In a meeting held last week, the Department Council unanimously decided that the chapter on Ramayana that drew the protest was necessary to “create an awareness and understanding of the rich and diverse cultural heritage of ancient India”.

The Council has submitted their letter to DU Vice-Chancellor Deepak Pental in which they have written, “When readings are prescribed in a course, it is not essential that the course designers, teachers, or students should agree with or defend each and every word therein. In fact, debate, dissent, and dialogue are important parts of the discipline of History”.

According to Pradip Kumar, a member of the academic council and a teacher of History department, Zakir Hussain College, the demonstration by the ABVP was unnecessary because students should be exposed to all kinds of view and discussions. “Every area in India has a different version. In the South Indian version if Sita is the daughter of Ravana then students have the right to know about it,” he told Newsline.

The ABVP, on the other hand, has condemned the move calling it “anti religious”. They will launch a signature campaign in the North Campus from Wednesday, Ashutosh Mehra, media coordinator of ABVP, said.

The ABVP last month had protested over “objectionable, malicious, capricious” references to the Ramayana in a subsidiary book of the History department. This time around too, they are ready to indulge in violence if their demands are not met. “It will be at a much bigger scale,” Mehra said.

The book that has the references is a spiral bound collection of photocopies of individual articles related to concurrent course for BA (Hons) History, second year.