Chinese Embassy provides a ₹6,000,000 INR grant to renovate two buildings at Cheena Bhavana at Visva-Bharati University

Project narrative

In February 2018, the Chinese Embassy in India provided a grant of ₹6,000,000 INR to Visva-Bharati University to support renovations at Cheena Bhavana, the Institute of Chinese Language and Culture at Visva-Bharat. The grant was intended to finance the renovation of two small buildings at the center. While the funds were received by Visva-Bharati University, no funds were used in the 2018-19 fiscal year; it is unclear if implementation began. Cheena Bhavana was founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1937 as a center for Sino-Indian cultural studies. In 2020, it had over 200 students enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Chinese language and doctoral research on the cultural ties between China and India. As of 2020, Cheena Bhavana had a memorandum of understandings (MoU) with three Chinese universities for exchanges that was to expire in 2022. In September 2020, after a summer of violent clashes along the Sino-Indian border, the authorities at Cheena Bhavana ceased communications with the Chinese universities, after fears of repercussions from India's University Grants Commission, which had began requesting details of the relationships between Indian universities and Chinese institutions and apparently required Cheena Bhavana to secure its permission before hosting any webinars with Chinese universities.