NEW DELHI: Couplets by mystic poet and saint Kabir Das will be taught to students pursuing a Master’s degree in Urdu at Delhi University (DU) if proposed revisions to the first-year syllabus are approved by the university’s Executive Council.
Students will be taught a selection of 40 couplets from ‘Kabir Bani’ in the first semester as part of the revisions recommended by the Faculty of Arts, officials said. The department recommended the revisions in the syllabus of a paper titled ‘Basic Text: Early Urdu Literature’, part of MA Urdu course.
Two readings have been proposed to be included in the first year syllabus of MA Urdu by Faculty of Arts. The suggested readings include—‘Kabir Bani’ by Ali Sardar Jafri, and ‘Kabir’ by Prabhakar Manchve.
Talking to the faculty of the Department of Urdu, Professor Abu Bakar Abbad said, “Our department has sent a proposal to introduce the poetry of Kabir among the other notable Hindi authors who have written in Urdu like Premchand, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Pandit Ratan Nath Sarshar, among others, who are already taught. Our purpose to teach these authors is to convey that the Urdu language does not only belong to Muslims. It is a language of everyone while 50% of our students are non-Muslims.”
If approved, the changes in the syllabus may be executed from the 2024-25 academic session slated to begin in August. The decision to introduce the changes was taken in the faculty meeting on February 19.
Lyrical couplets
Under the proposed revisions, first-year students will begin their course studies with ‘Kabir Ke Muntakhab Dohe’—a selection of 40 dohas (couplets) from Kabir Bani, which will become a part of the Unit 1 of the course.