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Proposed Ban on Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd's Books in DU Raises ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Proposed Ban on Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s Books in DU Raises Questions about the Future of Critical Thought ANNA JACOB Anna Jacob ([email protected]) is a PhD scholar at the Department of History, University of Delhi. Vol. 53, Issue No. 47, 01 Dec, 2018 Scholars of social sciences write and teach from particular ideological and political frameworks, and to expect them to be “objective” or “non-partisan,” without any sensitivity to questions of power, takes away much needed perspectives of the marginalised sections of society in academia. Any critique of an academic work should stem not from unwillingness to deal with complex or discomfiting ideas, but from close reading and engagement. This article discusses these aspects in light of the recent call to ban Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s books from the University of Delhi’s MA Political Science reading list, as well as other instances of such interference in university curriculum in recent years. On 24 October 2018, the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs of the University of Delhi (DU) proposed a ban on three books authored by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd—Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy; God as Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahmanism; and Post Hindu India—from the MA syllabus of the Department of Political Science. These texts are part of two courses titled “Dalit Bahujan Political Thought” and “Social Exclusion: Theory and Practice” (Roy Chowdhury 2018). The academic council is yet to take a final decision on the issue, but the department has decided to continue teaching the course. The university is currently ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 engaged in revising the syllabi of postgraduate courses to fit the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) format, and certain groups of teachers have used this occasion to get “controversial” books removed from post-graduate reading lists of the history, political science, and sociology departments. Calls for bans on books that some political or ideological groups find provocative are not new in Indian universities; but over the last few years, the frequency of such incidents has increased at an alarming rate. In August 2018, the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs in DU asked for removal of Nandini Sundar’s Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar and Archana Prasad’s Against Ecological Romanticism: Verrier Elwin and the Making of an Anti-modern Tribal Identity from a course offered at the Department of History (Iftikhar 2018). This was done after some members alleged that these books “glorified Naxalism” and “legitimised religious conversions.” In 2017, Sundar’s book, Flames in the Forest, was sought to be removed from the MA Sociology reading list after some teachers of the National Democratic Teachers’ Front (NDTF) opposed its contents. In 2016, Dinanath Batra wrote to the Ministry of Human Resources Development asking for the complete removal of historian Bipin Chandra’s book Bharat ka Swantantrata Sangharsh because it used the word “revolutionary terrorists” to refer to Bhagat Singh and other figures in the national movement (Economic Times 2016). This trend of interference in university curricula and activities has been visible at least for a decade. In 2011, A K Ramanujan’s celebrated essay, Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation was removed from the MA History reading list in DU after Hindutva groups, including teachers and students, objected to it. The ban was initially suggested in 2008, but at that time, the department refused to remove it even after it was attacked by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the head of the department was forced to take refuge inside his office (Vijetha 2011). In Mumbai University, Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such a Long Journey, was excised from the BA English reading list in 2010, after Shiv Sena activists (led by Aditya Thackeray, then a third year student of history at the university) opposed it for “using insulting language” against the party and its leader, Bal Thackeray. Aditya Thackeray said that the book was being forced upon students, when, in fact, it was an optional text in the reading list (Burke 2010). Universities Are Microcosms of the Nation It is useful to look at some of the patterns that emerge from these incidents. In one sense, they point to the fact that our universities are not ivory towers. They are microcosms of the nation, and hence, reflect the political struggles between rival visions of what kind of a society we ought to be. Any thriving university has a diversity of intellectual approaches and political ideals among its faculty, and this is reflected in its teaching and research. Hence, among students and faculty, we have left liberals, practitioners of various religions, supporters of Hindutva, and so on, who have very clearly defined positions on various issues. However, what is observable now is that these are not so much an interaction of ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 diverse ideas, as demands for outright bans on texts that are uncomfortable for particular reasons: for pointing out the plural nature of Hindu textual traditions as in Ramanujan’s essay; for being critical of political parties whose popularity rests on identity politics; for being critical of the state’s militaristic approach to the problem of insurgency, as in Nandini Sundar’s work; for being a forceful anti-Brahminical critique of caste as in Kancha Ilaiah’s work; or for using a term like “revolutionary terrorist” that had a very different meaning in a historical context, but is associated by the Hindu right only with a certain community today. In other words, it appears that there is a growing inability and unwillingness to deal with nuanced and layered thinking. It seems that the decisions to ban these works are being taken on the insistence of people who do not have the willingness to thoughtfully engage with the books in question, and who have no subject expertise. For example, as media reports show, many members of the academic council of DU who opposed Kancha Ilaiah’s book had a problem with the title of the book and the fact that it has no footnotes or citations, but they did not provide a detailed or nuanced argument against it (Mohanty 2018). In the case of Nandini Sundar’s book, The Burning Forest: India’s War in Bastar, a member of the academic council opposing it, asked the head of the Department of Sociology to “tell us the content of the book” (Chettri 2017). This raises questions about the complicated nature of academic freedom, about who should make decisions about university curriculum, the politically fraught nature of the humanities and social sciences in our time, and the shrinking space for critical thought. A close reading of the call for removing Kancha Ilaiah’s books and the proposal to ban the word “Dalit” from academic discourse reveals the kind of debates that are taking place on the ground regarding academic freedom. The opposition to these texts has come from within the teaching community of the university itself. The teachers are deeply divided in terms of their different visions for the university and their different political ideologies. Those proposing the ban seem to be using certain terms and ideas that those who oppose the call for ban would find hard to disagree with. For instance, Geeta Bhatt, a member of the Standing Committee emphasised that universities should foster thinking individuals and that reading lists and courses should include different perspectives. One could agree with her point that the university should indeed nurture thinking, but her understanding of inclusivity is rather vague. She suggested that there are other works that have titles similar to Ilaiah Shepherd’s book. For instance, in her opinion, Bertrand Russell’s Why I am not a Christian and Ibn Warraq’s Why I am not a Muslim are works that need to be included. When it was pointed out that these works would not be relevant in a course on Dalit–Bahujan political thought or social exclusion, she responded that perhaps they could be included in another course that was more relevant. When asked whether the banning of Ilaiah Shepherd’s books did not violate the very principle of inclusivity she was talking about, she questioned the scholarly credentials of Why I am not A Hindu, saying that there were no footnotes or citations, and termed it a “polarising text.”[1] Ilaiah Shepherd, in his ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 press statement, responded to the call for a ban by asking whether Savarkar and Golwalkar’s works, which his opponents wanted to include in the syllabus, had the scholarly credentials they were looking for. He argued that this was a clear attempt to crush diversity of thought in the university, that should be a space where “a hundred ideas clash”(Ilaiah Shepherd 2018). Knowledge Production, Politics, and the Social Sciences The demand for the ban brings to the fore the complicated relationship between knowledge production in the social sciences and questions of politics and power. The social sciences and humanities are the most vulnerable to the threat of state power or the power of political groups. While a detailed comparison is not attempted here, it may be mentioned that scientific research too often faces the pressures of business interests or national interests, particularly in areas such as defence, genetic engineering, and pharmaceuticals. Modern social sciences and humanities disciplines like history, political science, economics, sociology and literature closely examine society, political economy, culture, and the historical process that formed them. They may seem disturbing or challenging as they question the existing social structures and hierarchies, also leaving them open to political retribution from the state and various political groups.
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