Closed minds

Curiosity is the mother of intellect. Without it,the human mind would have turned a dead end at the dawn of civilisation itself. The decision taken by Delhi University’s Academic Council to drop A.K. Ramanujan’s seminal essay on the Ramayana from the BA (Honours) syllabus is a surrender to the enemies of thought. Everything else falls out of that greatcoat. Not only does it smack of a compromise with hoodlums who repeatedly attack individuals,texts and artefacts in the name of an offence supposedly caused to a faceless majority,but it also shows up the intellectual vacuity of the said council. DU’s vice-chancellor argues the removal was a technicality,but its history teachers are crying murder. Technically speaking,a single expert’s opinion swayed the council against that held by three others.

In facts learnt since,from the report of the four-member committee accessed by this newspaper,the said expert had expressed doubts about students’ ability to “tolerate” the “objectionable” bits of the essay,which were “bound to affect the sensibilities of impressionable minds”. An under-graduate student is impressionable. But she doesn’t pass the portals of higher education for a forced closure of her mind but its expansion. The expert also questioned the capability of “non-Hindu” teachers to explain the context of Ramanujan’s essay. For one,the expert did an indescribable injustice to academics. Teachers are professionals; the faculty they need in their professional capacity is their mind,not their religious adherence on paper. More disconcertingly,the expert insulted students,in assuming they enter university with set prejudices,which stay fixed,which shouldn’t be disturbed at all. What these assumptions amount to is a scholarship-worthy travesty of the idea and practice of education.

Did the council raise academic questions about the usefulness of the essay,about its instrumentality as a text? Reportedly,it didn’t even consult the history faculty,who argue that this text from a poet and translator helped,among other things,the interdisciplinary approach to historiography. Instead,the council’s decision is a call to academia to simulate the mindlessness of fanatics,who had caused the original controversy in 2008 with,typically,a physical assault.