Students pursuing a postgraduate degree in History at Delhi University (DU) no longer have the option of choosing a course on the Delhi Sultanate, which examines how the medieval state was formed, how authority was exercised, and how political, religious and cultural life evolved, records reviewed by The Indian Express show.
The paper, “The Delhi Sultanate: Structures of Authority in Medieval North India (13th-14th Centuries)”, which was being taught in Semester III, has been dropped from DU’s newly notified syllabus, along with several other long-running courses on medieval, ancient and modern India.
Some of the other omissions in the third semester include papers on “History of North India, c. 1400-1550”, “Gender and Women in Early India: 1500 BCE to 1000 CE”, “Political Processes and Structure of Polities in Ancient India” and “Religion and Society in Ancient Indian Literature”.
Official records show these courses were cleared at various stages of the syllabus approval process but did not figure in the final notification issued on August 7. Of the 38 Discipline Specific Elective (DSE) papers proposed by DU’s History Department, 16 were notified in the Semester III syllabus, records show.
Several other papers, not including the ones listed above, remain in categories described in university records as “under discussion” or “undiscussed”.
Policy shift
There have been syllabus revisions at DU since it began restructuring programmes under the National Education Policy 2020. The postgraduate revision follows changes in DU’s undergraduate programme from 2022-23 in line with the policy.
The postgraduate papers on “Delhi Sultanate” and “History of North India” have similarities with a paper offered in the undergraduate programme. However, a faculty member from the History department said both “are not comparable”. The postgraduate paper on the sultanate has been “a core medieval India paper for several decades”, the member said. The paper on North India was a “specialised thematic and historical study”, the member said, unlike the undergraduate version, which is a “survey course” on Indian history.
A DSE is an elective course within a student’s chosen discipline. For instance, it allows a History student to choose a specialised area rather than study only mandatory papers.
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The process of changing a syllabus at DU involves several stages. A department discusses and clears its proposed courses through its Committee of Courses. The proposal then goes to the university’s Standing Committee and, subsequently, the Academic Council, the university’s apex academic body. Once approved by the Academic Council, the syllabus goes to the Executive Council for final approval.
When contacted, DU’s Dean of Academic Affairs, K Ratnabali, said: “None of the courses were held back. We took everything to the Academic Council, which gave the Vice-Chancellor the liberty to constitute an Expert Committee to look into courses that required review. The committee included three external experts, the Head of the Department and two Academic Council members.”
Ratnabali said: “The issue was that even after papers were cleared by the Standing Committee, the department had made changes to some of the approved syllabi…. papers were added or deleted, units were changed and readings were removed or replaced. This created a trust deficit and meant that the syllabi had to be revisited. The committee examined the revised syllabi and cleared those that were found to be in order for notification. A few more papers are also expected to be notified once the committee completes its review.”
Sources familiar with the Expert Committee’s review told The Indian Express: “The committee has given suggestions to the department to make changes to a few courses… The review was aimed at making the syllabus more representative of different regions and periods of Indian history, while also ensuring that it was aligned with the objectives of the NEP.”
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Expert Committee chief, Prof Shri Prakash Singh, Vice Chancellor of Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University, did not comment. Prof Anirudh Deshpande, who heads the History department at DU’s Faculty of Social Sciences, declined to comment.
Another member from the Faculty of Social Sciences asserted that the revisions follow “a pattern of courses and papers, which were being taught for decades, being axed, especially in the Social Sciences, since the revisions for NEP 2020 have started both in undergraduate and post graduate syllabus revisions”.
In August 2023, The Indian Express first reported on the NEP-linked changes in DU’s undergraduate History syllabus, with references to “Brahmanisation” removed, and a paper titled “Inequality and Difference” dropped, apart from other changes.
According to the postgraduate syllabus document placed before the DU’s Academic Council, the course on Delhi Sultanate sought to examine “various historiographical interpretations of the 13th and 14th centuries” and reconsider how the period fits into the broader history of India.
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It examined the formation of the Delhi Sultanate and the political culture of the 13th and 14th centuries, as well as spiritual and religious traditions of the period.
The other paper, “History of North India, c. 1400-1550”, focused on the period between the disintegration of the Delhi Sultanate and the emergence of the Mughal Empire.
It examined Afghan political cultures, the diffusion of political power under different regimes, forms of patronage and literary cultures. It also looked at Sufism and Bhakti as forms of social and political authority, alongside debates around state formation, Islamisation, socialisation and intellectual production.
According to faculty members familiar with the curriculum, both papers were part of the old syllabus for the 2019-20 academic year and had been taught in the department for several years.
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The omissions are not confined to medieval history, records show.
“Gender and Women in Early India: 1500 BCE to 1000 CE” examined women across Brahmanical, Buddhist, Jain and Tantric traditions. It covered marriage, family, property and stridhana, and examined women as rulers, patrons and workers. The course also asked whether literary and inscriptional sources could reveal a distinct “female voice”.
Another dropped elective, “Political Processes and Structure of Polities in Ancient India”, traced the evolution of political institutions from early formations to the Mauryan and Gupta empires and later regional states. Its themes included taxation, warfare, bureaucracy, land grants, queens, temples, merchant guilds and local administration.
“Religion and Society in Ancient Indian Literature” examined Vedic and Upanishadic traditions, Buddhism and Jainism, epic and Puranic traditions, Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism and popular religious practices.
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The History department had raised concerns about the status of the syllabus before the August 7 notification. In a formal resolution dated August 4 and addressed to Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh, the Department Council noted that the new academic session had begun on July 28 but the Semester III syllabus had not yet been officially notified.
“Without access to official syllabus, students cannot exercise informed choices for optional papers,” the resolution said.
“In addition to the cleared papers in the Academic Council agenda file there were two other categories of papers treated as ‘under discussion’ by the Dean (Academic Affairs) on the grounds of cross-checking the revisions required some more time,” the resolution said.