Academics claim an attempt to break university’s ‘intellectual autonomy’ as executive council sends syllabus of four departments for ‘revision’ once again

On the night of July 16, about seven professors were secretly escorted out of a back exit of Viceregal Lodge, the office of the Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, following a meeting of the university’s Academic Council, and told to leave the premises immediately.

Student activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had managed to break into the compound of the lodge, and were rumoured to be asking for three professors, including the Heads of English and history department, to be handed over to them.

The offence of the professors? They had included certain material, deemed “objectionable by the group, in the revised syllabus for the undergraduate classes which began on Saturday.

The meeting ended in a hurry, with syllabus of all departments being cleared except for English, history, political science and sociology, which were sent back for “review”.

‘Complicated’ revision

Four months ago, Delhi University formed a committee to undertake the revision of all undergraduate courses on the basis of the Central government-notified “Learning Outcome Curriculum Framework” approach.

The process was fraught with complications with regard to the specific guidelines to follow in undertaking the revision. Sources involved said several guidelines were vague and lent themselves to multiple interpretations which caused confusion.

Departments across the university appointed multiple professors, including subject experts, to review the syllabus of core papers, electives, general electives and others.

After several rounds of consultation, the revised syllabus was uploaded on the website of the respective departments in May and feedback from the public was invited before it was presented before the university’s statutory bodies. None of the objections being raised now came up at that time.

An exercise that was meant to be academic in nature took a distinctly political turn at a meeting of the standing committee on academic matters, where the syllabus was presented on July 11. Rasal Singh, an elected representative of the National Democratic Teachers’ Front (NDTF) which he says “is aligned with the ideology of the RSS”, took issue with parts of the English syllabus he wanted removed and some of the history syllabus he wanted to be added.

‘Negative’ portrayal

Mr. Singh’s primary objection was against a short story — “Manibein alias Bibijan” — set in the Gujarat riots of 2002. The story was introduced in the syllabus 15 years ago and taught in the third year of B.A. Programme.

He took issue with the portrayal of a character who takes part in riots and looting in Ahmedabad as a member of “Yuvak Bajrang Dal” who teaches at “Shishugriha Vidhalaya”, which, Mr. Singh said, was run by the RSS. It casts these groups in a “bad light”, making them out to be killers, and is part of a “propaganda run against an ideology, a Sangh, and an individual”, he said, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the “Sangh Parivar”.

While the English department subsequently removed the story from the syllabus, the Head of the Department, Raj Kumar, dismissed the objection as an attempt at gaining political mileage. “There are multiple ways to interpret and teach a story,” he said.

“In my view, the two names of the protagonist, Manibein and Bibijan, and the broader story talk about how an individual shouldn’t be put in a box and must be treated only as a human being, nothing more, nothing less.”

On the decision to remove the story, he said, “We don’t want to hurt the sentiments of any group.”

A similar justification was given for alterations made in the course on ‘Interrogating Queerness’, where Mr. Singh complained: “It will now be taught that Lord Vishnu, Shiva, Kartikey and Ganesh were also LGBT.” In particular, he had problems with the use of Ruth Vanita’s “Same Sex Love in India”, which mentioned certain texts, references that he wanted expunged. Defending the course material, English department Professor Saikat Ghosh called Mr. Singh’s objection a “crude caricaturing”.

He said that the course “encourages engagement with the concept of gender as a fluid spectrum rather than a fixed binary” through alternative narratives of sexuality from across historical and cultural periods including instances such as the “Ardhanarishwara”, an androgynous form of Shiva and references to certain Puranic texts among other sources.

But Mr. Singh was of the opinion that such references should not be made in DU’s syllabus. “Things need to be taught in a certain context,” he said, adding that he doesn’t mind if it is taught in another country. “But in a Hindu samaj [society] this won’t be accepted.” Similar arguments were mooted for additions he and the NDTF wanted in the syllabus of other liberal arts courses.

‘Missing’ text

In the history syllabus, Mr. Singh claimed that Rajput history, B.R. Ambedkar and Amir Khusrau were either reduced in importance or were “gayab [vanished]”. However, a comparison of the department’s syllabus from 2016-17 and the revised syllabus, uploaded on the university’s website challenges this.

“Ambedkar and Dalit Movements” taught as a core course on “History of India” remains unchanged. So do at least five sections taught on Rajput history, including “Rajput and other warrior lineages”, “Establishment of political authority: Mughals, Rajputs and Nayaks”, Rajput political culture and state formation: Eastern Rajasthan; Rajput paintings; representation of women and men in Indo-Persian, Sanskrit and Rajput traditions. In fact, the number of reference to “Rajput” have increased in the syllabus. And Khusrau was not taught in the syllabus to begin with.

Mr. Singh, a professor of Hindi literature, however, believes that Khusrau is of great importance to medieval time period and must be taught.

Experts in the history department, however, said that the Sufi poet was a very complicated personality with multiple strands of thought, who does not belong in that rubric.

In sociology, he complained that “Vedic culture, joint family system, gram samaj” had vanished. However, the syllabus does contain a core paper on “Sociology of India” which has a chapter on “Kinship: Principle and Pattern” which does deal with joint family systems among a myriad of other familial networks.

In political science, he had an issue with the inclusion of Maoism in social movements and said that “Indian social movements” had vanished. The political science department too had to capitulate. The professors of these departments were not given an opportunity to present their case at the AC meeting.

Instead, over the last week, department-level revision committees have been in hectic negotiations with the university administration to address the NDTF’s objections. Those involved complained that carrying out this process in private meetings instead of the wider academic council was unfair. But they had to give in and accept several objections in order to ensure they had a syllabus to teach in time for the new classes.

Final syllabus by July 31

On Sunday, the revised undergraduate syllabus was put before the Executive Council of the university for final approval. With only two elected members, the final decision fell primarily upon Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi and the syllabus revision committee. Giving in to the demands of the Right-wing groups, the council sent the syllabus of the four departments for revision once again. Now, an oversight committee is slated to finalise the syllabus by July 31.

After having responded to all of NDTF’s objections, Professor Ghosh said that the English department was presented with another list of objections to address. “The required modifications are all absurd and listed in order to make a mockery of the efforts of teachers who have worked hard for two years with the hope that DU will eventually be able to give its English students a syllabus that is genuinely on par with the best in the world,” he said.

Mr. Ghosh condemned the university administration complaining that academic arguments were not being heard and said that the Vice-Chancellor was in connivance with the NDTF-ABVP combine, “bullies” who wish to run the university on diktats.

In a letter to the Vice-Chancellor, the NDTF wrote that “piecemeal” changes would not be accepted and demanded a comprehensive revision of syllabus with the inclusion of “nationalist teachers”, as Mr. Singh put it. The ABVP, meanwhile, claimed “victory”, having successfully opposed a “Left conspiracy”.

Professor Ghosh, however, disagreed. “Sure there are some people who may be labelled as Left, myself included, but the process involved several teachers, most of whom participated voluntarily and are non-ideological,” he said.

The English department for its part has been carrying out the exercise since before the university’s notification in March. And its HoD said that up to 120 teachers were involved in it.

“Academics is not meant to be a turf war for ideologies,” said Professor Ghosh. However, he also argued that the liberal arts were generally antithetical to the “Right wing”.

They were positioned on humanistic and critical values such as free speech and were typically the opposite of what the Right-wing’s conception of society is, he said.

Finally, commenting on the outcome of the Executive Committee meeting, Professor Ghosh said, “Despite our collective efforts at syllabus revision being lauded by academicians across the world, a section of our colleagues within the system are pushing us to the wall and spreading filth against our syllabus, giving it a partisan colour that it does not have.”

While in 2012, DU’s English department was ranked as one of the top hundred academic departments in the QS World University Rankings, he said, “We lost that place due to subsequent interference from people within and outside the university, who could not appreciate our accomplishments. We courageously tried to recreate excellence through the opportunity for syllabus revision, while carefully adhering to the UGC’s LOCF template... No other English department in India has proposed a syllabus in which more than 140 Indian authors from various bhashas and historical periods are proudly featured. People must remember that this English department was never beholden to other models. We have been a model for others.”