NEW DELHI: Delhi University’s teachers body, Democratic Teachers’ Front, on Tuesday alleged that Prof S P Agarwal, the principal of the Ramanujan college, has asked teachers and non-teaching staff to compulsorily register and attend a certificate course on Gita.
The course started on December 23 and is being organised by the Teaching Learning Centre in the college. It will conclude on January 9, 2024. The time of attending the course is from 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm.
Teachers who have been appointed in the last year have to mandatorily attend offline while other teachers could either attend online or offline. The non-teaching staff must attend offline, and read the statement by the DTF.
Meanwhile, DTF Secretary Abha Dev Habib said, “Among the objectives listed for the Teaching Learning Centre, the first in the list is to accelerate the teaching-learning process by way of promoting independent, critical and creative thinking. The illegal and unacademic mandate by the principal defeats that objective.”
“It is not against academic principles to critically study Gita or any other text. Making it mandatory and holding participants captive, however, suggests the propagation of uncritical thinking and sectarian beliefs. It is doubtful whether zealots attempting to take over academic institutions would permit such critical interrogation.
An academic institution in its entirety cannot be allowed to become an instrument of propagation of sectarian beliefs,” she added. The association called upon the administration of Ramanujan College to immediately withdraw the mandatory attendance requirement in the course.