Texts Like ‘Manusmriti’ and ‘Baburnama’ Are Essential Reading for Students of Indian History
Vikas Gupta | 12 March 2025 | The Indian Express
The Delhi University (DU) administration’s move to drop ancient and medieval texts like the Manusmriti, Baburnama, Jahangirnama and Akbarnama from the BA History syllabus has sparked a heated but uninformed debate in the media and among academics. This time the bone of contention is not any specific interpretation of the past, but rather, the ideologically-motivated intention to formally disallow students from reading important primary sources for historical research. The claim that these sources are being “introduced” or “included” in the syllabus through the new courses is erroneous. These texts in original form, or books and articles containing interpretations of historians, have always been present in a significant number of undergraduate and postgraduate papers offered at DU and elsewhere.
For example, the previous syllabus of History framed under the choice-based credit system for undergraduate and postgraduate studies and the already approved current syllabus under the UGCF NEP 2020 for the first three years of the four-year undergraduate programme, contain these texts as well as books and articles based on them. In fact, these texts are so indispensable and their presence so conspicuous that excising them from the syllabus would practically garble many courses and seriously compromise the depth of history studies and research at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. These primary texts are prescribed by the History Department for the NEP UGCF-mandated research methodology papers for undergraduate students in semesters VII and VIII so that students can assess different claims by reading the original sources, as they are expected to conduct some research to complete their studies. The current uproar is not as such about the inclusion of these sources, but rather a right-wing campaign seeking their withdrawal because it does not want to critically discuss the caste question and wants to delete Mughal history…