About the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology
Since its establishment in 1958, the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology has sponsored and promoted research on the religion, history, language, art and culture of the people of the Tibetan cultural area which includes Sikkim. The NIT's library holds one of the largest collection of Tibetan works in the world outside Tibet and a museum of Tibetan iconography and religious art. It has published the Bulletin of Tibetology since 1964 and numerous books over the years.

The site on which the institute was established was donated by the late Chogyal (king) of Sikkim Sir Tashi Namgyal in memory of his departed son Paljor Namgyal. The foundation stone of the institute was laid by the 14th Dalai Lama on the 10th of February 1957 and the institute was declared open by the late Prime Minister of India Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru on the 1st of October 1958. The building of the institute is an imposing monument and a splendid example of Sikkimese architecture.

In the summer of 2002, the NIT's new director, Mr Tashi Densapa, undertook to expand the institute, restructure its research wing and open its doors to international collaboration. This is being done through the creation of new research programs, lectures, seminars, fellowship programs, publications and collaboration with foreign scholars. It is hoped that the institute will actively promote Tibetan Studies, including its sub-field of Sikkimese Studies, and become a dynamic research centre in the Eastern Himalayas. In order to help him achieve this, Mr Densapa appointed Tashi Tsering (Amnye Machen Institute, Dharamsala) as part-time Consultant and Anna Balikci Denjongpa (PhD London) as Research-Coordinator.

Among its new research programs, the NIT's Research Officers have undertaken a project to document the social history of Sikkim's 60-odd monasteries and digitize their textual holdings. The Visual Sikkim project undertook to locate, digitalize and document old and rare photographs of Sikkim, both in India and abroad. It has created a digital image bank and realizes photographic exhibitions at the NIT. The Institute has also established a visual anthropology project in order to produce an enduring digital record of Sikkim's vanishing indigenous and Buddhist cultures. It’s first film, “Tingvong: a Lepcha village in Sikkim” has been screened at several ethnographic film festivals in Europe.

The NIT will soon undergo a general expansion of its infrastructure and facilities. The construction of a new building which will house a library, study rooms, a conference hall, studios and an administrative wing is to begin before the end of the year. A grant to modernize the NIT's exhibition hall has been approved by the American International Centre, India.