In recent years, India and the European Union have maintained a growing strategic partnership in the internationalisation of higher education. A part of this relationship is facilitated through the people-to-people exchanges and student mobility. Although this has existed for many years, growth has been sluggish from both sides. To begin with, partnership agreements have usually overlooked the internationalisation of higher education as a potential compatibility element. This can be cultivated by developing global citizens. American models of higher education use the term ‘comprehensive internationalisation’, while European ones use ‘inclusive and sustainable internationalisation’ to recognise that there is much more to Internationalisation of the Curriculum (IoC) than placing focus solely on outbound mobility.
This paper seeks to address the developing relationship between EU and India, and how their higher education framework functions. We examine this through novel avenues of internationalising higher education vis-à-vis capacity building. This includes looking inward by internationalising at home and decolonising the curricula to accommodate knowledge systems from the Global South. It further examines the steps taken in the further development of higher education by them, some of which are already at play: dual degree and twinning programmes to ensure that student mobility becomes more seamless, along with enhanced interaction in cooperation through a mutual recognition framework. However, the relationship will benefit from developing higher education in a way that creates an inclusive knowledge economy and integrates both Eastern and Western EU nations. Efforts to establish higher education not solely as an academic goal, but as a pathway to creating a globalised diversity, needs to be made. The paper attempts to make the case for India’s role to be pivotal in influencing the European knowledge economy to promote diversity in the flow of knowledge.