Dharma Civilization Foundation is a California based 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization. It seeks to promote and enhance philanthropic giving to promote the systematic study of “Dharma”, its interpretation and application in modern contexts, in formal academic settings. The Foundation aims to do this by creating visiting and tenured professorships, endowed academic chairs, fellowships, scholarships, centers of excellence and academic institutions for the study of Dharma, and other such similar pursuits in North America, India and around the world. The Corporation will also further, support and sponsor research that examines the relevance of Dharma to contemporary concerns and globally significant issues, and will enable the creation of books, journals, publishing projects, think-tanks and position papers to aid the adoption of Dharma-centered policies and practices towards the solution of challenges facing humanity.

Dharma Civilization Foundation, is one of a very few Foundations in North America representing the interests of the Dharma Communities i.e. Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh in the domain of Higher Education, particularly in the field of Religious Studies. DCF seeks to promote Higher Education Philanthropy in the domain of religious studies i.e. at the Masters and Ph.D. level. DCF will also focus on undergraduate level education as well as high school level education. DCF hopes to upgrade the study and quality of understanding of the Indian Dharma traditions in such a way that they are well represented within the Academia.

The discipline of Religious Studies is a prestigious discipline in the USA, and in the entire Western Academia. The American Academy of Religion (AAR) has over 11,000 Scholars with Ph.D. and Masters Degrees, and in addition the Theological Schools and Seminaries churn out another 9,000 Scholars with degrees such as Doctor of Theology and Masters in Divinity. Indians are by and large unaware of the significance and impact of this domain of study – in part due to their home country i.e. India not developing this discipline, and also in part due to an excessive emphasis on Science, Engineering, Medicine and other professional disciplines. DCF is trying to create a presence for the Indian Religions and Spiritual Traditions within the sphere of the academy that is authentic to those traditions. DCF expects that this effort will have long standing implications for the Hindu and Dharma communities in North America.

Actually, they are. Being a significant world religion, Hinduism in particular is studied quite extensively. But it so happens that a very high majority of the professors and scholars who study Hinduism academically are non-Hindus and non-practitioners of Hinduism. This has resulted in widespread incidence of misrepresentations of Hinduism, and mischaracterization of the traditions and practices within the Hindu fold. Even Professors of Indian origin, who would ordinarily be expected to have sympathetic orientation towards their religion and culture of origin, are often beholden to the methods of study, employed predominantly by the Area studies disciplines, which treat Hinduism and the other Dharma traditions as foreign exotica, and not lived traditions of fellow-Americans. The other Dharma traditions i.e. Buddhist, Jain and Sikh traditions are also studied in the academy. However, the Buddhist, Jain and Sikh communities have already started investing in the Academia for several years now.

In recent times, there has been a spate of controversies related to the application of Freudian Analytical techniques to explain Hindu Gods, Goddesses and Gurus. These analytics techniques create a distorted representation of almost all the things that Hindus hold dear to their heart. Examples are the book on Lord Ganesha by Paul Courtright, 1985; the book on Ramakrishna Paramahamsa by Jeffrey Kripal, 1995; the California School Text Book controversy, 2005 and Michael Witzel’s intervention in the case; the most recent episode of Wendy Doniger’s book called “The Hindus – An Alternate History, 2010”. This has helped in bringing focus to a long festering problem in the Academy. In prior years, Marxist interpretive lenses were used to look for who benefits, who gains in power and influence from the various principles and values within the Hindu Society, to continually discredit the spiritual realities expounded by the sacred texts of India.

Since Hindus have not engaged pro-actively in the domain of the academic study of religion there are very few authentic voices that represent the Dharma traditions responsibly and authentically within the academia. There are very few sources of funding within the academy which promote authentic study and writing about Hindu Dharma. Even these few voices are compelled by the sources of funding to engage in distorted writings about Hindu Dharma even if their own heart may not be in it. The senior academicians who are recognized within the field, have generally taken a position that is not friendly to the authentic study of Hindu Dharma, and defend it in the name of academic freedom.

Yes – This can be definitely reversed and corrected. All it takes is a critical mass of scholars who represent the Dharma traditions accurately and authentically, and apply new methodologies of study that are more in keeping with the traditions themselves – and they will begin to provide an alternate narrative to the one that is being currently presented as mainstream academic thought. Contention between different theories and propositions is normal in the academia – People i.e. Professors and Scholars when exposed to both narratives, can make a choice between them, and very soon, we will find that a large number of scholars find the authentic teachings of Sanatana Dharma and the other Dharma traditions much more appealing than the distorted narratives that have been privileged in recent years.

DCF plans to establish a variety of academic and intellectual infrastructure within the University and School systems in North America to begin with. Such infrastructure will include creating institutions i.e. Centers of Excellence, Faculty Positions, Students and Research and Writing projects. Center of Excellence are typically Centers for the Study of Dharma or Indic Dharma or more simply, a Center for India studies or may be called a Center for Hindu Studies etc. A Center brings together scholars from multiple disciplines who can look at a particular subject matter more thoroughly from a variety of angles. Faculty Positions can range from funding adjunct courses, to visiting faculty appointments to contract faculty with 3 to 7 year contracts, as well as endowed Chairs. Support for Students will include scholarships, fellowships and other ways of financing deserving students through their college programs. Funding research and writing projects are aimed at getting thematic journals and book series and papers which can make a difference in a particular field. They also include curriculum development for new courses and programs of study.

Endowed Chairs are professorships that are given as gifts to a university. An individual donor or organization gives a onetime gift of a fund to a College or University. The interest income from that capital normally supports the salary and research of a professor in perpetuity for as long as the University exists. The Chair is normally designated to be in a particular department or school. The endowed chair cannot be terminated according to the shifting interests of the university. Holding an endowed chair is considered an academic honor and allows the university to select highly qualified professors who, in turn, can more easily develop an academic following due to the position. The endowed position brings a great deal of prestige to the university and enhances the field represented by the Chair.

The difference between an endowed Chair and an ordinary professorship are many. First, an ordinary professorship is funded and supported by the university, represents the department’s interests and can be terminated after the retirement of a tenured professor or the dismissal of a non-tenured professor. The ordinary professorship can be occupied by a newly minted Ph.D. without a track record in scholarship, academic leadership, community outreach, or involvement in the development of the field. The endowed Chair, on the other hand, is funded by external parties—individuals or institutional donors who establish them to reflect their own interests and priorities. Further the endowed Chair cannot be terminated or otherwise subsumed by the University department, as the endowment gift that supports the chair is generally an “in-perpetuity” type of gift i.e. the professorship that has been created will exist for ever, ensuring that the community’s interests are preserved for ever.

This is an important aspect of any endowment gift. There are four parts to the answer. First, before entering into a relationship with a University, the Donor must ensure that the recipient institution is hospitable to the intent of the donor, and not just the donor’s money. Secondly, at the time of giving the gift, the Donor must enter into a gift agreement with the recipient, in which the intention and purpose of the donor is clearly documented and stipulated. This is a legal document, and is binding on the University. If the gift agreement is not drafted clearly and leaves open room for interpretation, it could be misinterpreted. Third, we must ensure that the University’s Faculty search process recruits a Professor who is eminently suited to fulfill the intention of the donor. This aspect is a key element in honoring the intent and spirit of the donor. A Professor whose academic interests are at variance with the donor’s commitment, may jeopardize the very intent of the gift. Lastly, when transitions occur within the Department, as it always does, there must be ongoing engagement between the donor and the key faculty within the University so as to ensure that the donor’s intent is preserved across key transitions. The last two aspects above may be difficult accomplish given the recruitment policies and processes of each individual University. Managing this effectively is one of the key value propositions of Dharma Civilization Foundation.

The creation of an endowed Chair, enhances the prestige of a field; it can establish a new area of research within an established discipline; it can strengthen poorly studied or weak areas of research in a field of interest to the donor; it can serve to provide credible academic counterweights to inadequate, non-rigorous or inaccurate research in a particular area; it can support a newly emerging field of research (e.g. Complementary and Integrative Medicine (CAM) in the general discipline of Medicine); it can honor the area of work and legacy of a great thinker (e.g. Swami Vivekananda); it has the potential to transform the discourse in a field through the leadership represented by scholars who hold the distinction of endowed chairs.

Successful national and religious Diasporas typically understand the value of endowments for teaching and research at major universities. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean diaspora all understand the power, privilege, and prestige that endowed chairs, centers and institutes bring to their cultural and national interests. The Chinese have funded over 70 Confucius Institutes in America alone and hundreds globally, in addition to dozens of China Studies Centers and numerous Chairs. The soft power invested in the effort to endow Chairs has not escaped the notice of most ethnic or religious minorities. In the 1980s, the Persian Gulf royalty began to endow chairs across the United States. The Saudi royal family alone established multiple Chairs, including the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas; King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara; the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture at USC, as well as the Sultan Program in Arab Studies at the U.C., Berkeley. There are dozens of Islamic Studies Chairs in the USA alone. The Christians and Jews have been in this discipline far longer – There are entire Jewish Universities dedicated to the teaching of Judaism.

Absolutely. Under the leadership of the Dalai Lama, as many as 14 endowed Chairs in Buddhist studies have been established in North America alone. The study of Buddhism in academic settings is considered cool and mainstream today. The Sikhs have created 6 endowed Chairs, and this has greatly altered the dynamics of Sikh studies. The Jains have created at least 3 and are working on a few more. In contrast, there is not even one endowed Chair for the study of Hinduism in North America or anywhere else for that matter. Foundations like the Jain Academic Foundation of North America (JAFNA) and the Sikh foundation are engaged with the academy for several years. Dharma Civilization Foundation has noted the enormous progress made by the Dharma traditions in this domain and has therefore committed itself to redressing this lacuna.

No. While Hindu Studies will be an important part of the concerns and interests of Dharma Civilization Foundation, DCF is also interested in promoting the commonality and underlying threads of relationships and connections across all the Dharma traditions i.e. Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Sikh. This concern is stemming from a recognition that, the Hindu Sanatana Dharma itself gave rise to the many Sampradayas, of India, and there is a great deal that each Sampradaya has borrowed from Hinduism as well as from each other. DCF is committed therefore to the study of the Dharma traditions as a whole family of traditions, distinct from the Abrahamic traditions.

Yes there is. As mentioned before, the academic study of Religion has been a prestigious discipline in North America, and tens of thousands of students are engaged in the study of Religion. It may be relatively new to the students of the Hindu and Dharma communities, who have preferred engineering and science and medicine. But there is a latent demand for studying and understanding the Indian spiritual thought, and DCF believes that if the students are well supported with scholarships and endowments they will come. This has been well borne out by DCF’s experiment at the University of Southern California’s visiting Professor position – a good teacher or professor will create their own charisma and demand, as Dr. Rita Sherma has demonstrated.

Students with Ph.D.’s in Religious Studies with Hindu and Dharma concentrations can become invaluable resources for the diaspora. They can engage with the communities as professors and teachers in Universities, Colleges and Campuses; they can be chaplains in hospitals, the armed services and universities; they can function as thought leaders working for think tanks and non-profit foundations; they can be teachers and counselors associated with temples who can support the next generation children of the diaspora. They can go into writing and become journalists and commentators on world affairs in the media. More than anything else, they can become the Voice of Dharma in the public square which is sorely missing today.

If DCF does not take up this challenge, and no one else does, then the study of Hinduism will be grossly neglected in the academia. Distorted understanding of Hindu Dharma stemming from treating it as a “foreign” tradition, belonging to “other people” will remain the mainstream understanding. Our children and grand-children will want to move away from Hindu dharma since they don’t understand it, nor are they proud of it. Any authentic representation of Hindu Dharma will be questioned and challenged as belonging to some kind of “fringe movement” as it already is being done. The Voice of Dharma and all that it has to offer the modern world, will be suppressed. The positive principle of all-round sustainability embodied in the principle and value system of Dharma will be lost to society and humanity as a whole.