Delhi University approves semester system in 11 Arts courses

The faculty of Arts of Delhi University (DU) approved the introduction of semester system in 11 disciplines — Philosophy, Psychology, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Arabic, Buddhist Studies, Linguistics, Modern Indian Languages, Persian and Punjabi — on Monday.

The members present at the meeting, chaired by Dean of Arts Professor H. S. Prasad, passed the semester- based syllabi of as many as 30 undergraduate programmes in the above mentioned disciplines in just an hour even as the departments of English and Germanic and Romance Studies asked for more time to prepare their new syllabi.

The latest development has come just within a week of the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences toeing the university line and is being perceived as a big victory for the DU administration. But the “ hurried manner” of approval of courses has aggravated dissent among the teaching community.

“ Such statutory meetings have turned into a farce as there is immense pressure from above to bring in semester system in the remaining programmes. There was no scope of discussion in the meeting of the Faculty of Arts and everything was passed in just little over an hour,” said Shaswati Mazumdar, a professor with the department of Germanic and Romance Studies, who was among the three professors who formally registered their dissent in the meeting.

DU had introduced semester system in 13 undergraduate science programmes last year and wants to do the same in the remaining arts, social science and commerce programmes this time on the logic that a university cannot run in “ dual mode”. This plan has hit hurdles in shape of rejection by the committee of courses ( statutory body responsible for syllabus revision) of the departments of History and Sociology.

Teachers, meanwhile, have been registering their protest by holding classes in the open and have also started a signature campaign to appeal to the vice- chancellor (V- C).

Their dissent is rooted in the fact that their academic arguments of semester system are not being considered by V-C Dinesh Singh.