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Published on:
Oct 07, 2022
Views:
433
Just a few weeks after India celebrated 75 years of independence, we mark the anniversary of a remarkable Anglo-Indian partnership - 75 years of the Rhodes Scholarship in India. It is an opportunity to look back and celebrate the tremendous contributions to India and the world made by the nearly 250 men and women who have won the Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford over the past decades. But this anniversary also spurs us to look to the future and commit to expanding the opportunities available to brilliant young people across this great country.
Indian Rhodes scholars have gone on to distinguished careers in a wide variety of fields: scientists, jurists, journalists, Olympians, university leaders, entrepreneurs, public servants, and more. They include such remarkable individuals as Girish Karnad, the playwright, author, actor and director; Padma Vibuhushan award-winning economist and policy expert Montek Singh Ahluwalia; Letten Prize winner Tarunabh Khaitan and trailblazing advocate Menaka Guruswamy, and Yidan Prize-winning educational innovator Rukmini Banerji, to name a few.
Tackling humanity's challenges
Beyond the opportunity to study at the world's oldest English-speaking university, Rhodes Scholars also join a global community of Rhodes alumni committed to having a positive impact on the world - a community that includes such in spirational figures as President Bill Clinton, Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Malcolm Turn bull, Nobel Laureates in medicine and economics, and heads of major international organisations including the Gates Foundation, the Aspen Institute and Oxfam. We like to say that Rhodes Scholars are called to 'fight the world's fight,' and we are inspired by the ways Scholars from many countries have joined forces to tackle humanity's greatest challenges, including climate change and Covid-19. We are determined to ensure that sought-after scholarship is open to people from the widest array of backgrounds and areas of interest across India. Our latest round of applications, which closed only a few weeks ago, attracted candidates from every corner of India, with applications from 27 out of the 28 states, and 3 out of the 8 Union Territories. In recent years, we have welcomed our first scholars from Kashmir and Nagaland and Indian scholars from over 90 different undergraduate institutions across India and around the world.
Increasing the participation
We are committed to raising funds to permanently endow more Indian Rhodes Scholarships so that more remarkable students from this great country can join and contribute to our global community. We are also working through our partner programmes Rise and Schmidt Science Fellows to recruit and support talented Indian students at earlier and later phases of their lives. We believe that investing in and connecting public-spirited people who are unlike-minded but like-hearted will have an exponential impact for good. As we celebrate the illustrious past and present of the Indian Rhodes Scholarships, we embrace the challenge to do more to support the amazing diversity, talent in India today.
(The author is the warden of Rhodes House and CEO of the Rhodes Trust)
Published :- Tme of India
Date :- 26/09/2022
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