Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune has started offering online courses on the nation's rich heritage, without any narrative attached to it, senior officials from the institute stated. The institute has its online learning platform known as 'Bharat Vidya'. The topics that will be covered are- religion, literature, philosophy, governance and policy-making, astronomy, mathematics, sciences, medicine, art, architecture, history and culture.
The platform has been offering six courses: Ved Vidya, Darshanas, Digital Sanskrit Learning, Introduction to Mahabharata, Kalidas and Bhasha, and Fundamentals of Archaeology. The spoken Sanskrit course is being conducted for no fee, while others are available on a subscription basis.
Additionally, the officials stated that the online learning platform is getting a good response as people from different walks of life are enrolling themselves in its courses. The premier institute, set up in 1917 for Indology and Asian studies, is home to more than 28,000 manuscripts and 1.53 lakh rare books and is a favourite haunt of academicians and researchers.
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) has been working on the digitisation of manuscripts and books for the last few years. "In 2019, we started our digital library, and to complement it we thought of creating a parallel learning platform where people with diverse interests can explore the resources available with the institute and interact with each other. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic intervened around the same time," he said.
During the pandemic, the institute introduced online courses, starting with a course on Indian heritage which received a good response. However, several subscribers lived outside India and were working professionals, which gave rise to issues related to different time zones or paucity of time, Bhandari said. "We figured out that people needed permanent access to the material. Putting the course content on YouTube was not practical, so to resolve these issues we undertook a dedicated project on an online learning program offering short-term courses," he said. Thus the online portal www.bharatvidya.in came into being, Bhandari said.
Furthermore, within a few days of the launch of the platform, more than 600 people opened accounts and more than 100 enrolled on these courses. Among the subscribers, Bhandari said, the largest demographic was persons between 25 and 40 years old, mostly working professionals, trainers, coaches, engineers, professors and doctors. "In short, Bharat Vidya online project is receiving good responses from people from diverse fields," he said. All the courses are pre-recorded and their length varies from 10 hours to 20 hours. Talking about the objectives of the projects, he said the founder of BORI Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar and other scholars worked towards taking its treasure trove of resources to the people, so the primary goal was to take the vision of these founders and the tangible heritage to the masses in a simple and digestible manner.
"The other objective is to make authentic information, without any sort of narrative attached to it, available to the people. When there are so many conflicting narratives about the topic which are of this nature such as Indian history and heritage, we can offer very authentic, primary source-based information which will bring out the reality of that particular epoch," he said.
BORI is planning to launch 15 to 18 more online courses covering subjects like Buddhism, Jainism and the History of Dharmashastra, Bhandari said.