Not So Innocent Abroad.

In the summer of 1968, American scholars of South Asian studies found their research in India jeopardized by disclosure in the New Delhi, India, Parliament that the University of California, Berkeley, California, Himalayan Border Countries Project was to be financed for three years in the amount of $282,844 by the United States Department of Defense. This project had been in existence on a modest scale for several years under civilian, nongovernmental sponsorship. The region is politically sensitive, and India's response to the Defense Department connection was vigorous; the project died. There seems to have been pre-existing doubts about the aims and desirability of all foreign social science research, but the suspicions were exacerbated by the disclosures and resultant political clamor regarding the Himalayan Project.