Delhi: On 16 July 2019, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP) and the National Democratic Teachers Front (NDTF), respectively, student and teacher groups linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), led protests against “anti-RSS content” in undergraduate syllabus outside the University’s vice-chancellor’s office, while an academic council meeting was underway. 

Their objections were to a lesson on the 2002 Gujarat communal violence , portraying the RSS as attackers; the introduction of papers on caste, sexuality and queerness; and material on the 2013 Muzzafarnagar riots and anti-Muslim lynchings. Three days later, on 19 July 2019, sections on the Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar communal violence were removed by the English department.

While the involvement of Hindu groups in the violence in Gujarat (here and here) and Muzaffarnagar (here and here) is evident, the ABVP and NDTF protests alleged the material showed the Bajrang Dal and RSS in a “bad light”. 

More syllabi changes have followed since, including  the removal of papers on Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Muhammad Iqbal, and the Constitution of India from the political science syllabus. Dalit writers Bama and Sukirtharana were dropped from the English syllabus. 

The subject-specific changes are being implemented on the back of new larger policies on curriculum and teaching. Two significant examples are the National Education Policy (NEP), and the new four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), implemented in Delhi University in 2022. 

Maya John, PhD, professor of history at Jesus and Mary College, and a member of DU’s Academic Council,  described, at a panel discussion on curricula revisions in July 2023, the changes as a “cultural war” entering higher education. Teachers have criticised syllabi changes as being ambiguous, arbitrary and lacking in consultation. 

These are a microcosm of shifts in education syllabi taking place from school to college nationwide. The first attempts to rewrite school history textbooks surfaced in the early 2000s, culminating in recent controversies around the removal of Mughal history and other changes in the National Council of Educational Research And Training (NCERT) syllabi, revealing the infusion of right-wing Hindutva ideology into public education. 

In June 2023, several of the original drafters of the NCERT syllabi, such as Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, publicly demanded that their names be removed from the textbooks due to their disagreements with the revisions. 

A Mysterious ‘Oversight Committee'

Any changes to syllabi made in DU are usually decided by the faculty of the subject, then subject to the university’s academic council, the body that regulates all standards of “instruction, education and examination within the university” as per The Delhi University Act, 1922.

A new stakeholder called the “oversight committee” was introduced in 2019. Between 2019 and 2021, this committee pushed through several changes in syllabi. Several professors have been vocal against it, regarding it as not only a  “censor body”, but also “illegal”. 

Naveen Gaur, PhD, an associate professor of physics at DU’s Dyal Singh College and a former member of the academic council from 2019 to 2023, said there the university’s rules did not permit such a committee. According to Gaur, it was “arbitrarily” created by Yogesh Singh, DU’s vice chancellor (VC), to effect changes across department syllabi.

“The committee is functioning, but not according to Delhi University rules,” said Gaur. “The committee tries to control certain departments whose syllabi design is unpalatable to the ruling dispensation. It’s illegal, and we have frequently raised our voices against it.”

Mithuraaj Dhusiya, PhD, an associate professor of english at Hansraj College and an elected member of the academic council from 2023 to 2025, called the committee “unconstitutional and illegal”. 

With regard to the English department, Dhusiya said the committee “has been purposefully going against particular texts and particular authors for no rhyme or reason solely on the basis of ideological dispensation”. He said along with English, history and political science syllabi  were often “on the committee’s radar”, and changes were averted only after criticism in the media and in council meetings. 

Minutes and agendas of academic council meetings are available online, as well as papers of other committees. However, Article 14 could not find any information on the oversight committee online, including on who the members are. The link to the oversight committee on the DU website leads to a “404 error”.

Even without a clear mandate, the oversight committee has proposed and enforced syllabi revisions. In 2021, it removed two Dalit writers Bama and Sukirtharana, and Mahasweta Devi’s short story ‘Draupadi’ from the fifth semester English (Honors) syllabus. 1100 academics and writers condemned the removal and urged these women writers be brought back. 

Article 14 sought comment from Yogesh Singh, via email, on his role in syllabi changes and the oversight committee. This article will be updated if a response is received. 

Sweeping Curriculum Changes Hurried Through 

In 2022 and 2023, major changes to both curriculum structure and content were made under the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework (UGCF) and the FYUP.  DU introduced the UGCF and FYUP in 2022, in line with the NEP.

While core courses requirements have increased from two to three per semester, the teaching time and credits allotted to core courses have been reduced. DU teachers expressed strong apprehensions that this will lead to learning losses and increased student fatigue. 

SECs includes courses such as Big Data Analytics, Essentials Of Python, Negotiations And Leadership, and Personal Financial Planning. VACs include courses such as Ayurveda And Nutrition, Vedic Mathematics, The Art Of Being Happy, Yoga, and Swacch Bharat. 

The adoption of the FYUP sidestepped basic norms.  John, professor of history at Jesus and Mary College and a member of DU’s Academic Council, said the deadlines given to faculty were “ridiculous”. Certain disciplines got only a single night to rehaul their entire syllabus into the FYUP programme.

“The deadlines themselves reveal a serious violation of protocol,” John said. 

Students who joined DU in 2022, the first year of the FYUP, still do not know their entire syllabi. Courses only up to the third semester have been released as recently as June and July 2023, to date. 

John said the larger intent was to “arm-twist the teaching community to comply with imposed templates for syllabus revisions”. 

Critical Dilutions In Syllabi

Not only is core specialisation being reduced, but, as we said, the syllabi of political science, english, history, and sociology have been significantly changed. Enforced from 2022, the tenor of the changes lean towards the ideology of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

The political science syllabi has been subject to the most revision.  For instance, a core paper in first semester BA (Honours) Political Science—Constitutional Government And Democracy—which focused on the  role of the Constitution in Indian government and democracy, drawing from the Constituent Assembly debates, has been dropped. 

In its place, a paper called Ideas And Institutions In Indian Political Thought has been brought in, focussing on ancient Indian political theories, such as dharma (righteousness), dhamma (natural law), danda (to coerce/restrain) based on Hindu scriptures; and Vedic concepts like sabha (self-governance), samiti (committee), rajya (kingdom), and rashtra (nation) to explain statecraft in ancient India. 

Two elective courses offered by the political science department to students from other disciplines—Gandhi And The Contemporary World and Understanding Ambedkar—were initially removed in 2022.  Nearly a year later, both courses were reinstated, but as discipline specific electives, available only to political science students in the fourth and fifth semester respectively.

Anshul Singh, a 2022 graduate of BA (Honours) in English Journalism, took these two electives in his first year. He said that the courses were not just informative but opened up “new horizons” for him and his batchmates. 

“In this age, there is a lot of misinformation about Gandhi, Ambedkar, Nehru, and Patel. These courses take you to another level,” said Singh. “You get to know how they emerged as mass political leaders and what their demands were."

“You learn about their contributions, not just in the freedom struggle, but in the enhancement of society,” said Singh. “These courses offered valid criticisms of these leaders along with their accomplishments and theories.”

Western Philosophers Out, Savarkar In

In June 2023, in the BA (honours) political science syllabus, a chapter in a sixth semester core subject Modern Political Theory, on poet Muhammad Iqbal, the author of the Saare Jahaan Se Accha, a patriotic song, was cut. Yogesh Singh defended the move, saying “those who laid the foundation of breaking India” should not be in the syllabus.

Rajshree Chandra, PhD, professor of political science at Janki Devi Memorial College, DU spoke about the “real-time” changes in the political science syllabus, at the panel in July. 

Chandra said thinkers of western political thought—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Rawls, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx and prominent others—have been dropped.  “Any student who is graduating from political science without a basic knowledge of these theories and theorists is going to have a very weak foundation,” she said. 

For the first time, Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar was added to the political science honors syllabus in the fifth semester, before Gandhi, who was moved down the syllabus chronology to be taught for the first time only in the seventh semester. After the academic council and department members voiced concerns that students would choose the exit option after the sixth semester and not get an opportunity to study Gandhi at all, the paper was brought back to the fourth semester.

According to Chandra, the core subject Indian Political Thought (IPT), taught in fifth and sixth semesters, has been the “most contested” and “least defended” of courses. She said teaching time devoted to Jawaharlal Nehru, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, and Rabindranath Tagore was now 1.5 to 2 hours a semester. Savarkar has 8 hours in IPT, while Gandhi gets 5 hours.

In the old syllabus, those in the IPT featured in an equal number of lectures, either four or five. Gandhi, Ambedkar, Iqbal, and Vivekananda were all taught over five lectures, while Savarkar and the idea of Hindutva was taught over four.

A professor of political science at DU, who did not wish to be named, pointed out that understanding Hindutva right-wing ideologies was “essential” for political science students; the issue was the space to Savarkar in the new syllabus.  

“Where the issue arises is the fact that the removal and dilution of a lot of thinkers, both Indian and Western, shows an ideological bent in the syllabus that favours the Hindu right-wing instead of producing well-rounded political scientists,” said the professor.

New Syllabi For A New India: VC

Human Rights In A Comparative Perspective, a core subject, and Democratic Processes And Social Movements, an elective, have also been removed. Chandra said the papers might find a place in fourth year, but, she added, “a majority of students are going to use the exit option after third year”.  

In the history syllabi, a new elective called Culture And Everyday Life In India carries a unit called Religion Everyday: At The Threshold, Shrine And Online. This unit omits any learning on the cultures and rituals of Islam, focusing solely on Hinduism and Sikhism. 

Significant revisions to the history syllabus for the fourth and fifth semester were cleared in June 2023.  An elective course—Inequality And Difference, which examined topics around the origins of the caste system, like varna (class) and jati (caste), as well as class and gender—has been removed after being taught for five years. 

Other changes include renaming a course component previously called Approaches To Brahmanisation In The Early Medieval Era, to Approaches To Shaiva, Shakta, And Vaishnava In The Early Medieval Era; extinguishing the concept of ‘brahmanisation’ from the title. Critical perspectives on patriarchy and patriarchal customs, in gender-based subjects, such as Women In Indian History and Gender in Indian History Up to 1500 CE, are being softened with the addition of matriarchal perspectives. 

Responding to these changes, DU VC Yogesh Singh told the Indian Express on 14 August 2023 that they were “towards making a new India with new terminologies that are gender-neutral, terms that don’t target specific communities and keep all equal. These changes are a step towards that direction”.

A section titled Role of Media in Democracy has been removed from the Introduction To Journalism course in first semester BA (H) English Journalism.

The philosophy department has objected to a proposal by a standing committee of the university to drop a course on the philosophy of BR Ambedkar from the fifth semester syllabus. In May 2023, the head of the department wrote to Yogesh Singh, asking that the course remain. There’s been no decision yet. 

Article 14 sought comment on the changes from the English, History, and political science departments. There was no response. We will update this story if they do respond. 

Divided Views

Other major changes moving forward involve the creation of two new centres of study—a Centre For Hindu Studies and a Centre For Partition Studies. Divides have surfaced regarding each. 

A 17-member committee, headed by Prakash Singh, director of DU South Campus, has already been constituted for the Centre For Hindu Studies to provide courses on the “history of Hindus”. Prakash Singh justified the centre saying DU should join the 23 other universities in India that offer courses on Hindu Studies. 

A member of the academic council opposed the centre, saying there are no centres for Sikh or Muslim studies. Prakash Singh said, “Hindu is a way of life (sic). Religion is only an aspect of it, we have thousands of years of history. The centre will focus on this aspect.”

As for the Centre for Independence And Partition Studies, proposed by a special committee, an ideological bias is clear in the concept note submitted. 

The note blames “external invaders” for India’s fault lines of caste, religion, language, and race. It asserts Partition and its horrors were grim reminders of how “invasions” and “slavery of 1,300 years  by British colonisers” and “Islamic invaders” caused a land of “tolerance, co-existence, and plenty” to become “stagnated and intellectually complacent”. 

It holds the invaders as “destroyers of grand structures” and “Indian knowledge system”. At least five academic council members termed the mandate of the centre “offensive and communally divisive” in a signed statement. 

Saffronising Knowledge 

Syllabus at every educational level has become a battleground under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). John, professor of history at Jesus and Mary College and a member of DU’s academic council, termed it a larger ongoing project to “saffronise” knowledge systems. 

She said that in a bid to “abide by the dictates of the ruling dispensation and to be seen as proactively implementing the NEP 2020, the administration in DU has literally wielded a sword to the head of university and college teachers”. This is towards “a concerted effort to pack syllabi committees with political yesmen and to launch a cultural war within academic committees”. 

Aside from attempts to mold syllabi, greater governmental control over universities has been exerted in different ways. One example is the proposed Common Universities Act in Gujarat, which will give the state government powers to make key administrative appointments in state universities. In addition, academic freedom in India has declined since 2014, critics have said. 

“Through these violations, through this dismemberment, the attempt is to win this cultural war at any cost,” said John. “Political cronyism and nepotism are unleashed to dominate knowledge production and its dissemination.”

(Prabhanu Kumar Das is an independent journalist based in New Delhi and a student of journalism at the Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia.)

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