The vice chancellor of Delhi University has used his emergency powers to stall the proposal of the law faculty to include the Manusmriti in the reading material at the undergraduate level. This was such an extraordinary matter, he felt it necessary to issue a video statement to talk about his decision to stop the proposal going to the academic council of the University.

The Manusmriti is a Hindu legal code that has been widely criticised for its gender and caste-based provisions.

Whether the vice chancellor took this decision on his own or he had to do it on the instructions of the Union Government’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is a matter of speculation.

The reason for this speculation is a statement by Dharmendra Pradhan himself.

When the proposal to teach the Manusmriti started getting talked about and criticised all around, Pradhan said that there was no question of teaching such controversial material. He said that he has spoken to the vice chancellor who informed him that the plan was dropped even before it reached the academic council.

The vice chancellor said that the university does not want to teach anything that hurts a section of the society. He used his emergency powers to reject the proposal.

The chairman of the law faculty said that the proposal was brought to the faculty and there was a great deal of discussion about it. It went to the standing committee of the academic council. No one objected to it.

This article neither supports nor opposes the proposal to include the Manusmriti in the reading list. It is being written with the purpose of considering the process of this decision.

As worrying as the proposal to teach the Manusmriti was, the process followed to make the decision to reject it is equally, if not more, worrying.

At Delhi University, departments have the right to make the syllabus........

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