NEW DELHI: Eight members of Delhi University’s Academic Council on Friday wrote to the Vice-Chancellor against the approval of revised syllabi of four departments of English, History, Political Science and Sociology.
“We have been repeatedly arguing that the syllabi for the UG courses in English, History, Political Science and Sociology need to be comprehensively reviewed by including many more teachers in the task of syllabi making, as these departments were very selective and non-inclusive in their approach while making/revising their syllabi,” they said in the letter addressed to Yogesh Tyagi, the Vice-Chancellor.
“This has resulted in the production of syllabi that are controversial, objectionable, exclusivist, biased, partisan and propagandist in its outlook and content. We, therefore, believe that any hurried approach on such an utmost important academic matter will not serve the purpose at all,” they wrote. The eight professors who signed the letter are Rasal Singh, Chaman Singh, Naina Hasija, Shambhu Nath Dubey, Sunil Kumar, Anil Sharma, Narender Bishnoi and Kamlesh Attri.
“We are deeply dissatisfied with the fact that proper participation of teachers of different colleges, specialisations and ideological thinking has not been ensured again, even in the process of revision, and teachers are not given any platform, opportunity or reasonable time to critically analyze all the contents of these syllabi,” they said.
They also said that they were “greatly disappointed” with the “contradictory versions” in news reports published in different newspapers.“We are still being approached by many teachers with complaints and their serious apprehensions and suggestions on these syllabi. These need to be academically engaged in the revision exercise so that their ideas can be incorporated,” they said.
Curriculum row
The Standing Committee at Delhi University approved the draft of the new curriculum for more than 78 undergraduate programmes on July 11 even after some members objected to the anti-RSS content in the English syllabus and some other elements in other courses.
On July 16, the revised curriculum for undergraduate courses for English, History, Political Science and Sociology did not get the Academic Council’s nod.On July 21, the Executive Council also referred back the syllabus to the four departments.
The departments submitted the syllabus by making the suggested changes on July 31.