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CSIS: A Historical Outline
The Mandate: The aim of the Centre for South Indian Studies is to pursue and strengthen inter-disciplinary research and studies relating to political, social, religious, cultural economic and scientific development of South India, and to promote interaction among all persons, bodies and institutions engaged in Indological/ South Indian Studies.
The Origin: The organization was an informal association formed in 1980 under the initiative of Prof. E. Sreedharan, a revered teacher of History. The organization was formally registered in 1991 under Travancore Cochin Literary, Scientific and Charitable societies Act 12 of 1955.
Seminars and Discussions: Centre regularly conducts discussions on the topics related to South India. Up to 1998 the discussions covered areas of Arts and social Transformation, Village life and culture, Coconut and cultural Life, Matrilineal Kinship, Metaphysics and Monumental Art, Yakshagana, library movement in South India, Christianity in South India, Nature in Sangam Poetry, Codification of Advaitic Principles, Astronomy in South India, Buddhist Architecture in South India, Government in South India etc. First Volume of the leading papers of these discussions was published in 1998 under the title South Indian Studies. Centre has supported various research and translation projects on different facets of South Indian Studies as well as on Greater India. A series of national seminars on Dynamics of Representation is also organized by the Centre.
Projects for Universal Brotherhood: Herman Hesse and India and Khalil Gibran: Life and Works are the projects undertaken with the objective of popularizing the literature, which reaffirm the eternally identical structure of the human soul in all peoples and all lands, to further the cause of universal brotherhood, which will ultimately lead to world peace.
Translation of Siddhartha to Tamil, Malayalm, Kannada and other South Indian languages is a major programme under this scheme.
Translation from and to South Indian Languages: Translation Project. This project consists of English Translation of Poems of selected Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Marathi Poets and also translation into these languages and English selected works from Sanskrit related to South India.
Peoples Movements in South India: Under this project People's Library Movement in Kerala was completed.
IT for Conservation of Cultural Heritage: : Centre has under this project in association with CIRD developed a prototype of Kerala digital Library using Nitya Archive which is a digital full text retrieval utility for the organization of records like books, old paper manuscripts, palm leaf manuscripts, paintings etc and information in digital libraries and CDROM publications. This can serve as a model for content development on other regions of South India
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