In the new millennium, Delhi University has embarked on an innovative course of providing `liberal' education. In the name of modernity, the college dons have been asked to teach obscenity and sexuality to the English (Honours) classes. Some of the texts are just unteachable.One of the texts, now prescribed for the second-year English (H) course, is Lysistrata. This Greek comedy of Aristophanes is a dream about peace, conceived at a time when Athens was going through its worst crisis since the Persian War. The central idea of the play is provided by a stratagem adopted to bring about peace between Athens and Sparta. Lysistrata, the heroine of the play, thinks that the salvation of Greece lies in the hands of women. She summons a meeting of the women of the warring nations, and gives a call for `sex strike'. She propounds that `sex starvation' would compel warriors on both sides to stop war. The theme may be laudable, but the vocabulary employed makes this comedy almost a pornographic book. Some quotes from the text (Penguin edition) suffice to illustrate the point.After dilating on the purpose of the meeting, Lysistrata makes every participating woman swear the following oath: ``I will not allow either boyfriend or husband. to approach me in an erect condition. And I will live at home without any sexual activity. wearing my best make-up and my most seductive dresses to inflame my husband's ardour. But I will never willingly yield to his desires. And should he force me against my will. Iwill be wholly passive and unresponsive. I will not raise my legs towards the ceiling. I will not take up the lion-on-a-cheese-grater position.''When Calonice, an Athenian woman, asks, "What is it you've summoned this meeting of the women for? Is it something big?", Lysistrata replies that it is `very' big. Thinking that she detects a significant intonation in that word (big), Calonice retorts: ``Not thick as well.''Here are some more examples of what no teacher, male or female, can teach a class, particularly in a co-educational college, without an awkward blush:"Look what a fertile vale she's got there! Yes, with all the grass so beautifully cropped, too!" It is a sad thing for a woman "to sleep alone without a prick." "Manelaus threw away his sword when he saw but a glimpse of Helen's breasties." "Our six-inch Ladies Comforters." "Well, if we could slaughter a full-grown cock.'' ``No dog will even grab your balls, again!" "What are you - a man or a phallic symbol?" "She's a fine bottom." "I have not seen a bonnier lass." "Nor I a shapelier cunt." "Our triangles carefully plucked." "The men are like the ramrods and can't wait to leap into the bed."Even a magistrate in the play wantonly suggests: ``Now I have got to go off to Salamis; so if you've got time, could you go down to my place tonight and put the pin back in the hole for her?'' ``Could you go down around lunch time perhaps and ease the strap off for her, enlarge the opening a little.''Another text prescribed is Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Prologue, which too deals with free sex. Says a character: ``For if I were to sell my belle chose/I could go walking fresher than a rose''. Can a teacher, particularly a female one, explain `belle chose' (literal meaning `a beautiful thing' that is the female principle) to the students? Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is by and large healthy literature. But why choose from among its several tales this smutty and pathologically morbid story?Of course, keeping sex out of literature is hypocrisy. But teaching obscenity and sexuality in the name of literature is also a dissembling exercise. Sex is relevant provided it is an integral part of the text and the subject matter (as in Shakespeare) is treated with due caution.Two other texts prescribed are Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Ismat Chugtai's Lihaf (The Quilt). Both deal with the theme of lesbianism. Sample this passage from Goblin Market: ``She sucked and sucked and sucked the more/Fruits which that unknown orchard bore. Laura. come and kiss me. hug me, kiss me, suck my juice. Eat me, drink me, love me, Laura, make much of me.'' Chugtai's Lihaf is no better. I ask: Is it essential to prescribe texts for students, fresh from schools, which suggest lesbianism? Can one bring about empowerment of women through lesbianism?The writer is head, department of English, Hans Raj C³ianism? Can one bring abou>
