About the Institute

The South Asia Institute (SAI) promotes the study of the Indian subcontinent across the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, across other regions in Asia and the Indian Ocean, and across global South Asia diasporic communities. The Institute organizes seminars, lecture series, and occasionally, conferences, that bring together faculty and undergraduate and graduate students with diverse interests and backgrounds. SAI partners with departments, centers, and institutes at Columbia, and works with South Asia groups on campus, in order to reach new audiences and facilitate an exchange of knowledge. 

Degree options for the Study of South Asia at Columbia University

The Master of Arts Program in South Asia Studies, administered by the Institute, combines a core curriculum on South Asia with a coherent set of courses from a variety of disciplines across the university. Each student selects an individualized program of study under the advice and approval of the M.A. Program Director. Students in the M.A. Program will join a larger cohort of students working on South Asia at Columbia in other degree programs. There are options to pursue undergraduate majors or concentrations, and graduate study of South Asia, in a number of departments, primarily Anthropology, Art History and Archeaology, Comparative Literature, History, Political Science, and Religion; and in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (see below). Master's students at the School of International and Public Affairs may pursue a Regional Specialization in Southern Asian Studies.  Graduate students at Columbia may take six to eight courses to qualify for a Certificate in South Asia Studies, which is administered by the South Asia Institute.

Faculty and Curriculum

Affiliated Institute faculty members teach courses on South Asia in fourteen departments and six schools. SAI faculty research and teaching are often interdisciplinary and comparative across other world regions. Columbia offers three year department-based language programs (Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced levels) in Hindi, Persian, Sanskrit, and Urdu. Two year language programs at Columbia include Bengali, Punjabi, and Tamil, with third year classes arranged as tutorials or directed study.

Columbia Libraries

The Columbia Libraries have one of the oldest and largest South Asia collections in the country, with some 500,000 volumes -- over 150,000 of them in South Asian Languages. Columbia hosts the digital library website, SARAI (South Asia Resource Access on the Internet) which serves as the official South Asia catalog for the WWW Virtual Library Association, the oldest extant web catalog and one of the most respected.

Links for Admissions and further information about Degree Programs at Columbia

The Institute welcomes inquiries from prospective students interested in studying South Asia at Columbia. Applications to apply to Columbia Schools can be found on-line at their respective websites, as below.