Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
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Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
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Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
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Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
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Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

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    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67eef50fe0c80-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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                <strong>Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna</strong></h1>
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                <br /><div align="justify">October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.<br /><br />However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.<br /><br />Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't.<br /><br />The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.<br /><br />On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.<br /><br />In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.<br /><br />And that's where the plot thickens.<br /><br />Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.<br /><br />And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was &quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&quot;<br /><br />Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder<br /><br />ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire.<br /><br />When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &quot;I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&quot;<br /><br />Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair.<br /><br />The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit.<br /><br />Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.<br /><br />So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.<br /><br />Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.<br /><br />The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.<br /><br />Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.<br /><br />Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.)<br /><br />That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.<br /><br />It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &quot;embarrass&quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &quot;mischief&quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.<br /><br />It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of &quot;thought policing&quot;, adding that Ramanujan's essay &quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&quot;<br /><br />International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.<br /><br />The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &quot;Leftist&quot; attempt to &quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&quot;<br /><br />NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &quot;Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&quot; He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.<br /><br />Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, &quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&quot;<br /><br />Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay.<br /><br />The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. <br /><br /></div>               </font>
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Times of India, 3 December, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Ramanujan-essay-dropped-to-save-PM-another-headache/articleshow/10965372.cms&#039;,
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna&#039;,
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Times of India, 3 December, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Ramanujan-essay-dropped-to-save-PM-another-headache/articleshow/10965372.cms&#039;,
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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                <strong>Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna</strong></h1>
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                <br /><div align="justify">October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.<br /><br />However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.<br /><br />Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't.<br /><br />The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.<br /><br />On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.<br /><br />In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.<br /><br />And that's where the plot thickens.<br /><br />Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.<br /><br />And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was &quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&quot;<br /><br />Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder<br /><br />ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire.<br /><br />When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &quot;I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&quot;<br /><br />Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair.<br /><br />The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit.<br /><br />Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.<br /><br />So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.<br /><br />Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.<br /><br />The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.<br /><br />Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.<br /><br />Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.)<br /><br />That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.<br /><br />It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &quot;embarrass&quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &quot;mischief&quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.<br /><br />It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of &quot;thought policing&quot;, adding that Ramanujan's essay &quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&quot;<br /><br />International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.<br /><br />The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &quot;Leftist&quot; attempt to &quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&quot;<br /><br />NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &quot;Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&quot; He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.<br /><br />Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, &quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&quot;<br /><br />Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay.<br /><br />The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. <br /><br /></div>               </font>
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Times of India, 3 December, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Ramanujan-essay-dropped-to-save-PM-another-headache/articleshow/10965372.cms&#039;,
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Times of India, 3 December, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Ramanujan-essay-dropped-to-save-PM-another-headache/articleshow/10965372.cms&#039;,
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University&#039;s academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan&#039;s essay, &#039;Three Hundred Ramayanas&#039; from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn&#039;t.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan&#039;s essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &amp;quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&amp;quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh&#039;s eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And that&#039;s where the plot thickens.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan&#039;s essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP&#039;s student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan&#039;s essay was &amp;quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Academic reasons not behind essay&#039;s removal: Upinder&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP&#039;s vandalism, he clarified that the PM&#039;s daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan&#039;s essay. That didn&#039;t douse the fire.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &amp;quot;I can&#039;t say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council&#039;s decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university&#039;s internal affair.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay&#039;s merit.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Coming back to Sunday&#039;s academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan&#039;s essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay&#039;s removal.)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &amp;quot;embarrass&amp;quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &amp;quot;mischief&amp;quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It&#039;s this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay&#039;s removal as an instance of &amp;quot;thought policing&amp;quot;, adding that Ramanujan&#039;s essay &amp;quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU&#039;s aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers&#039; Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &amp;quot;Leftist&amp;quot; attempt to &amp;quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&amp;quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM&#039;s daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &amp;quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left&#039;s attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;NDTF&#039;s Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &amp;quot;Why didn&#039;t the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&amp;quot; He added that they had got a week&#039;s notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay&#039;s removal at the meeting, said, &amp;quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &amp;quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&amp;quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM&#039;s daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan&#039;s essay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay&#039;s merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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                <strong>Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna</strong></h1>
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                <br /><div align="justify">October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.<br /><br />However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.<br /><br />Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't.<br /><br />The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.<br /><br />On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.<br /><br />In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.<br /><br />And that's where the plot thickens.<br /><br />Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.<br /><br />And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was &quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&quot;<br /><br />Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder<br /><br />ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire.<br /><br />When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &quot;I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&quot;<br /><br />Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair.<br /><br />The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit.<br /><br />Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.<br /><br />So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.<br /><br />Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.<br /><br />The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.<br /><br />Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.<br /><br />Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.)<br /><br />That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.<br /><br />It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &quot;embarrass&quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &quot;mischief&quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.<br /><br />It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of &quot;thought policing&quot;, adding that Ramanujan's essay &quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&quot;<br /><br />International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.<br /><br />The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &quot;Leftist&quot; attempt to &quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&quot;<br /><br />NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &quot;Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&quot; He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.<br /><br />Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, &quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&quot;<br /><br />Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay.<br /><br />The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. <br /><br /></div>               </font>
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		'title' => 'Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna',
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<div align="justify">
October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.<br />
<br />
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.<br />
<br />
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't.<br />
<br />
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.<br />
<br />
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.<br />
<br />
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.<br />
<br />
And that's where the plot thickens.<br />
<br />
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.<br />
<br />
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was &quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&quot;<br />
<br />
Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder<br />
<br />
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire.<br />
<br />
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &quot;I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&quot;<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair.<br />
<br />
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit.<br />
<br />
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.<br />
<br />
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.<br />
<br />
Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.<br />
<br />
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.<br />
<br />
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.<br />
<br />
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.)<br />
<br />
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.<br />
<br />
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &quot;embarrass&quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &quot;mischief&quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.<br />
<br />
It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of &quot;thought policing&quot;, adding that Ramanujan's essay &quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&quot;<br />
<br />
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.<br />
<br />
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &quot;Leftist&quot; attempt to &quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&quot;<br />
<br />
NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &quot;Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&quot; He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.<br />
<br />
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, &quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&quot;<br />
<br />
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay.<br />
<br />
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. <br />
<br />
</div>',
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...',
	'disp' => '<br /><div align="justify">October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.<br /><br />However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.<br /><br />Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't.<br /><br />The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.<br /><br />On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.<br /><br />In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.<br /><br />And that's where the plot thickens.<br /><br />Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.<br /><br />And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was &quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&quot;<br /><br />Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder<br /><br />ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire.<br /><br />When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &quot;I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&quot;<br /><br />Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair.<br /><br />The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit.<br /><br />Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.<br /><br />So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.<br /><br />Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.<br /><br />The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.<br /><br />Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.<br /><br />Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.)<br /><br />That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.<br /><br />It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &quot;embarrass&quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &quot;mischief&quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.<br /><br />It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of &quot;thought policing&quot;, adding that Ramanujan's essay &quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&quot;<br /><br />International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.<br /><br />The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &quot;Leftist&quot; attempt to &quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&quot;<br /><br />NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &quot;Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&quot; He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.<br /><br />Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, &quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&quot;<br /><br />Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay.<br /><br />The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. <br /><br /></div>',
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	'title' => 'Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna',
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<div align="justify">
October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.<br />
<br />
However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.<br />
<br />
Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't.<br />
<br />
The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.<br />
<br />
On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.<br />
<br />
In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.<br />
<br />
And that's where the plot thickens.<br />
<br />
Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.<br />
<br />
And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was &quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&quot;<br />
<br />
Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder<br />
<br />
ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire.<br />
<br />
When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &quot;I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&quot;<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair.<br />
<br />
The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit.<br />
<br />
Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.<br />
<br />
So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.<br />
<br />
Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.<br />
<br />
The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.<br />
<br />
Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.<br />
<br />
Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.)<br />
<br />
That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.<br />
<br />
It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &quot;embarrass&quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &quot;mischief&quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.<br />
<br />
It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of &quot;thought policing&quot;, adding that Ramanujan's essay &quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&quot;<br />
<br />
International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.<br />
<br />
The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &quot;Leftist&quot; attempt to &quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&quot;<br />
<br />
NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &quot;Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&quot; He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.<br />
<br />
Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, &quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&quot;<br />
<br />
Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay.<br />
<br />
The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. <br />
<br />
</div>',
	'credit_writer' => 'The Times of India, 3 December, 2011, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Ramanujan-essay-dropped-to-save-PM-another-headache/articleshow/10965372.cms',
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October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.

However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away...'
$disp = '<br /><div align="justify">October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses.<br /><br />However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world.<br /><br />Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't.<br /><br />The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall.<br /><br />On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour.<br /><br />In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, &quot;Cultural History of Ancient India&quot;. The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member.<br /><br />And that's where the plot thickens.<br /><br />Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook.<br /><br />And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was &quot;malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus.&quot;<br /><br />Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder<br /><br />ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire.<br /><br />When contacted, Upinder Singh said: &quot;I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that.&quot;<br /><br />Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair.<br /><br />The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit.<br /><br />Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it.<br /><br />So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation.<br /><br />Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening.<br /><br />The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay.<br /><br />Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay.<br /><br />Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.)<br /><br />That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal.<br /><br />It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to &quot;embarrass&quot; the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the &quot;mischief&quot; in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way.<br /><br />It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of &quot;thought policing&quot;, adding that Ramanujan's essay &quot;shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices.&quot;<br /><br />International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating.<br /><br />The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a &quot;Leftist&quot; attempt to &quot;hurt Hindu sentiments&quot;. They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, &quot;It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture.&quot;<br /><br />NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, &quot;Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women.&quot; He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours.<br /><br />Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, &quot;I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here.&quot;<br /><br />Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that &quot;there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone.&quot; Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay.<br /><br />The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it. <br /><br /></div>'
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Ramanujan essay dropped to save PM another headache? by Neha Pushkarna

October 9 was a Sunday. An unusual day to call an emergency meeting of Delhi University's academic council. The main agenda was fairly routine stuff: approval of certain courses. However, tucked away as supplementary agenda was a proposal to do away with A K Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' from the history course - a proposal that was passed, triggering one of the fiercest debates in recent times in the academic world. Actually, it was a landslide win for the Ramanujan nay-sayers. In all, 111 members voted against the essay; only nine offered dissent. Matters might have rested there, but they didn't. The voices of the nine members have since grown louder with support pouring in for Ramanujan's essay from top scholars in other campuses in India and abroad. In Delhi University, too, there have been several protest meetings. The history department - the relevant department in the context of the essay - held a special debate in a jam-packed hall. On the face of it, the controversy centres on a 1991, 18-page essay by A K Ramanujan, a historian of outstanding scholarship who taught for many years at University of Chicago. Top historians maintain that Ramanujan has dealt with the Ramayana tradition with exemplary academic rigour. In DU, the essay, taught to second-year students of History (honours), was part of a 525-page textbook, "Cultural History of Ancient India". The course was devised by the history department, of which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's eldest daughter, Upinder Singh, is a member. And that's where the plot thickens. Upinder Singh, a highly-rated history scholar with a PhD from McGill University and several books on ancient India to her credit, was a member of the sub-committee that designed the course containing Ramanujan's essay. The essay was being taught for three years without any trouble before someone close to the BJP found out that Upinder had played a role in devising the course, and suspected that she had compiled the essays in the textbook. And soon, she was in the eye of the storm. On February 25, 2008, several activists of BJP's student wing, AVBP, vandalized the office of the then history department head, S Z H Jafri, for including the essay in the history course. They claimed Ramanujan's essay was "malicious and offensive to the beliefs of millions of Hindus." Academic reasons not behind essay's removal: Upinder ABVP activists alleged that Upinder Singh was behind the selection of the essay and was trying to influence the department. Jafri denied this. On February 28, three days after ABVP's vandalism, he clarified that the PM's daughter had neither edited nor compiled the book that included Ramanujan's essay. That didn't douse the fire. When contacted, Upinder Singh said: "I can't say if there is a political edge to the whole thing but it is very surprising that the academic council voted against the essay. The decision has caused worldwide outrage among academics. There was no need to withdraw the essay. Tomorrow if somebody indulges in hooliganism, are we going to act like cowards and take away academic freedom? The university should not have backed down in the face of hooliganism and physical intimidation. Everybody knows what happened in the history department in 2008. The academic council's decision to drop the essay is a reaction to that." Meanwhile, a right-wing organization that sprung up in wake of the controversy, Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, moved the high court demanding scrapping of the essay. The court rejected the demand, saying it was the university's internal affair. The Samiti filed a civil suit in Supreme Court, and the apex court advised the university to set up an experts group to determine the essay's merit. Four experts were identified by the university (their names have been kept under wraps as is the norm in academic peer reviews) and they gave their report. Three of them said it was a first-rate essay and found nothing wrong with it. So did the fourth expert, other than adding the caveat, almost in passing, that teachers belonging to the minority community might find it awkward to teach the essay - something, which many teachers say, is as irrelevant to an academic exercise as the religion of a surgeon conducting an operation. Coming back to Sunday's academic council meeting, the notice for it was sent a week earlier, but that Ramanujan's essay was part of a supplementary agenda was told over phone to academic council members on Saturday evening. The actual article and comments of the four experts were circulated among the members only at the meeting - in other words, the whole thing was so brought up that there was hardly any scope for an informed deliberation on the essay. Several spoke against the essay, among them the chemistry and other non-related departments. History department opposed its removal and was backed by the commerce department. Significantly, Sanskrit department head Mithilesh Chaturvedi spoke at length in favour of the essay. Social sciences and humanities departments like political science, English and sociology, were taken unawares. (They, as well as the history department, have since passed resolutions against the essay's removal.) That Sunday, though, the motion against the essay won hands down, but left behind the lingering belief that political, rather than academic, reasons were behind its removal. It would seem that what began as a vicarious attempt to "embarrass" the prime minister, was somewhere recognized by the University establishment as an issue that could potentially hurt the PM. And it chose to nip the "mischief" in the bud, albeit in a surreptitious way. It's this belief that is now snowballing into a protest movement in the academic world. Scores of teachers have signed a petition describing the essay's removal as an instance of "thought policing", adding that Ramanujan's essay "shows in rich detail how Indian culture is constituted of a multiplicity of traditions, how it speaks in many voices." International scholars, among them Paula Richman of Oberlin University - a leading scholar of the Ramayana - and students of Ramanujan wrote protest letters to OUP chief executive Nigel Portwood demanding an apology for discontinuing publication of the book containing the essay and thus helping DU to scrap it from its history course. There was a protest meeting in Oxford University on November 30. DU's aspiration to be among the top global universities was taking a beating. The BJP-backed National Democratic Teachers' Front (NDTF) and ABVP have dubbed the protests a "Leftist" attempt to "hurt Hindu sentiments". They have, however, not lost sight of the PM's daughter. NDTF recently issued a statement saying, "It is unfortunate that a daughter of the Prime Minister of India, who teaches history in DU, is involved in lending support to left's attempts at attacking ancient Indian culture." NDTF's Ajay Bhagi, an AC member who teaches chemistry at Dyal Singh College, said, "Why didn't the leftists raise their voice when the autobiography of Taslima Nasrin was banned under the left rule in West Bengal. The essay has just been replaced by another one because our female colleagues felt the text was against the dignity of women." He added that they had got a week's notice for the AC meeting and the discussion on the essay went on for three hours. Other members disagree - the motion, they claim, was passed almost on the sly. History department head R C Thakran said he was told about the essay only the night before the meeting. Sheo Dutt, one of the academic council members who opposed the essay's removal at the meeting, said, "I have taught this paper for three years. It was hugely popular among students. History has both good and bad aspects. We should teach both to our students because we have a pluralistic culture. But anything reasonable is termed as communist here." Upinder Singh is equally indignant. She insisted that "there is absolutely nothing mischievous in the text nor did it attempt to denigrate anyone." Academic reasons were certainly not behind its removal, she said. So why was it removed? Obviously for political reasons, including the fact that the PM's daughter was a strong votary of Ramanujan's essay. The four experts identified by the university to determine the essay's merit said it was a first-rate essay and that there was nothing wrong with it.