A third central university on Tuesday launched a master’s programme in Hindu Studies, after Banaras Hindu University and the Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University, New Delhi, did so last year.

The Delhi-based Central Sanskrit University launched the programme on its Puri campus, the Sadashiva Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya.

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Hindu Studies would be taught and researched at the Puri institution.

The Hindu Studies curriculum projects the caste system as inclusive, seeks to counter “negative” interpretations of Hindu theory and practice by foreign scholars, and appears to present Buddhism and Jainism as branches of Hinduism.

“Chicago University in the US and Oxford University in the UK were offering courses in Hindu Studies. Now the University Grants Commission has allowed master’s in Hindu Studies,” Pradhan told an event in Puri.

These courses abroad study Hinduism in its societal, cultural and historical contexts and stress multiplicities in Hinduism, an expert recently told this newspaper.

The UGC has included Hindu Studies as a subject in its Common Universities Entrance Test for postgraduate courses.

Pradhan said master’s students of Hindu Studies can research Hindutva and the Jagannath cult.

The minister laid the foundation for a Rashtriya Adarsh Veda Vidyalaya on the same campus.

This Vedic school, affiliated to the Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratisthan, Ujjain, will offer Veda Bhushan and Veda Vibhushan certificates, which were recently granted equivalence with the Classes X and Class XII certificates, respectively, of other boards.

“The Vedas are a repository of knowledge. Today, there is a misplaced priority on Macaulay education,” Pradhan said.

British historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was the architect of institutionalised western education in India.