DU Drops Delhi Sultanate & Four Other History Courses From PG Syllabus

Delhi University has discontinued the postgraduate history paper ‘The Delhi Sultanate: Structures of Authority in Medieval North India (13th-14th Centuries).'

The course examined the formation of the medieval state that ruled large parts of the Indian subcontinent for an extended period, how rulers exercised authority, and the political, cultural and religious life of the era.

The removal was officially notified in the university’s syllabus published on August 7.

Other Dropped Courses

Several other Semester III topics were omitted. These include 'History of North India, c. 1400-1550', 'Political Processes and Structure of Polities in Ancient India', 'Gender and Women in Early India: 1500 BCE to 1000 CE' and 'Religion and Society in Ancient Indian Literature'.

These subjects passed the syllabus approval stages but were excluded from the final notification, official records cited by The Indian Express reported. The publication reported that while the History Department proposed 38 Discipline Specific Elective papers, only 16 were notified for Semester III.

NEP Policy Shift

The syllabus restructuring began under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. These postgraduate revisions follow undergraduate changes initiated in 2022-23.

While an undergraduate paper on the Delhi Sultanate still exists, a faculty member told The Indian Express that the two cannot be compared. The faculty member described the removed course as "a core medieval India paper for several decades".

A member of the Faculty of Social Sciences told the publication there is "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".

Official Response

Delhi University's Dean of Academic Affairs, K Ratnabali, said the university did not hold back any courses.

"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 told The Indian Express.