In South Korea, university students are fighting to save one of country’s oldest Hindi language programmes

Just as the year was drawing to a close, in December 2020, a group of students and faculty members at Busan University of Foreign Studies (BUFS), unable to physically congregate due to the South Korean government’s restrictions on public gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic, began using social media platforms to stage protests. For weeks prior to the start of the protests, the Department of Indian Studies at the university had been considering phasing out the teaching of Hindi language at the university saying that knowledge of English would be sufficient for Korean nationals interested in working, studying and traveling in India. The Busan University of Foreign Studies that started...