The South Asia Institute was established as part of a University of Texas at Austin initiative to promote South Asian programs, especially those pertaining to contemporary issues, across the entire university and in the larger community.
As a National Resource Center for South Asia funded by a Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the institute sponsors major conferences, scholarly symposia and a weekly South Asia Seminar.
The institute also provides Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships to students pursuing graduate degrees relating to South Asia in any department or school of the University.
[1] Additionally, the Title VI grant also provides resources for outreach programs to K-12 schools, post-secondary institutions, business and civic organizations, and the Texas community at large.
These include Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, while funding is also available for study of Pashto and Persian (taught in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies) if their work relates to South Asia.