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An important decision has been taken by Delhi University. The university has given instructions to remove material related to Iqbal, Manusmriti, and Pakistan from the syllabus of Philosophy.

The Philosophy Department of Delhi University has received a new instruction stating that the syllabus of undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) courses should not include any material related to Pakistan, the famous poet and thinker Muhammad Iqbal, and the ancient text Manusmriti. This instruction came from the Dean of Academics on June 12 and the department has been asked to complete its review by June 16.

The email from the Dean's office states that there should be no mention of these three things in the units and reading lists of all semesters of UG and PG syllabus (under NEP). All faculty members of the department have been asked to carefully check and confirm the content of each course.

These subjects will not be taught.

A member of the department, on the condition of anonymity, said that for the last few years it has been repeatedly said by the Vice-Chancellor that subjects that divide the society will not be taught in the university. Material related to Iqbal has been removed earlier as well, but still some departments were trying to include them in the new course.

In the year 2023, a unit based on Muhammad Iqbal was removed from the BA (Hons) Political Science course. Iqbal, who is the author of Sare Jahan Se Achcha, was later declared the national poet of Pakistan. At the same time, a new optional course on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was added in the same year.

Earlier this month, it was recommended to remove issues like Kashmir and Israel-Palestine from the Psychology syllabus, saying that these topics are controversial and their psychological context is not clear. Instead, it was said to give more space to Indian thinkers like Gandhi and Buddha.

Biopolitics course also cancelled

Apart from this, a new course of the Philosophy department, Biopolitics, has also been cancelled by the university administration. It was first said that this subject is related to political science and later it was completely removed. Some teachers of the department believe that this course was necessary, but due to less time, they could not oppose it. The university administration is describing such changes as a step towards maintaining social unity.