An act of Cowardice

The scholar and poet, A.K. Ramanujan wrote an essay called, “Three hundred Ramayanas”.
No educated, sane person can question the erudition and the scholarly credentials of Ramanujan. The essay looks at different ways the great epic has been retold in various contexts. The different versions do not in any way diminish the importance of the epic. Rather, they enrich it.


But half-baked bigots who believe that there is only one version of the Ramayana fail to comprehend this. What is denied by these chauvinists is the richness embedded in the plurality.

It is not the views of the bigots but the views of an academic community that are at issue here.

Now, isn’t it very strange that the vice-chancellor and the academic council of Delhi University took the decision to remove this essay from the university’s undergraduate history syllabus, and that there has been no outcry from those ‘big names’ who swear they are safeguarding India’s democracy?

The poet, philosopher, essayist, late AK Ramanujan

Come to think of it, that there has been too much of an outcry from those who should be concerned with the preservation of academic standards and values, either.

As one writer put it, ‘this piece of’ history’ is no more and no less appalling than its ‘pre- history’.

In 2008, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad ‘activists’ attacked the history department of Delhi University for including this particular essay in the syllabus, and then beat up the head of the department. No record of any action taken against the hooligans who bashed up a professor.

But, perhaps not so strangely, this act of violence was followed up by a ‘complaint’ filed in the subdivisional magistrate’s court in Dera Bassi. The complainant said that the essay, inter alia, ‘hurt’ Hindu sentiments because it contained ‘libellous comments ‘about Hindu deities.

The matter ended up in the Supreme Court, which appointed a four-member expert committee to look into it.

Three members of this committee completely endorsed the essay and the fourth had no comments on the essay’s contents but noted that it would be a difficult essay to teach, especially for teachers who were not Hindus.

In spite of all this, the vice-chancellor and members of the academic council, in their wisdom, decided to strike off the essay from the syllabus.

One would have thought that core idea behind any institution of higher education is to open up the minds of students. This means, especially in a subject like history, making them aware of the different views that exist and the different texts that historians have to read and interpret. Ramanujan’s essay , I believe, demonstrates this in the case of one very important text.

Quite a few members of the academic council may not be knowledgeable about history and the concerned text. Yet they passed an opinion. This is a transgression of the norms of scholarship. The decision of the Delhi University vice-chancellor and the academic council is an act of cowardice.

Less noise this Diwali?

Newspaper reports say that this year Patna experienced a less noisy and slightly cleaner Diwali than last year.
I suppose it's because the prices of fireworks have  sky-rocketed, and the rupee has less buying power.
It's also because, thanks to rising prices, I've heard several youngsters aged 18 and above say that it's not a good thing to burn money on crackers.
The prices of fireworks also got steeper thanks to the welcome dwindling of child labour employed in the business.
Even so, I did enjoy my free-fireworks show lounging on my terrace with a tall glass of something cool while I watched several other wealthy people in the apartments around lighting up the skies. The rising prices did one thing... the number of kids sneaking around with dangerous 'atom bombs' has gone down considerably.

It was, indeed a sparkling Diwali night. There were less toxic chemicals flying around in the air this year, according to the pollution control board... ABSOLUT good news. Cheers!

Ram Dayal Munda

This morning, almost a month after it happened, I learned of that Dr Ram Dayal Munda is no more.

He can be seen singing and dancing on Meghnath's memorable documentary 'Gaadi Lohardaga Mail'.

"Dance to survive!" was Ram Dayal Munda's personal slogan. He is Jharkhand's only Padma Shree, awarded the honour in 2010.

He was born in 1939 in the village of Diuri near Ranchi. He studied in Khuti, near Ranchi.

After gaining his Master's in Anthropology at Ranchi University, he moved to Chicago University, for his PhD. He joined the university's Department of South Asian Studies and pioneered the teaching of tribal and regional Languages. He also taught South-East Asian languages at Minnesota University.

It was in the US that he came into contact with native-American activists and his commitment to the political emancipation of India's 100m indigenous people – much the largest indigenous population in the world – began to grow, says an obit in the Independent.

He returned to India and became the Vice-Chancellor of Ranchi University in 1985. After retiring from teaching in 1999, he focused on international efforts to improve the status and prospects of Adivasis.

He took part in the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples in Geneva and other forums. He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha.

He was sceptical of the new, fast-growth India from the Adivasi perspective. "All this hype, what does it represent for our country? – just a tiny minority is touched by all that, nothing in comparison with the millions and millions of jobless. There is no comparison with what we are losing, without compensation.

 In the mean time, millions of people will simply have to disappear. One-fifth of our tribal population is already on the street, nearly 20 million people lost, uprooted, displaced, wandering around..."