Why process followed to reject Manusmriti from inclusion in Delhi University syllabus is worrying

The vice chancellor of Delhi University has used his emergency powers to stall the proposal of the law faculty to include the Manusmriti in the reading material at the undergraduate level. This was such an extraordinary matter, he felt it necessary to issue a video statement to talk about his decision to stop the proposal going to the academic council of the University.

The Manusmriti is a Hindu legal code that has been widely criticised for its gender and caste-based provisions.

Whether the vice chancellor took this decision on his own or he had to do it on the instructions of the Union Government’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is a matter of speculation.

The reason for this speculation is a statement by Dharmendra Pradhan himself.

When the proposal to teach the Manusmriti started getting talked about and criticised all around, Pradhan said that there was no question of teaching such controversial material. He said that he has spoken to the vice chancellor who informed him that the plan was dropped even before it reached the academic council.

The vice chancellor said that the university does not want to teach anything that hurts a section of the society. He used his emergency powers to reject the proposal.

The chairman of the law faculty said that the proposal was brought to the faculty and there was a great deal of discussion about it. It went to the standing committee of the academic council. No one objected to it.

This article neither supports nor opposes the proposal to include the Manusmriti in the reading list. It is being written with the purpose of considering the process of this decision.

As worrying as the proposal to teach the Manusmriti was, the process followed to make the decision to reject it is equally, if not more, worrying.

At Delhi University, departments have the right to make the syllabus and decide its readings. After that, the proposal goes to the faculty body , which has representatives from other departments. It is then sent for consideration to the standing committee of the academic council for consideration. This committee also includes representatives from other disciplines.

After that, the academic council discusses the proposal and approves or rejects it.

In the present context, it is very clear that the minister and the vice chancellor have disrupted this process. Rather, they have violated it. There is no provision for government interference in the running of the university, especially in academic matters.

Ideally, the minister should have said that he could not do anything in this matter and the decision had to be taken by the university.

The vice chancellor has all kinds of power, but if he starts using the power that he should use in exceptional circumstances to change the syllabus or the text list, it would violate the academic autonomy of the department or faculty concerned.

We should know why the teachers of the law department and faculty included the Manusmriti in the text list, and on what basis the standing committee accepted it.

Was there no one in the entire department and committee who opposed it? Did the discussion and debate on this that should have been held take place or was this proposal passed without it? Is there any record of this debate?

Those who are law experts and have been teaching for a long time have the right to make the syllabus, to include books and other readings necessary for it.

It is the right of the academic council to consider their proposal. In this case, it is clear that the right of the academic council has been taken away. After all, the opposition that was heard outside could have been raised inside the council as well!.

The vice chancellor is the chair of the council but he could have participated in this discussion and presented his arguments against including the Manusmriti as reading material.

From the vice chancellor’s statement, it seems that he himself has no opinion on this matter. His instructions that the Manusmriti should not be included in the text list seem to be an attempt to avoid controversy. But of course the job of education is to create trouble. Whether a text would hurt a section of society (or not) cannot be the basis on which to decide what should be in the syllabus.

In Indian universities, external interference in academic matters is not considered bad. It is never debated. For example, in 2011, Sangh organisations created a ruckus to demand the removal of AK Ramanujan’s essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” from the text list of the undergraduate level course of history. They attacked the history department of Delhi University and its chairman.

An affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh filed a case in the Supreme Court. The court directed the university to form a committee of experts who would decide whether this article should remain in the text list. The committee voted in favour of keeping the article. But in the meeting of the academic council , the vice chancellor said that irrespective of the committee’s suggestion, it should be removed to avoid further controversy.

At least a procedure was followed in Ramanujan’s article. Even then, it would have been better if the court had said that it would not interfere in the academic process of the university. But at least the court did shove a decision down the university’s throat.

The episode showed that many teachers do not want to get into trouble. But how will the work of knowledge creation be done without getting into controversy?

Keeping an article or a book in the syllabus does not mean that the university endorses or is promoting it. The purpose is to read and analyse it critically. Teaching the Communist Manifesto does not mean promoting communism. Similarly, teaching Hind Swaraj does not glorify or promote Gandhism. The same logic should apply in the case of keeping the Manusmriti in the text list.

But the dean’s statements say nothing about the pedagogy involved in reading the Manusmriti. Was BR Ambedkar’s critique of the text suggested along with it? Or is it beyond analysis because it is considered the foremost representative of ancient Indian opinion?

This could have been debated in the academic council but the education minister and the vice chancellor used emergency powers to avoid this most crucial discussion. The university lost an academic and intellectual moment that this debate could have created.

This episode would have thrown light on whether those who have been given intellectual leadership of the university are capable of performing their duties. It is possible that this time too the decision would have been the same as in 2011 – but it would have shown that the leadership community of the university does not have intellectual courage.

Intellectual war is always preferrable to physical war. It is clear that the Union government and the vice chancellor do not believe that they have the intellectual weapons with which they can fight this war. That is why they thought it better to flee the battlefield. They have saved themselves. But once again the academic autonomy of the university has been badly dented.

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.