Announcing the decision to drop a chapter on Urdu poet Muhammad Iqbal from the BA (Political Science) syllabus, Delhi University Vice Chancellor Yogesh Singh on Saturday said that “those who laid the foundation to break India should not be in the syllabus”.
In a 15-hour-long meeting of the university’s Academic Council that ended at 1.20 a.m. on Saturday, a proposal was passed to drop the renowned poet’s chapter titled ‘Modern Indian Political Thought’, taught in the sixth semester of BA (Political Science) under the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework (UGCF).
While the university approved a host of proposals, including the formation of a Centre for Independence and Partition Studies, a section of the Academic Council members who attended the meeting said a paper on Mahatma Gandhi in the fifth semester of BA (Political Science) syllabus was replaced with one on Hindutva ideologue V.D. Savarkar. Although the paper on Mahatma Gandhi will now be taught in the seventh semester, dissenting members said the move would “essentially mean that students opting for a three-year graduation course instead of a four-year programme will not study Gandhi”.
‘Study national heroes’
Born in 1877 in Sialkot in undivided India, the national poet of Pakistan had written the famous song ‘Saare jahan se achcha Hindustan hamara’. Mr. Iqbal, also known as Allama Iqbal, is often credited with giving birth to the idea of Pakistan.
Saying that the poet was the first to raise the idea of Partition and the establishment of Pakistan, Mr. Singh said, “Instead of teaching about such persons, we should study our national heroes.”
The Freedom and Partition Study Centre, the university said, would through research work shed light on unsung heroes and events of the freedom movement which have not yet found a place in history.
On August 14, 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced to observe the day annually as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day in memory of the struggles, sacrifices and pain of people of India due to Partition.
“Incidents during the tragedy of Partition will also be deeply studied and researched and oral history will be recorded in the voices of those people of that era who have suffered this tragedy,” the university said.
Dissenting note
Six members of the Academic Council presented their dissenting note on the Centre for Independence and Partition Studies, saying that the proposal is meant to be divisive as one of the objectives stated in it says the centre will study and research invasions and consequent sufferings and slavery that occurred in the past 1,300 years.
“A discussion on the past 1,300 years will only provide an opportunity for venomous communal speeches. Credible historical scholarship of every conceivable variety has established Partition to be the outcome of a specific modern and colonial context,” the dissenting members said in their note.
