Succumbing to the pressure of RSS’s student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), Tamil Nadu’s Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli, has removed Arundhati Roy’s Walking with Comrades from its syllabus.

The book forms part of the additional reading material for students in the third semester in MA English Literature. It is recommended under the ‘Commonwealth Literature’ elective and has been a part of the syllabus since 2017. The book, according to its publishers Penguin Random House, is a non-fiction account of ‘a little known rebel movement in India’. “Roy takes readers to the unseen front lines of this ongoing battle, chronicling her months spent living with rebel guerrillas in the forests. In documenting their local struggles, Roy addresses the much larger question of whether global capitalism will tolerate any societies existing outside of its colossal control,” Penguin House website says about the book.

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The letter seeking removal of the book sent to the university’s Vice-Chancellor by ABVP alleged the book openly encourages armed revolutions of Maoists against the nation. “For the past three years, Naxal and Maoist ideas were directly imposed on the students. Since the book kindles hatred towards the nation in the minds of students, many students were subjected to stress,” the petition alleged.

Condemning the university management for adding this book, the ABVP demanded an apology from the university and to remove the book from its syllabus threatened to take the matter to the Ministry of Education and organise several protests if there is any delay in this.

Vice-Chancellor K Pitchumani formed a committee to examine the matter and decided to remove the book which has been replaced with another book by Padma Shri-winning Naturalist Krishnan.

Madurai LS MP and CPI (M) leader Su Venkatesan, a writer, condemned the university’s decision to drop the book from its syllabus. DMK MP Thamizhachi Thangapandian tweeted: “If those in power decide what students should study, social justice, plurality and freedom of expression will become a question mark, that this act shows the authoritarianism of those in power.

DMK MP Kanimozhi tweeted: “When ruling power and politics decide what is art, literature and what students should study, a society’s pluralism will be destroyed”.