Dr Tamal Dasgupta
A political storm of sorts was brewing on the Arabian Sea. Mumbai students belonging to a particular political dispensation were agitating and protesting against a work of fiction. The furore was about a novel titled Such a Long Journey, written by Rohinton Mistry. It was a part of the English Literature syllabus of Bombay University, and it supposedly denigrated the late Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. This was sometime during the UPA regime and the said text was soon expunged, to ameliorate the aggrieved students who could not bear their icon being vilified inside a novel. India has long been sensitive to the severe ability of fictions to hurt sensibilities. We were the first country to ban Satanic Verses. But this is not a lamentation for banned texts. This is an elegy for English.
That novel by Rohinton Mistry was a curious postmodern fiction in which an alternative history of the 1970s India was created around the personal lives of a few fictitious Parsi characters living in Bombay. That novel was closely known to me, because at that point of time, I used to teach that very text here in Delhi University. Funnily, the storm over Arabian Sea did not even reach the banks of Yamuna or the ridges of Aravalli, most probably because very few students, academics and political rabble-rousers were aware of the existence of this particular English course offered by Delhi University, of which Mistry’s novel was a part. This was not the conventional English Honours, or English language course, or any other usual sort of English course you came across elsewhere.
This course was called English Discipline.
It was offered in just a handful of colleges of Delhi University, may be just four or five colleges. Why this course was so rare? I still have no idea. May be colleges either offered the standard English Honours, or offered various compulsory English language courses, but did not offer a course that was neither this nor that.
When I started teaching in a Delhi University college back in 2008, a fresh internal immigrant to India’s capital from the city of joy, I was a rank outsider in Delhi, being a product of Jadavpur University and Calcutta University, looking for greener pastures moving out of a stagnant Kolkata which didn’t offer much opportunities to write home about, in terms of academic jobs. My first job in Kolkata was that of a guest lecturer which paid me a princely sum of ₹ 75 per lecture, and the last one paid me a consolidated ₹ 1200 per month. The only saving grace and solace was the NET-JRF in English which I had to my credit.
So, when I joined this DU college, back in the zero decade of the new millennium, apart from discovering the good salaries, I was pleasantly surprised to discover this course that was offered in my workplace. And my senior colleagues were gracious enough to entrust me completely with this course. Soon my elder colleagues started referring to this course as my baby, as if I was nurturing and caring for it, like a parent does.
This is an elegy for a course called English Discipline.
In Kolkata there was no exactly equivalent course in terms of content and substance. In terms of common UGC structures, we did run a similar course in the colleges of Kolkata called Elective English, or English pass, which was really a watered-down version of English Honours. But English Discipline of Delhi University was different. The most striking thing about English discipline was that it had a life and character of its own. Although its syllabus did share some texts with the (al)mighty English Honours, for example some anthologies meant for first and second years which were taught in English Honours, but most of its texts were unique, and remained distinct from English Honours.
And that uniqueness attracted me. And soon I fell in love with English Discipline.
*****
Humans falling in love with inanimate things are often a matter of creative and philosophical contemplations. The great auteur Ritwik Ghatak made a movie named Ajantrik, in which a motor mechanic fell in love with an old car.
It’s a strange behavior for which humans are often known. We admire, adore and sometimes even personify inanimate things. A course of literature is not exactly a tangible, palpable, concrete thing, and is an abstract concept. But then the teacher, the students, the classroom, the texts primary and secondary, the physical shape of books, the graphic shape of ebooks, the assignments and presentations, the test papers, the freshers’ welcome and farewell ceremonies, the first lecture of a batch and the final farewell speech (and all of these centred on an abstract course of study!) – they do have a palpable life of their own.
As I write these lines, English Discipline has been wiped out by the New Education Policy. The course is dead, and may it live long! Here is the elegy that I intend to write for a course that I taught for fifteen-odd years, something that I started teaching from day one of my career as a faculty in a Delhi University college which offered this quaint, rare course.
And this course weathered like a unique wine inside a forgotten cellar, while the world outside went through many ups and downs. This course casually existed during the Vajpayee era, and it continued in a carefree way during the regime of Dr Manmohan Singh. This English course existed when there was the good old annual system, when we used to conduct final exams only at the end of the year, when we did not just teach and learn but relished the elan of literature in a leisurely manner. Then the semester system happened, and English Discipline continued its life in an absent-minded hurry within the semester system, undaunted by the upheavals. A specific sort of semester system titled CBCS (credit-based-choice-system) came into being, and still English Discipline remained as it was, largely unchanged, within the minor offering of two optional papers to choose from, during the two final semesters.
The syllabus was never standstill, let alone stagnant. Every now and then they used to replace a text or two. Sometimes that created a problem. Once DU changed the syllabus of the Renaissance paper, and Merchant of Venice was replaced by Othello at the eleventh hour without any time to prepare for the change. It was shocking for the students who expected to encounter Shylock but to their horror found Iago entering the stage.
Then under CBCS, the erstwhile semester syllabus in which we studied some postmodern and postcolonial stuff in the final year got changed, and we had the option of choosing between canonical modernity and popular literature. As the subject teacher I had the freedom to choose and also had the compulsion to offer only one of the two options (as mandated by the administration of our college, because they was weary of an increase in workload) and I thought popular literature would be fun.
So we studied detective fictions and children’s fictions in the two final semesters. The other options that I did not choose to teach had an excellent paper on modern drama which had, among other things, Bertolt Brecht. How I sometimes wished we had two sections, allowing students to be taught both these two options, canonical and popular. There is no watertight division between these two. Shakespeare was a churner of popular blockbusters during his lifetime. Brecht was an unapologetic populist.
*****
This is a requiem for English Discipline, a course which had five periods a week. Now, we have English minor in its place that has three periods per week. And, English minor just a watered down, diluted, downsized version of English Honours. Just the way Elective English used to be in Kolkata.
A separate, unique, lively course of English literature is what we’ve lost.
NEP starts, and English Discipline comes to an end. NEP was styled as a form of Indianization, and this meant that this “foreign” language called English will be put to a disadvantage (ironically English is still one of the two official languages of India). I often doubt that the present set of Indian rulers are over-compensating for their lack of fight against the English (as in the Raj) in the twentieth century by their enthusiastic fight against English (as in the language) in the twenty-first century.
Whatever.
As a result of their dismantling, decolonising exercise, some of the English Departments of some colleges of Delhi University witnessed a massacre: NEP almost destroyed their workloads. They heavily taught compulsory English language courses, and those courses were suddenly all gone. English teachers were looking at a dire prospect of being left without a class to teach.
No such problem at my workplace, though. We had the opposite problem of sorts for quite some time, since a number of older teachers retired and some contractual teachers left, and no replacements were recruited, and over the years it built up an unmanageable pile of overload. In other words, our English Department was seriously understaffed. So, NEP was a mixed curse, really. We lost some load but we were no longer overworked, so that came as a breather.
But, NEP did not just kill the compulsory English Language course (in DU parlance it was called AECC, Ability Enhancement Compulsory Course) in a decolonising gesture. It killed English Discipline, something that was a part of my professional identity and passionate commitment, something that I held dear to my heart.
New admissions in English Discipline within BA Programme stopped two years ago with the introduction of NEP in 2022. The last batch which entered our college with English Discipline was back in 2021. So, in 2024, the sunset batch of English Discipline graduated. Under NEP, we were left with downsized versions of English Honours titled Major and Minor.
An amazing and unique course was gone.
Change is the only constant feature on earth. Why then I mourn the loss, why then I’m writing this elegy, I wonder. The answer might be curious. Sometimes the minor differences mean a world to us, when it comes to identity, self-esteem and a desire for uniqueness. The thing is, while English Honours had, say, Macbeth, English Discipline defyingly had Othello. English Honours did not have any paper on detective literature, or children’s literature, but we had them. It’s funny, but this can be explained with what Freud called “Narcissism of Minor Differences”. It is not a full-fledged theoretical treatise so I shall desist from any further elaboration. Those who’re interested to find more may simply google: narcissism of minor differences by Freud.
I was an outsider in the DU English ecosystem. I was different because I came from elsewhere. But I gave a damn, I did not care, because English Discipline did not care. I was different, but then so was English Discipline. I was not supposed to be a downsized, second-class version of English ecosystem of DU, as the English Discipline that I taught refused to be and stood its guard. It was alright to be different, and minor differences were all that mattered.
And when my students competed with other students, and got into MA English Programs in various universities, that mattered. It screamed to the world about the ability of this course to empower its students who studied an entire span of English literature during their three years of study. They studied renaissance poetry and had an in-depth exposure to Shakespeare. While I asked my students to watch Shakespeare in Love as a window to the Elizabethan world, I saw that they enjoyed the strange dynamics of that era. My students studied metaphysical poetry, Reformation and Restoration poetry, Augustan Verse Satire. While they studied Romantic Poetry, I made them watch a movie titled Pandemonium which was a fictionalised, magical biography of Coleridge. My students studied Victorian poetry and Modern poetry. They studied nineteenth century novels, as we delved deeper into the gothic settings of Jane Eyre, the horror of the Red Room when Jane is a child, or a strange Rochester on horseback at night when Jane was young, or the madwoman of the attic, when Jane is a bride to be.
Some of my students went on to do masters in English, some of them have since been working as teachers. Some have cracked NET and are in the process of joining academic profession. I think they will feel sad knowing that the course does not exist any more.
*****
Yes, English Discipline syllabus will be missed, most of all. Some of the semester exam question papers will be fondly remembered, like one remembers with nostalgia a quiet sunset by the sea. Paris in the fictions of detective Dupin, or London in the fictions of Sherlock Holmes, Susanna’s comparison with the black widow spider in Ruskin Bond’s novel or Mukul as a Jatismar in the Feluda story, Iago as pure evil or Rochester as a Byronic hero – discussing such questions from the previous repertories or from the realms of probability on a rainy morning of September or a wintry afternoon of February – ah, such discussions will be fondly remembered. And missed, too.
We shall miss English Discipline. My ex-students of English Discipline may walk back to the corridors of the college one day in future, but they won’t ever catch me teaching this course anymore, like some of my ex-students did during the past. Those ex-students who came to visit me while an English Discipline class was under way often beamed with not just joy, love and nostalgia but the solemness of a cosmic assurance of continuity.
No more.
As English Discipline has been discontinued, very few would notice its loss inside the DU community, as it was a rare course from the beginning to the end. Most of the people in DU did not even know that such a course existed. This unique course of literature almost allowed one to hold the literary universe on one’s palm, allowed expanse without losing depth, allowed a student to specialise in English literature even though pursuing a general degree. It was a microcosm of hundreds of years of trajectory of English literature.
It is now a thing of the past. Its pattern, structure, philosophy belonged to a different era. It’s a misfit in the age of the insufferable lightness of being, the age of Major and Minor, Sec (Skill Enhancement Course) and Vac (Value Added Course).
The last batch of students of English Discipline keep on saying that they would miss me, miss my classes. I shall miss them too, needless to say. While our memories need to be preserved, and we should leave a record, as we live in a time of flux, in which poor English Discipline had to be sacrificed to uphold Indianization, I take this opportunity to look back to my days with this excellent course, its students, its texts, its discussions, its synaesthetic experiences. I look back at the radiant faces of my students. I remember walking into the English Discipline classroom accompanied by Professor Archna Mathur to deliver my first ever lecture. I remember the Individual and Society text which I shared with Professor Sunita Malik, or Sanjay Ningombam. I remember the names and faces of my students. Meenu, Babloo, Sadiq, Sania, Sushma, Akshita, Pranjal, Gautam Shreya, Raghvi, Sakhi, Himanshi, Dev, Vaibhav, Krishna, Ananya, Sarvesh, Sapna, Akansha – just to name a few, and apologies for all those I cannot mention here for the fear of making this article too long, but all of you are in my heart. And some of you are in my Instagram too, so we shall keep in touch.
Is this an Elegy for English in general? Is English literature as a whole suffering under NEP, and English Discipline was just a case in point? Time will tell.
English Discipline was a window, and it opened into a sky. It was a language, and it was a vast channel. Its methodology allowed us to explore the human condition. It was a frame that offered a vantage point on history, psychology, society and politics. It was a structure that made all of us fall in love with English literature and also worked as an analytical tool to examine all cultural structures.
Let us mourn its loss and try to preserve its memories from the jaws of oblivion. Let us breathe life into its memories so as to save it from meeting a mortal end. Let us resort to Shakespeare’s assurance, as we conclude.
“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
