a fully funded postgraduate award supporting outstanding students to undertake two to three years of study -- depending on the academic curriculum taken -- at the University of Oxford. Students aged 18-23 (up to 27 in particular circumstances) are eligible to apply.A total of six scholars will be shortlisted and awarded the scholarship.The applications are open till July 23, 2025."The Rhodes Scholarship continues to seek out exceptional young leaders from India who demonstrate academic excellence, a commitment to service, and the potential to drive positive change in the world," said Sir Richard Trainor, Interim Warden of Rhodes House and CEO of The Rhodes Trust."We are excited to open applications for 2026 and look forward to welcoming the next generation of Rhodes Scholars to Oxford," he added.The Rhodes Scholarship is among the world's pre-eminent and oldest graduate fellowships, based at the University of Oxford since 1903.Administered by the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, the programme awards 106 fully funded Scholarships to students from anywhere in the world with proven academic excellence who also show exceptional character, leadership, achievement in extra-curricular activities and a commitment to solving humanity's challenges. PTI

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Indian Express

a day ago

• Indian Express

‘Nationalist history presents India as this ancient thing called Bharat Varsha, with geography from the Mahabharata that remained constant. But the British were conquering random territories based on economic sense, not Indianness': Sam Dalrymple

Sam Dalrymple is in the United Kingdom when we speak, where he will be based until October. It is a fitting location from which to reflect on Shattered Lands (Harper Collins; 536 pages; ₹799), his ambitious debut on the British Empire's afterlives, which traces five partitions that dismantled what was once known as the Indian Empire. From Burma's separation in 1937 to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, Dalrymple reconstructs the imperial geography, one where Indian rupees circulated in Dubai, Yemeni Jews carried Indian passports, and loyalty to the Viceroy stretched from Aden to Assam. A Delhi-raised Scottish, Dalrymple, 28, studied Persian and Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He also speaks Hindi and Urdu fluently. His work spans media — print, film, and virtual reality with projects exploring migration, memory, and the afterlives of empire. If the surname rings familiar, it is not incidental. He is the son of historian William Dalrymple, one of the most prominent chroniclers of South Asia's early modern past. In this conversation with The Indian Express, Dalrymple speaks about erased borders, nationalist cartographies, Jinnah's contradictions, and advice from his father. Edited excerpts: The key moment was visiting Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas at 16. But the real inspiration was Project Dastaan, founded with friends at Oxford. We noticed Indians and Pakistanis mingled freely abroad unlike Israelis and Palestinians, yet could not visit each other's homelands. We used Virtual Reality to reconnect Partition-separated families. One man, Iqbal, wanted to find his Hindu friend Narendra Singh, who had preserved their ancestral mosque amid horrific violence. We found Narendra's family in Mohali near Chandigarh. Though Narendra had passed, his widow immediately suggested they all vacation together. My co-founder Sparsh Ahuja's family was saved during Partition riots by Muslim neighbours in what is now Pakistan. When we visited, he heard for the first time their side of the story — how they hid his family in their barn when mobs came looking for Hindus to kill. Project Dastaan showed me how Partition severed connections that persisted despite official hostility. Reconnecting families made me want to explore how these borders came to be – not just 1947 but all the partitions that shattered the Indian Empire. The way that India is defined by the British is very clearly laid out in the Interpretation Act of 1889: that everything ruled and governed under the Viceroy will be defined as part of India. This includes both directly ruled British India as well as the princely states and protectorates: all these maharajas, nawabs, sultans and sheikhs who had handed over their foreign policy and defence to the Indian government, though they ranged from being internally completely independent to having significant state involvement like Jaipur. States such as Bhutan and Sikkim were very much internally independent with only minor British interference. The definition was simply the territories inherited by the East India Company. Everything ruled by the East India Company in 1858 was nationalised by the Crown, though random distant territories such as Hong Kong and Singapore were separated within the first few years. What's remarkable is that this vast swathe from Yemen to Burma was given Indian passports. In the book, I've included a picture of an Indian passport given to a Yemeni Jewish woman who wanted to migrate to Mandate Palestine after the Balfour Declaration. To think that in order to migrate from Yemen you had to get an Indian passport is bizarre. The way nationalists have written history presents India as this ancient thing called Bharat Varsha, with geography from the Mahabharata that remained constant. But the British were just conquering random territories based on economic sense, not on 'Indianness'. Gandhi and other nationalists were certain independent India should stretch from Sindh to Assam, but when Gandhi went to Burma he argued for its separation. Hindu nationalists from the Mahasabha said Arabian states shouldn't be part of India because Arabia was a separate civilisation. Modern India traces its origins to this Bharat idea that excludes places the British conquered but nationalists don't consider part of India. Also, Yemen and Burma have been racked by civil war, their archives often burnt, so few historians have looked into them. In the Gulf, historian James Onley discovered that 99 per cent of Qatar's history is kept in the Bombay archives. He wrote The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj (2007) because these areas never appeared on maps of British India – it was always kept somewhat secret. Of all the characters, Jinnah was the most surprising and complex. In the 1920s, he was considered the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity — Sarojini Naidu gave him a trophy with that title. He married 'Rutti', a much younger Parsi woman, believing in interfaith marriage, but she was ostracised by her community. This disillusioned him about India moving past religious boundaries. Later, as a leading Congressman, he was overshadowed by Gandhi and Nehru who treated him poorly. We're used to the Jinnah of the 1940s, but in the 1920s he was a secular man who ate pork, drank whiskey, and had a Parsi wife. His transformation into the founder of the first Islamic republic is fascinating. In 1946, he accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan where Pakistan would exist as a province within a united India — like countries within the United Kingdom today. It is fascinating to think how much bloodshed could have been avoided had this gone through. Gandhi and Jinnah ultimately pulled out of this idea. It was Hindu nationalism, Muslim nationalism — all of them. But Hindu nationalists wanted a nation resembling Bharat Varsha. The idea of Bharat Mata is key to why Burma and Arabia were separated. Nationalist maps of Bharat Mata never included these areas. The British, seeing India might soon be independent, considered separating these regions to maintain economic control, knowing nationalists didn't want them. Fascinatingly, there were nationalists in Burma and Yemen who saw themselves as Indian and wanted to remain part of India, but figures such as Mahatma Gandhi pushed against this. U Ottama, a Burmese Buddhist monk who became Savarkar's predecessor in the Hindu Mahasabha, argued that Burma was part of Bharat and that Buddhism was part of Hinduism, but was booed down at Mahasabha meetings and eventually resigned. He actually pushed me to write this as a book. Originally it was a documentary project with National Geographic, but when Covid hit and we could not film, he suggested turning it into a book. He read two drafts – one after my first draft and one before final submission. But my mother was the real editor-in-chief, reading everything meticulously. My father's work focuses on medieval through early modern history, while mine relies heavily on oral histories, techniques I learned from mentors such as Aanchal Malhotra and Kavita Puri who specialise in Partition testimonies. That said, I owe my historical interest to him dragging me around Rajasthan's hill forts, Bengal's delta, and Kerala's theyyam dancers since childhood. I've lived in Delhi for 22 years because he moved us here. I do not see them in conflict at all. Globally, academic historians do research while others popularise it accessibly. My book uses sources in eight languages from multiple archives, as rigorous as any academic work, but written for general readers. It reveals new research like Burma and Dubai's separation from India. Good popular history like films about Rome builds on scholarship. The distinction is when popular works lack footnotes or obscure sources — but you can absolutely write academically rigorous history for the public. Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More

The Hindu

6 days ago

• The Hindu

More ‘mind space' for India in the American imagination

Why is there no 'Schwarzman Scholars' programme for India? Why does a country of 1.4 billion people — an ancient civilisation, a dynamic economy, a nuclear power, and a key player in the Indo-Pacific — still appear marginal in the priorities of elite American institutions? The answer lies not merely in policy lag but in perception, psychology, and deeply embedded narratives that continue to shape the West's engagement with Asia. The Schwarzman Scholars programme The 'Schwarzman Scholars' programme, launched in 2016 and based at Beijing's Tsinghua University, was explicitly modelled after the Rhodes Scholarship (founded in 1902). Its mission is ambitious: to cultivate a future generation of global leaders, deeply familiar with China's systems, strategic worldview, and societal aspirations. That no such equivalent programme exists for India is not an accident. It is the culmination of decades of lopsided intellectual investment — one that privileges China as essential, and views India, at best, as peripheral. This imbalance was presciently explored by Harold R. Isaacs in his seminal work, Scratches on Our Minds: American Images of China and India (1958). Isaacs uncovered the psychological residue — 'scratches', as he termed them — left on American consciousness by media, education, missionary engagement, and diplomatic narratives. China loomed large in this imagination: revolutionary, mystical, dangerous, promising. India, by contrast, was filtered through colonial British lenses: remote, spiritual, chaotic, and, ultimately, less urgent. Even today, those scratches endure. India is often misunderstood, misrepresented, or, more often, simply missing in the frameworks that shape western elite understanding. The Cold War's bipolar logic left India unmoored in American strategic thinking. China was a site of ideological competition, and later, a partner in global capitalism. India, non-aligned and self-reliant, never fit the template. Its democracy attracted rhetorical admiration, but its strategic ambivalence dampened deeper interest. This selective seduction continued into the 21st century. China masterfully framed its rise as an opportunity — and the West was psychologically prepared to believe it. Scholars such as Australian sinologist Stephen FitzGerald described in the 1980s how the West 'wanted China to succeed' — economically, politically, even ideologically. China offered a compelling, seductive narrative of transformation: poverty to prosperity, isolation to globalisation, authoritarian control with capitalist efficiency. Western business leaders, academics and policymakers were drawn in. Programmes such as Schwarzman were not just reflections of China's pull —they were symptoms of the West's emotional and intellectual readiness to be seduced. India never orchestrated such seduction. It emerged from colonialism with a focus on sovereignty and self-reliance. It rebuffed bloc politics, avoided entanglements, and developed slowly and unevenly. Its strengths — pluralistic democracy, entrepreneurial diaspora, and cultural richness — did not easily translate into strategic urgency or narrative coherence for the West. While the Chinese state invested heavily in soft power — through Confucius Institutes, think tanks, cultural exchanges, and university partnerships — India's outreach was modest, sporadic, and often bureaucratically constrained. The problem with India-focused research Even within American academia, the difference is stark. China Studies enjoys robust institutional support across top universities. With a few exceptions, India-focused research, by contrast, is fragmented, often subsumed under South Asian or Postcolonial Studies, with an emphasis on religion, anthropology, or classical languages. These are critical fields, but do not capture the lure of a civilisational state and a modern India that is shaping global technology, space innovation, climate policy, and strategic affairs. India appears in headlines, but rarely in syllabi. The consequences are serious. Future American leaders, whether in diplomacy, business, or policy, are not being trained to understand India in its full complexity. The persistence of reductive frameworks, such as the old hyphenation of 'India-Pakistan', continues to distort strategic thinking. U.S. President Donald Trump's repetitive remarks about mediating between India and Pakistan are not just personal gaffes. They reflect institutional inertia, a failure to update mental maps to match geopolitical reality. And here lies a paradox: just as India's importance is rising, its visibility in American intellectual and philanthropic circuits remains limited. The absence of a flagship fellowship akin to Schwarzman is both a symbol and a cause of this gap. Such a programme would not just serve India's interests; it would meet a growing demand among global youth for deeper engagement with the world's largest democracy — its challenges, innovations, contradictions, and aspirations. But for such a fellowship to succeed, India must first invest in the institutional foundation. Tsinghua University, where Schwarzman is housed, is not just a campus. It is a a brand, a node of state-backed ambition with global recognition. India has institutions of excellence — the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, and emerging liberal arts universities such as Ashoka and Krea — but none as yet combine academic prestige, international pull, policy connectivity, and philanthropic momentum at the scale required. This must change. India needs a globally oriented, strategically empowered academic platform that can host and nurture the next generation of world leaders — Indian and foreign — who understand India not just as a subject of study but as a site of leadership. Creating such an institution will require government will, private capital, academic autonomy, and long-term vision. Narrative matters India also needs to project its narrative with much more feeling and conviction. The Chinese have always felt they are a 'chosen' people. The world, from Napoleon, has felt the same. India is the Cinderella in this story. Strategic restraint and ambiguity has served Indian diplomacy in many arenas, but silence can be mistaken for absence and risk-aversion for reticence and a lack of confidence. Narrative matters. Global leadership today is as much about shaping perceptions as it is about GDP or military muscle. That means calling out outdated framing, investing in storytelling, and claiming intellectual space with confidence. The refrain of a rising GDP lifting all boats, of International Yoga Days, will not just do. Every few blocks in an American city you will find a yoga studio and an Indian restaurant. But does that change the power scene for India? Ultimately, the battle for influence is not only fought in the corridors of power or in street corners, but is also shaped in classrooms, fellowships, research centres, and campus conversations. If India wants to be understood on its own terms, and not just as a counterweight to China or a bystander in someone else's story, it must be present in the places where ideas are formed and futures imagined. The scratches on our minds can be healed, but not with silence. They require vision, voice, and a story compelling enough to inspire the next generation of global leaders. A Schwarzman-style fellowship in India would not just be a corrective. It would be a declaration that India is no longer content to be studied at a distance. It wants to be known, on its own terms. Nirupama Rao is a former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to the United States

Hindustan Times

6 days ago

• Hindustan Times

Naga delegation seek return of ancestral remains from UK's Pitt Rivers Museum

Kohima: Naga tribe leaders and seniors currently in the United Kingdom (UK) for talks with the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford have issued a declaration, seeking the repatriation of Naga ancestral remains that were on display at the museum until 2020. According to the Naga delegation, the declaration, made on Friday at the Lecture Theatre of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, stated that the repatriation process is towards the healing and wholeness of the Naga people. Over 200 human remains of Naga tribes are believed to have been taken away during the colonial period, many of them now kept at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM). 'We are grateful to our ancestors for being a testament and silently proclaiming the stories of our people. We are sorry that it has taken us several decades, but we are here now to reclaim and return you to the homelands from where you were taken. We are committed to the process of your return from museums,' the declaration said. 'As Nagas, we do so in a united voice, with mutual respect and consensus and to offer you a dignified rest, establishing a Naga monument of healing and peace for all generations, symbolising the oneness of the Nagas,' it added. The Naga team also extended their solidarity to fellow indigenous peoples across the world who seek to undertake a similar journey of repatriation in the hope of bringing decolonisation, justice, and peace—not just for themselves, but for humanity. The delegation has been in the UK since June 8, holding dialogues with Pitt Rivers Museum administrators to strengthen the process of repatriating Naga ancestral human remains. The delegation is composed of leaders and seniors of different Naga tribal bodies, members of the Forum for Naga Reconciliation (FNR), and the Recover, Restore and Decolonise (RRaD) team.