Hindu studies go online

 

Since 2003, the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies has taught extramural courses throughout the UK as part of its commitment to bring the fruits of Oxford scholarship in Hinduism to a broad audience. Since then the courses have been taught dozens of times in Leicester, London, Birmingham, and Oxford.

 

In 2005 it was decided to broaden the reach even more by making courses available online. As the technologies developed pilot schemes were run, the latest of which was a full-scale implementation of the course from November 2008–January 2009.

 

The course consists of seven sessions each of which covers a fundamental aspect of Hinduism including scripture, practice, caste and gender, and modern trends in Hinduism. Each session has extensive class notes and a video lecture. Most importantly these resources are backed up by online discussion forums and the guidance of experienced tutors with a zeal for their subject: Dr Nick Sutton, one of the pioneers of our Continuing Education courses; Dr Jessica Frazier, OCHS fellow and newly published author (see below); and Rembert Lutjeharms, OCHS Librarian and D.Phil. candidate.

 

The course is competitively priced at £95 and is an excellent way to deepen knowledge of the Hindu traditions and support the OCHS at the same time.

 

This development was largely brought about by the efforts of our friends Harish I. K. Patel, Bharat Bhundia, and Vijay Thakrar. We also gratefully acknowledge the following generous sponsors for their vision in providing the seed funding for this initiative: R. C. Uduhiri, Jenmark Ltd, Mountweb 2000 Ltd, Sanjiv Shah, Kamlesh and Yaksha Patel, Dinesh Hirani of MP Bros., Vinit and Hema Patel, Nitin Palan, Sameer Thakkar, Amki Management Ltd, Dr Shashikant H. Patel, Krishnakant Mehta, Deepak Manghnani, Praveen Manghnani, and Anil Manghnani.

 

For more information, go to www.ochs.org.uk/ced