Resources for South Asian Area Studies in the United States

Book excerpt: This book presents an analysis of the current state and the future needs of American studies of India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Afghanistan, and Nepal. Although most of the developmental goals set immediately after World War II by the scholars then working in South Asian area studies have been amply fulfilled, a new stocktaking and blueprint for the future was felt to be necessary. In addition to meeting this requirement, Resources for South Asian Area Studies treats the more general needs of the field and discusses the individual papers, which were read at a plenary conference held in New York early in 1961. One of the purposes of this volume, then, is to survey the current resources and needs in the field of South Asian area studies, and this is a primary interest of the convener of the conference, the Association for Asian Studies' Committee on South Asia, whose chairman, Richard D. Lambert, edited this book. The other purpose is more specialized, and reflects the specific interest of the United States Office of Education, the sponsor of the conference. Under the National Defense Education Act this office is explicitly charged with the development of skills among Americans in the vernacular languages of the region. A companion volume to this one, edited by W. Norman Brown and entitled Resources for South Asian Language Studies, concerns the development of linguistic material and personnel. The present volume is oriented more toward the integration of those materials into area studies proper; hence the discussion of this problem that runs through each of the papers. The book should be of interest to all those concerned with the emergence from parochialism and the development of an international, particularly non-Western aspect of American higher education.