provided information about Nalanda and also helped to prepare students for studying there."

"entry qualifications"? If Sen knows this, it is a new discovery. I don't think anyone knows anything about how 'students' were granted 'admission' to 'study' at Nalanda. The entire presentation of Nalanda as a 'university' with 'students' who come to 'study' there is, to my mind, fantastical. This spirit permeates the piece. 

"Special care was taken to demolish the beautiful statues of Buddha and other Buddhist figures that were spread across the campus."

Setting aside 'campus', I don't think again that there is any evidence for this, and rather, it seems to me that when monasteries were sacked in North India the goal was almost entirely economic. The 'beautiful statues' were often made of precious substances or encrusted with jewels; my guess--but it is nothing more than that--is that there is at least a whiff of some idea that one might connect this sack of Nalanda with the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, which is historically, and typologically, an entirely unrelated event.

Birgit has already referred much more authoritatively than I could to the discussion of debate; I have nothing to add.

One more:

"The issue of the spread of knowledge was raised in a conversation in the seventh century when Xuan Zang completed his studies and

was considering going back to China. The professors at Nalanda asked Xuan Zang to stay on as a member of the faculty."

The professors? The faculty? Completed his studies? Andrew would perhaps not characterize this as fantastic, but I think it fundamentally and entirely misrepresents the very nature of Nalanda, and plops it right down in the European context to which Sen wishes to equate the Indian institution.

Finally, and unrelated, a random question: is it just because he thinks his NYRB readers will expect it that Sen refers to Lokesh Chandra as Chandra? It's one name, LokeshChandra, right?!

I would like to sincerely thank the colleagues who have helped place this discussion in the wider context, of which I was entirely ignorant, of contemporary Indian politics. It is an interesting, but depressing, story, which unfortunately seems to hold serious lessons for those of us in Europe also dealing with State control over education and resources.

Jonathan