Approaches to the Study of Religion

The study of religion has yet to secure in the Indian university the status which legitimately belongs to it. However, academic opinion has lately been consolidating in favour of making this aspect of human experience the subject of serious intellectual and scholarly enquiry.

The Kothari Commission report came out decisively in support of this idea. In 1967, a seminar was held at Bangalore on the Study of Religion in Indian Universities. Participants included the distinguished comparatives thinker Professor Wilfred Cantwell, Smith, Director, Centre for the Study of World Religious, Harvard University, and representatives from Indian universities

such as Visva-Bharati, Banaras, Osmania, Delhi, Madras and Mysore. The Punjabi University, Patiala, had, by then, worked out a scheme for starting a department of religion. The Vice-Chancellor of the University, Sardar Kirpal Singh Narang, took part in the Bangalore seminar. The Punjabi University’s plans firmed up and a Department of Religious Studies-perhaps the first under this name in an Indian University-Materialized.