The Quiet Dismantling of Liberal Education at Delhi University

At its core, a literature syllabus is more than a list of prescribed texts. It is a pedagogical contract, a space where students and educators commit to engaging with the world’s complexities, however uncomfortable. This contract enables critical engagement with power, history, caste, gender and the structures that shape our lives. It is through this space that students learn not just to read, but to question – to not merely absorb, but to interrogate.

The recent restructuring of syllabi at Delhi University under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 marks the calculated unraveling of that contract.

What is happening in the name of “educational reform” is not reform at all. It is the deliberate depoliticisation of the humanities – an effort to sanitise curricula, dilute critical content and render the classroom an ideologically safe space for the status quo.

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Consider the removal of Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi from the English Honours syllabus. The story, which centres on Dopdi Mejhen – a tribal woman who becomes a symbol of resistance after state brutality – is unapologetically political. Its exclusion cannot be seen as neutral editorial discretion; it is an act of ideological discomfort.

Take the omission of Bama’s Karukku, an autobiographical work that gives voice to the lived experiences of a Dalit Christian woman navigating both faith and caste oppression. These are not simply “texts.” They are interventions – literary works that expose what mainstream narratives often suppress. The absence of such voices from the curriculum amounts to erasure. And what is being inserted in their place? Generic texts with no political bite. Literary selections that offer moral clarity instead of ideological challenge. The message to students is clear: you may learn how to communicate, but not how to confront.

The NEP’s pitch – flexibility, skill development and interdisciplinary learning – sounds appealing. However, its execution reveals something else entirely. A credit-based, modular structure, paired with multiple “exit points”, reduces the university experience to a utilitarian checklist.

Students are nudged toward job readiness and away from reflective thinking. The humanities are forced to justify their existence in market terms. And when they cannot, they are deemed expendable.

A hallway in Delhi University campus. Photo: du.ac.in

But literature is not a “skill”. It is a way of understanding the world. The classroom should not be a neutral space – it should be a site of intellectual tension, where difficult questions are asked and easy answers are resisted. What’s being lost isn’t just content – it’s the culture of critique.

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In its earlier iterations, the DU curricula, especially in arts and humanities, allowed students to engage with feminist theory, Dalit literature, postcolonial studies and Marxist and queer critique. It allowed them to study why things are the way they are and who benefits from it. These are the kinds of questions that unsettle established hierarchies – and that is precisely why they are being pushed out. The result is a syllabus that is politically tamed, ideologically aligned and functionally hollow.

Where are the educators?

Educators have been cut out of the process. Faculty members have repeatedly raised concerns about the lack of transparency and academic autonomy in the syllabus revision process. Departments that once shaped curricula through internal debate and academic consensus now receive top-down directives. Teaching, in this new model, then becomes an exercise in content delivery – not critical engagement.

This isn't just a matter of academic design. It's about cultural power.

When literature no longer contains stories that speak of state violence, caste injustice, or gendered oppression, students are implicitly taught that these are not the kinds of stories worth telling – that they are not “relevant” or “productive.” Over time, the absence becomes a normalisation. 

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A generation grows up not reading Mahasweta or Bama – not because they were discredited but because they were omitted. This is precisely how ideology works – not by loud imposition but through quiet omission.

To call these syllabus changes apolitical is disingenuous. The humanities have always been political – not in the sense of partisan allegiance but in their commitment to examining how power operates in society. To dilute that purpose is to strip education of its democratic function.

Delhi University is one of India’s most influential institutions of higher learning, and now, it has become a site where education is being redefined – as compliance not liberation. This should concern anyone who believes that a university’s role is not just to produce workers, but citizens. Not just to skill, but to stir the mind.

To reclaim the pedagogical contract, we must insist on syllabi that provoke thought, not suppress it. We must resist the erasure of voices that speak from the margins. And above all, we must defend the classroom as a space where students can ask not just how the world works – but why it works the way it does, and who it leaves out.

Because if we lose that, we’re not just losing literature. We’re losing the point of education itself.

Pravin Raj Singh is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Satyawati College, University of Delhi.

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