Get the book back in curriculum! Somehow!!

Last week, I had voiced my serious misgivings about the way Rohinto Minstry's Such a long journey was taken off the Mumbai University's curriculum but I find that the issue is gathering steam. I thought it fit to give a wider audience for that issue and wrote about it in my fortnightly column on www.rediff.com, where it appears once a fortnight.

However, the media, save the Mumbai Mirror, by and large has given the issue a miss though this particular newspaper, after breaking the story on October 2, 2010 - mark the irony, on the day linked to Mahatma Gandhi, man who believed in freedoms - is persisting with the exposure, the latest one being today, October 13, 2010 where it asked the Vice Chancellor, Dr Rajan Welukar three questions.

I share Mirror's scepticism: Dr Welukar would remain quite, playing possum, hoping it would blow over. It would be nice to see this storm developing into a full scale demonstration against thoughtless, mindless mania of proscribing anything one individual or a group dislikes.

Let us see what unfolds as the days roll on. Will the Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan act and breach the sham veil of autonomy of the university and have the book restored? It has less to do with quality et al but more to do with freedom and procedure not yielding to goons because they feel it is bad medicine to have it on the syllabus.