India, Dec. 28 -- Last week, I attended the first Nalanda Literature Festival at Rajgir, which is close to Nalanda, in Bihar. It is a commendable initiative, and Ganga Kumar, its prime mover, deserves our felicitations. The event was well attended, with danseuse Sonal Mansingh, parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor, historian Vikram Sampath, author Abhay K (who has written a well-received book on Nalanda), among many others, participating. A festival of ideas in Nalanda's name is a befitting tribute to the world's first world-class university. Founded in the early 5th century CE during the reign of the Gupta dynasty - traditionally dated to 427 CE - it blossomed into a residential academic campus long before the medieval universities of Europe took shape. When the University of Bologna - often cited as the oldest in Europe - was established in 1088 CE, Nalanda was already over 650 years old. In its prime, it remained the jewel of India's intellectual life for more than seven centuries. I first visited the brooding ruins of Nalanda - a World Heritage Site - in August 2012. My wife and I were the guests of chief minister Nitish Kumar, and he sent us on a tour to see Bihar Sharif (next in importance only to Ajmer Sharif), Pawapuri (where Jain founder Mahavir took samadhi), Bodh Gaya, and Gaya. It is amazing that within a radius of around 100 km are key sites of four of India's major religions. That was Nitish's way of emphasising to us the eclectic and inclusive ethos of Bihar. At Nalanda, I stood transfixed pondering over the fact that there was once a flourishing university here, with 10,000 students and 2,000 teachers, in which Buddhist philosophy and metaphysics, Vedic literature, logic and linguistics, medicine (including Ayurveda), mathematics, astronomy, astrology, economics, politics, poetry, ethics, and even arts and architecture, were taught and debated. Foreign students, from China, Tibet, Central Asia, and, indeed, all of South East Asia, who studied at Nalanda, took their learning back home, becoming emissaries of Indian thought systems, translating texts, and initiating dialogues across cultures. The description of Xuanzang, the Chinese scholar who visited India (630-643 CE), and lived in Nalanda for five years, was carried by the gentle breeze to me: "An azure pool winds around the monasteries, adorned with the full-blown cups of the blue lotus; the dazzling red flowers of the lovely kanaka hang here and there, and outside groves of mango trees offer the inhabitants their dense and protective shade." My mind conjured students debating with acharyas, and profound Buddhist scholars like Nagarjuna, or mathematical geniuses like Aryabhata (who discovered the zero) and Brahmagupta, among hundreds of others, making path-breaking discoveries. The thought also struck me: Why, in a civilisation that produced the first Harvard of the world, and other great universities like Takshashila and Vikramshila, there is, today, no Indian university in the top 100 educational institutions globally? Why have we so easily accepted our educational downgrading, relinquishing our pursuit of moulik soch, the power of original thought? Perhaps the ecosystem of support that sustained such an extraordinary institution has died. Nalanda did not flourish in a vacuum; it flourished because the Indian polity and society recognised knowledge as worthy of sustained patronage. The Gupta kings, and later the Pala dynasty of Bengal, were among its most committed patrons. They provided endowments, land, monasteries and stipends - conceiving a centre of learning not as a private academy but as an essential public good. And then, with a shudder, I visualised the army of Bakhtiyar Khilji destroying Nalanda in the 12th century. Centuries of priceless accumulated knowledge were reduced to ashes. Contemporary accounts describe its libraries - Ratnasagara, Ratnodadhi and Ratnaranjaka - as repositories of thousands upon thousands of manuscripts, millions of scrolls arranged in scientific order, reflecting an encyclopaedic grasp of human knowledge. The libraries are said to have burned for months owing to the sheer volume of texts. This wanton destruction shows how vulnerable human knowledge is when political and ideological intolerance displaces curiosity and open inquiry. In a global age that frequently privileges technocracy over wisdom, Nalanda's heritage - its expansive, inclusive, innovative and deeply reflective pursuit of knowledge - must be reclaimed not as nostalgia but as inspiration. In doing so, we honour not only the scholars and seekers of ancient India, but reaffirm that the pursuit of knowledge, when unfettered, remains humanity's noblest pilgrimage....