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?
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.
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?
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| The poet, philosopher, essayist, late AK Ramanujan |
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.
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