Knowledge – its very disciplines – are today locked in a struggle for survival on university campuses in India. It is a bloodless war, but no less brutal for that. Most people in India remain blissfully unaware of this conflict and carry on with their business. On one side stand those who defend knowledge, armed with nothing but their training, their discipline, and their commitment to intellectual integrity. On the other side are the invaders, wielding a far more lethal weapon: nationalism, sharpened into its Hindutva form.The latest dispatches from this battlefield tell us that the standing committee of the academic council of Delhi University has asked the Departments of Economics and History to reconsider their curricula. In the Economics syllabus, the unit that has provoked particular ire is titled “Gender and the Economy.” Even within this, it is the sub-unit “Crime and Gender” that has most angered certain influential members of the committee. Their objections are twofold. First, they ask: What possible connection can gender have with the study of economics or the economy? Second, why should crimes related to gender be discussed at all? This, they insist, lies outside the domain of economics.The chair of the Economics Department tried to explain that violence against women – whether inside the home or outside – has a direct bearing on economic structures and outcomes. Such violence affects women’s participation in economic activity, often in deeply adverse ways. This relationship is well recognised and widely studied within economics across the world. The explanation made no impression. The committee members remained unmoved and returned the draft syllabus to the department. Now it remains to be seen what will happen if the department sends the syllabus back unchanged.Also read: Why the Suspension of a Jamia Professor Over a Question Paper Should Worry UsReading this report brought back a recent conversation with a colleague from the Economics Department. There was a paper in the syllabus titled “The Economics of Discrimination.” The standing committee had ordered its removal. When teachers from the department went to meet the chairperson of the committee, they were told that the very word ‘discrimination’ was offensive to the ear. How, they were asked, could such an unpleasant-sounding word be allowed into a syllabus?The Department of History was informed that there was no need to teach so much global history. India’s own history, they were told, was deep and vast enough – why look beyond it? The department explained that nearly 70% of the syllabus already dealt with Indian history, and only 30% with global history. If historians did not learn about the wider world, would they not risk becoming frogs in a well? The chair of the department stood his ground. We learn that it has also been suggested that the word ‘society’ be removed from a paper titled “Ancient Indian Economy and Society.”It has also emerged that books and articles by certain scholars have been marked for removal. Among them are Shireen Moosvi, Indrani Chatterjee, and Richard Eaton. This year alone, similar debates have taken place over proposed changes in the syllabi of the Departments of Psychology, Geography, and Political Science. The Department of Political Science, for instance, was advised to drop units on Pakistan and China, ‘religious nationalism’, ‘the politics of the RSS, ‘Islam in international relations’, and the civil war in Sri Lanka. The Department of Sociology was asked why it relied so heavily on foreign thinkers such as Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, and was advised instead to place greater emphasis on Indian thinkers and Indian family values.The Department of Geography was instructed to avoid topics such as internal conflict and nation-building. Social geography, which examines the location of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in social space, was also recommended for removal. “Foreign” terms such as caste, church, cult, and sect were to be replaced with supposedly Indian words like ‘rishi’ and ‘muni’. Books and writings by scholars such as Paul Brass and Nandini Sundar were removed. One might recall that the Delhi Police once accused Sharjeel Imam of having read Paul Brass, implying that this reading had corrupted his mind. Now, the representatives of Delhi University’s administration wish to protect students from the evil influence of Paul Brass.For the past eleven years, the making of syllabi has turned into a continuous tug-of-war. Hapless department heads have had to defend their curricula against volleys of nationalist and “Indianist” sophistry. Whatever the discipline – particularly in the humanities and social sciences – the moment words such as caste, gender, discrimination, sexuality, or LGBTQ appear, administrative representatives react with hostility. Foreign authors and thinkers provoke a similar unease. In their haste to “Indianise” knowledge, committee members do not hesitate to browbeat subject experts.Some heads of departments still feel a responsibility toward their disciplines and argue their case in committee meetings. Often, this requires tactical manoeuvring. Others find the struggle exhausting and pointless, and preemptively Indianise – and Hinduise – their syllabi. In my own field of Hindi literature, for instance, a paper on ‘Bhartiyata Bodh’ has been introduced. I have also heard that ‘Hindu Navotthan’ now forms part of the undergraduate syllabus. Even Premchand’s novel ‘Godaan’ has come under suspicion because, in the end, it is a Hindu who kills a cow. To read and teach such an “anti-Hindu” text is seen as an act of sacrilege. A search is now underway for works that conform to the ideology of Hindu nationalism. Unfortunately, such writers are scarce. When “authentically Indian” texts cannot be found, nationalist writings are pressed into service instead.At the undergraduate level, courses are increasingly taught in the name of values and skills that have little academic substance – papers on cleanliness or happiness, for example. These empty courses waste students’ time. Speak to students at Delhi University, and you will encounter a deep sense of betrayal. They feel they were lured by the institution’s reputation, only to be met with academic disappointment. A student recently told me that she chose a four-year BA programme, only to discover that the one-year MA exists nowhere except at Delhi University. She now has no alternative. She has, in effect, been taken hostage.The same logic governs PhD admissions. Instructions now prioritise candidates who have qualified for the JRF. The JRF or NET is little more than a lottery. It rewards mastery in rote memorisation rather than intellectual ability. We have watched with sadness as many exceptionally talented students fail repeatedly to clear it. The fault lies not with them, but with the nature of the examination. What kind of intellectual capacity is tested by questions about the colour of a character’s slippers in a particular scene, or the colour of another character’s cap? There is no need to assess research aptitude or writing ability. Meanwhile, officials insist that PhD admissions must be maximised. In some departments, hundreds of students are simultaneously enrolled in PhD programmes.Listen to the research topics being approved, and you’ll cry. Many in literary studies may not even be aware of the writings of Pokhriyal, who writes under the name Nishank. To remedy this alleged ignorance, research is now being conducted on his work. His qualification was perhaps political: he was a minister when the topic was approved. He no longer holds that office, but the quest to establish his literary significance continues undeterred.It would be wrong to say that everything is lost. As I have noted earlier, many department heads and teachers continue to devise ways to protect the dignity of their disciplines. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes they are forced into compromise. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Indian universities have become battlefields where a fierce struggle is underway between knowledge and Hindutva ideology. Knowledge itself cannot fight. On its behalf stand those teachers who still remain teachers, entering committee meetings prepared to counter an endless barrage of Hindutva idiocy.Outside public universities such as Delhi University or Jawaharlal Nehru University, disciplines like history, sociology, geography, and literature at institutions such as Ashoka University or Shiv Nadar University do not face such assaults. This year, foreign universities have opened campuses in India. Will their curricula also be aligned with Hindutva nationalism? If not, why not? Why are their students being denied the blessing of nationalism?What we are witnessing is the emergence of a new inequality in the domain of knowledge. On one side is an Indianised knowledge that turns away from contemporary research because it is labelled “foreign.” On the other is knowledge that continually enriches itself through research conducted anywhere in the world. If you were forced to choose, which would you choose? It is for this reason that many teachers now send their own children to private universities.The consequences of this new inequality will be grave. It is doubtful whether India’s public universities will continue to produce scholars of international standing. Will students trained under these curricula be accepted as researchers or teachers abroad? Will they be able to participate in the global community of knowledge? They are destined to lag behind their peers from private universities – and this is not their fault.For now, “anti-national” or “anti-Indian” books are merely being removed from syllabi. Slowly, they will disappear from libraries. Soon, they will cease to be mentioned at all. A long winter has begun to descend on the land of knowledge. Whether India’s Hindus will ever recognise the injustice being done to their children remains doubtful. Or perhaps that is not quite true. They cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for this slow annihilation of knowledge, for it is they who placed the sword in the hands of those now cutting its body, inch by inch.Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University.