New Delhi: Congress president Rahul Gandhi has written to Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, expressing solidarity against the “majoritarian move” of the Delhi University’s standing committee’s recommendation that three of his books be removed from the reading list of the post-graduate political science course.
In the letter, Rahul Gandhi says:
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) fascism is apparent in this move. Their aggressive move to propagate a unilateral view of Hinduism is deplorable. The fact is, that your books have been a part of the university’s syllabus for over a decade, without any questions being raised on their impact on the minds of the students. Now the RSS, which cannot boast of any intellectual or academic capital, is seeking to destroy academic integrity by silencing diverse voices. This is part of their larger design to keep the Shudras and Dalits disempowered.
The Congress president hoped that the university’s academic council would reject the standing committee’s recommendation. He added that students should be able to read “divergent views and form their own opinions instead of following the line of the RSS.”
Kancha Ilaiah said the letter showed Congress’s support for maintaining academic standards. He hoped that other political parties would also oppose the standing committee’s recommendations.
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Last week, a controversy blew up when the DU’s standing committee wanted the word “Dalit” and three books by Ilaiah to be dropped from the post-graduate political science course. It received much criticism, even from DU faculty members, who rejected the committee’s opinion that Ilaiah’s books did not have any “academic value“. The recommendations will be considered by the academic council, which will meet in November.