By Shradha Chettri
NEW DELHI: ‘Draupadi’, a story by Mahashweta Devi, and the writings of Bama Faustina Soosairaj and Sukirtharani, both Tamil dalit feminist writers, were removed from the English syllabus in Delhi University. Despite the resistance of 15 elected members, the Academic Council, which met on Tuesday, approved the chop.
Some teachers expressed surprise at this decision of the university’s oversight committee which they allege had no representatives from the English department, the head of the department being only a special invitee. The panel considers syllabus changes that are contentious.
Mithuraaj Dhusiya, AC member who signed the dissent note on the syllabus change, claimed, “The restructuring of the syllabus has been ongoing and has been democratically done at various levels. A year ago, the AC formed the oversight committee to look at controversial syllabus changes. But the committee does not have a locus standi to alter anything. There were political reasons for removing certain texts. We 15 elected members expressed dissent, but the English changes were still approved.”
The dissent note reads, “In a core paper titled Women’s Writing in semester V, the oversight committee has committed the maximum vandalism. It first decided to remove two dalit authors, namely Bama and Sukirtharani, who were replaced by upper-caste writer Ramabai. Second, the committee, as an afterthought, suddenly asked for the deletion of the celebrated short story of Mahasweta Devi, ‘Draupadi’.”
M K Pandit, chairman of the oversight committee, asserted, “The oversight committee is appointed by the Executive Council, the highest decision-making body of the university, and is an empowered committee. This panel has been working for over six years now and was specifically created to look at matters of syllabuses particularly when the AC and EC meetings aren’t held.”
Dhusiya described ‘Draupadi’ as a seminal text discussing the exploitation of tribal women. “It is in the syllabus since 1999 and is a part of the UGC template. We don’t know why DU removed it,” she said. ‘Sultana’s Dreams’, a short story, has replaced it.
The dissent note added, “In a discipline-specific elective paper titled ‘Pre-colonial Indian Literatures’, the oversight committee has instructed the department to replace ‘Chandrabati Ramayana’ with Tulsidas, thus removing a feminist reading of the Ramayana. Similarly, in another DSE paper titled ‘Interrogating Queerness’, the committee has arbitrarily deleted sections from the units at the expense of the academic rigour of the paper.”
In 2019, there was controversy over the removal and alteration of English texts on the riots in Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar from the reading list. In history too, there was an objection to Naxalism being taught as part of the ‘Democracy at Work’ paper. In sociology, a chapter from Nandini Sundar’s Subalterns and Sovereign: An Anthropological History of Bastar ran into trouble, but was later retained.
This story first appeared on timesofindia.indiatimes.com