The course is for you

• If you are looking for meaningful academic and community engagements, and creative immersion in transforming material and non-material conditions in society and nature around you through sound historical and philosophical approaches;
• If you want to enhance your critical understanding of why Southasian populations and communities have evolved their diverse forms of social, political and economic characteristics;
• If you want to experiment with and learn about collective strategies, actions and solutions to pathways towards dignified lives and livelihoods of our populations;
• If you believe that only by corresponding with dynamics of the earth systems, such as those imposed by the oceans, the Himalaya, or the monsoon can societies in Southasia remain sustainable, accessible, egalitarian and equitable;
• If you believe strongly in the emancipatory purpose of higher education in which learning outcomes assist us to help others in realising their personal and collective liberation, and dismantle newer forms of barriers, bondage and suffering arising through cultural and economic distinctions.

Values of the MA Programme

SiHP’s MA Programme actively encourages its students, through diverse and open-ended enquiries and continuing experimentation, to gain the following four central values:

1. Value of Transformative Experience

Education is meant to be more uplifting than acquiring knowledge, a set of skills and employment. The MAHP programme seeks to encourage its students in findings ways to enrich and transform themselves through their experience about the world.

2. Value of Inter-connectedness

Since the world is a total set of relations, the Programme promotes enquiries that capture this inter-connectedness along with their full dynamic complexity.

3. Value of Authenticity

ntuitive understanding and self-awareness such that the students are able to articulate and act with authenticity to bring effective transformation in their world.

4. Value of Detachment

The MAHP programme aims to enhance the students’ appreciation of the value of detachment from self, and the self as a space of possibilities for better individuals as well as collective action and realisation.

Eligibility

• A score of at least 50% in aggregate or CGPA 2.0 out of 4.0 grading system in any undergraduate discipline from a recognised institution; or
• Exceptional, demonstrable and proven capacity to contribute to transforming Southasian societies or for rare recommendation of being as equivalent as above.
• An acceptable ranking in SiHP’s ALT-HuS (Advanced Level Test for Humanities in Southasia) admission exam.

General Details

Total Seats: 22

Duration: Two Years(4 Semesters) OR
Part-time: Three Years(6 Semesters)

Class Hours: 11 am – 5am (Mon- Fri)

Rolling Admission: You can apply, be evaluated and get accepted anytime throughout the year!

Conditional Offer: Available for applications who are still completing their requirements. You can secure your spot while finishing up your ongoing course.

Scholarship Schemes

Curriculum

The MA curriculum includes foundational and advanced courses in History and Philosophy, and elective courses in Society, Technology and Environment. The MA Programme curricula is based on five principles –

• strong and guided expertise in historical and philosophical explorations
• creative comprehension and articulation skills
• committed community engagement
• academic freedom and periodic audits
• continual assessment and task-based interactional pedagogy

The thematically structured curriculum enables faculty, students and experts, from Southasia or beyond, to grasp, share and articulate the course content. Classical and Other language learning as well as strong fieldwork and community engagement requirements equips students with skills to break ideological and epistemic barriers existing in the mainstream humanities and arts curricula in the region.

Language

Contemporary Language:

In the first semester, students will take a course in one of the living languages other than their mother tongue. If a student’s mother tongue is Tibeto-Burman, for instance, they will learn an Austro-Asiatic or Indo-European language; if coming from a dominant language group, they will take up a ‘minority’ tongue, preferably an endangered language. Achieving relative proficiency in a language not their own, students will glean first-hand insights into a broader and dynamic socio-linguistic, historical context within which historical and philosophical concepts are questioned and newer questions framed.

Classical Language:

In the second semester, it will be mandatory for students to acquire proficiency in one of the following ‘classical’ languages in Southasia, for example: Pali/Prakrit, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Limbu, Maithili or Tamil. This will deepen their appreciation of the enduring and echoing knowledge systems within which both urgent and emergent worldviews are debated, contested and resolved.

Fieldwork & Labs

The History and Philosophy Labs will help the SiHP academic community to formulate, test, incubate and extend practical, historically grounded and meaningful life-changing approaches to action for improving social, technological and environmental landscapes of the region.

This experimentation module brings concrete situations of History and Philosophy to the fore, thereby helping students gain practical insights into doing history and philosophy. The nature and aims of the actual experiments are customized to reflect changing interests and priorities of the students and reflecting requirements of Southasian populations and communities.

Three weeks in the field (i.e. outside campus) will help course participants to learn, engage and formulate historical/philosophical questions for the people and communities, questions that are critical, right and just.

Course Structure

Evaluation

Student evaluation is based on in-semester and end-semester examinations, classwork and homework assignments, lab, fieldwork and presentations, term papers, and, when applicable, publications. Faculty are continually assessed for their performance and effectiveness in course content delivery. Course details are periodically reviewed as well as audited, and the faculty are helped to construct the courses as required.

Career Prospects

As a New Humanities Scholar, you will be able to perform various jobs and research activities as:

• Historian
• Philosopher
• Researcher
• Public Intellectual
• Policy Analyst
• Planner
• Diplomat
• Public Servant
• Journalist
• Art and Literary Critique
• Social Commentator
• Public Communicator
• Community Leader
• Academic
• I/NGO Project Specialist
• Social Activist

Student Support Services

We invest time and resources in providing personalised student services including counselling, co-learning, mentoring, guiding and referencing on one-to-one basis. Each individual at the time of admissions will be assigned a faculty supervisor who will mentor him/her for academic growth at SiHP, provide for individual counselling and guidance, as well as ensure co-learning with a peer group within the class and beyond.

SiHP also has career and student support counselling. The former has been designed to help students for in-study jobs, internships, trainings and skill enhancement, while the latter is a sign-up professional assistance to the students to ensure that the students’ time at SiHP is stress-free, enjoyable, rejuvenating and meaningful.