Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t63: Vidya Prakash Dutt
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t63
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Vidya Prakash Dutt
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Vidya Prakash Dutt (1925-2011) was an eminent Indian sinologist, who played the key role in the establishment of what is now the Department of East Asian Studies in the University of Delhi, one of the main centres for China studies in India.
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Dutt first went to China as part of a cultural delegation led by Vijayalakshmi Pandit in 1950. Thereafter, he was among the earliest Indian students who studied in China in the 1950s. He remained in China from 1956 to 1958. The title of his doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Delhi through the Indian School of International Studies in 1961 was - “The Revolution of 1911 in China – Its Origins and Impact”. At that time, there were hardly any Indian scholars working seriously on modern China, and almost no one who used original Chinese language materials to produce a scholarly study on it as Dutt did.
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Dutt took the lead in establishing the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Delhi in 1964, which has evolved into today’s Department of East
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V. P. Dutt
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Asian Studies. He can thus be considered the pioneer of the second phase of China studies in modern India, the first phase having been the establishment of the Cheena Bhavana at Vishwabharati University by the poet Rabindranath Tagore and the Chinese scholar Tan Yunshan. For a couple of decades he taught an immensely popular course on “China in Revolution” at the University of Delhi, and mentored and encouraged a number of young scholars to enter the field not just of Chinese studies but of Japanese studies as well. He was also appointed Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University.
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He wrote many works on China studies and Indian foreign policy, including *China and the World: An Analysis of Communist China’s Foreign Policy*, *China’s Foreign Policy* and *India’s Foreign Policy*. He also co-authored ‘*China’s Cultural Revolution*’ with his wife Gargi Dutt, a Professor of Chinese Studies herself at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was nominated to the Upper House (Rajya Sabha) of the Indian Parliament.