DU axe on Indian languages in BA Programme over empty seats; teachers blame CUET, vacancies

Sohail Khan*, two years into a PhD programme in Urdu at Delhi University, hopes to teach it at the college level one day. But by the time he finishes, there may not be many jobs left in modern Indian languages at the central university.

At DU, teaching of Modern Indian Languages (MIL) has been shrinking for years. Academics point to a variety of reasons for this – the university’s alleged reluctance to hire teachers, half-hearted approach to admissions and finally, the Common University Entrance Test (CUET UG), introduced in 2022, and online counselling. Now, a new DU proposal to restructure the undergraduate BA Programme will likely deal a body blow to these departments across colleges and the university.

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Based on counselling data, DU admission branch has asked colleges to rejig their BA Programme seat matrices for the next academic year, 2026-27. The goal: to offer combinations of ‘popular’ disciplines only as part of the BA Programme offerings and eliminating those less subscribed. A presentation made before college principals late last month shows where the axe will likely fall – modern Indian languages.

The proposal has not only alarmed teachers – it saw several dissent notes from elected members of DU’s Academic and Executive Councils in their December meetings – it has created deep uncertainty in research scholars who intend to pursue academic careers in Indian languages.

“For those of us doing a PhD with the aim of teaching in universities, this is extremely worrying,” said Khan. “If UG and PG courses are reduced or discontinued, there will be no future recruitment. Departments will shrink and language teaching will be reduced to a few introductory or certificate-level courses.”

This not only spells doom for teachers already employed and research scholars hoping to join them, but also belies the union government’s claims of preserving and promoting Indian languages and culture.

“The NEP supposedly encourages Indian languages but practically, they are not treated as academic disciplines. Science and technology are priorities while literature and language studies are slowly pushed out,” said Khan. The National Education Policy (NEP 2020) does indeed emphasise the promotion of Indian languages.

DU: BA Programme and Indian languages

The BA Programme offers a combination of subjects from the humanities, languages and social sciences instead of focussing on one discipline as in ‘Honours’ programmes.

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Colleges with modern language departments and teachers have in the past bundled ‘popular disciplines’ with languages to both encourage students to study them and maintain workload for teachers.

Now, DU wants this restructured, based on data from the Common Seat Allocation System (CSAS), used to conduct online admission counselling after CUET results are declared each year.

At a meeting with college principals on November 28, the DU admission branch presented an analysis of undergraduate admissions data between 2019 – the last year of regular merit-based admissions that weren’t affected by the Covid pandemic – and 2025’s CUET- based admissions.

The presentation compared seat utilisation before and after CUET.

As per the presentation, DU filled 72,229 seats in 2025, against a sanctioned strength of 71,642; in 2019, it had filled 68,213 of 70,735 seats. The admission branch argued that CUET had made the process more transparent and controlled by reducing over-admissions that were common earlier.

However, the presentation pointed out uneven enrolment across streams. While commerce courses recorded over 110% seat utilisation, science and BA programme courses were largely filled and language courses had the lowest fill rate, at 81.22%.

Based on this analysis, officials proposed restructuring the BA Programme combinations for which there wasn’t even one applicant for every two seats, or a preference-to-seat ratio below 50%. They suggested that low- demand combinations be restructured or discontinued, while programmes with high demand be promoted. Teachers have heard that combinations involving Indian languages such as Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi, were suggested as candidates for realignment or reduction at the meeting.

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A few days later, on December 3, DU issued a notification asking colleges to redraw their BA programme seat matrices and submit revised proposals by December 8, triggering objections from elected academic council members.

A dissent note from EC member, Mithuraaj Dhusiya, circulated during the meeting last week, objects to the restructuring process being initiated without academic discussion or scrutiny by elected academic representatives.

Few seats in Indian languages

Dhusiya’s note points out that BA Programme combinations with Indian languages as subjects already have very few seats. It cites the example of Bengali. BA Programme combinations with a Bengali component have under 100 seats across six DU colleges. Their distribution is as shown below.

Tamil and Telugu show a similar pattern. Miranda House has only five BA Programme seats with Tamil, while Sri Venkateswara College offers 13 seats each for Tamil and Telugu, paired with political science or history.

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“It is important to investigate if closing down small courses can really account for several thousands of seats remaining vacant,” Dhusiya’s note states. It points out that the languages are especially vulnerable in colleges where they are taught only as part of BA Programmes and not as Honours courses. It will cause the collapse of teachers’ workload and eventually, the elimination of those posts altogether.

While current students are not directly affected, many worry that changes will have long-term consequences for Indian language departments. “We are continuing our studies as normal but if admissions are cut or seats are reduced, the department itself will shrink. That will affect junior batches, research opportunities and the overall academic environment,” said a student currently enrolled in BA Programme with Bengali and history as subjects.

DU: Admissions and recruitment

Delhi University has struggled to fill language department seats before as well. Dhusiya’s note acknowledges that as do other academics.

Imtiaz Ahmad, a faculty member in Delhi University’s Department of Urdu, pointed out that Urdu has been shrinking for years. “It was offered in many colleges earlier. It did not shut down overnight. It was closed one by one, over a long period. Today, it is available in only about nine colleges,” Ahmad said.

While having fewer takers than, says economics, is just one reason for this, it’s not the only one. Tamil professor Uma Devi said the crisis is fundamentally about lack of teachers.

“The problem is not that students are unwilling to study Indian languages. The real issue is that there are no teachers and no proper language centres. If a college does not have a Tamil teacher, where will a student go to learn Tamil?”

Across DU, she said, there are only two permanent Tamil teachers in colleges, three in the department, and only one teacher each for Kannada, Malayalam and Marathi.

“Whenever a teacher retires, the university simply does not recruit a new one. This is how Tamil was removed from Miranda House, from School of Open Learning, and from several other colleges,” she explained.

There is no real push for the languages and departments that exist have been allowed to atrophy. Ahmad explained how.

“In postgraduate Urdu, we have 177 sanctioned seats,” he said. “This year, 136 students applied, but only 17 were admitted. When workload is reduced, vacancies will never be filled. This is a slow, structural dismantling.”

He described this as part of a broader shift towards self-financing.

“Universities are being pushed to generate resources. But languages are not profit-making subjects. They are passion-driven disciplines rooted in culture, literature and critical thinking.”

CUET UG exam, CSAS portal

The twin reforms of the CUET exams and NEP have sharply worsened the situation.

Ahmad pointed out that while restructuring is not new, the scale of disruption after CUET is unprecedented.

“Course restructuring has always happened from time to time,” he said. “But after CUET, the entire admission process has changed. It is neither student-friendly nor teacher-friendly. Everything has become centralised, mechanical, and removed from the classroom.”

“Earlier, a college with 4,000 seats would have 5,000 students. Now some colleges barely have 2,500 students for the same number of seats. Nearly 50% of seats are vacant in many places. This is not only about Indian languages, this is about how admissions are being run.”

While the DU presentation reports over-admission taking all seats together, teachers point out that there are wide variations between subjects. For this, they blame the centralised system of admissions through the CSAS portal.

“After CUET, admissions to language courses have dropped sharply. In the third year, enrolment has fallen by nearly 50%. Before CUET, our seats used to get filled.”

Explaining the structural shift, he said, “Earlier, admissions were college-centric. Colleges released their own cut-offs, and students chose nearby colleges. After CUET, admissions are completely centralised. Colleges no longer have control,” said former AC-member Samrendra Kumar, “I have personally approved students during admissions, but many of them didn’t take admission because the allotted college was far from their residence. There is no transparency in how seats are allotted.”

Munshi Md. Younus, who teaches Bengali at Zakir Husain Evening College, said the absence of physical counselling in the admission process has played a major role in declining enrolment. “Earlier, admissions were decentralised. Students could come physically to colleges, interact with teachers and receive academic guidance. This helped many students understand which courses suited them best,” he explained. “Now, admissions are completely centralised and online. Many students, especially those coming from outside Delhi, don’t know which colleges offer which language courses. Information exists on websites, but it is not always visible or accessible.”

NEP blow

Over the same period, DU has restructured its curriculum to align with the goals of the National Education Policy 2020 and a National Credit Framework. This has “diluted” academic engagement, argued Ahmad.

“You are expected to complete extensive courses in four credits. How do you teach the history of Urdu literature, which has twelve units, in four lectures? What kind of learning will that produce?”

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If the trend continues, Kumar warned, “Indian language departments will gradually disappear. Faculty positions will shrink, and remaining teachers will be asked to teach generic VAC courses instead of core language subjects.” VAC courses are “value addition courses” – add-ons expected to develop skills that make graduates employable.

DU’s ‘popularity’ argument

The framing of subjects as ‘popular’ or ‘unpopular’ has also irked academics.

“We come from an academic tradition,” said Younus. “Popularity does not decide the value of a subject. Calling a discipline unpopular does not mean it is inferior or unimportant.”

He pointed out that vacant seats exist across disciplines. “If vacant seats are the only criterion, then many so-called elite science and professional courses also have vacant seats. Will they also be reduced?”

“When languages disappear, cultures disappear,” Uma Devi added. “Language education is not just academic but also civilisational.”

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Central policies appear to agree with Devi and Younus. In its policies and public pronouncements, the union government professes to support Indian languages and has even launched initiatives – Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat, Bharatiya Bhasha Utsav, the app Bhashini and others – to that end.

The NEP 2020, too, recommends multilingual education and even suggests “bilateral agreements” between states to facilitate language teacher recruitment at the school level.

But DU is not building on this momentum.

“This is a move towards a monolingual university structure,” Dhusiya’s note points out, adding that it contradicts the "much-vaunted claims about promoting Indian languages and literature in the UGCF imposed on DU as per the NEP".

The UGCF is the Undergraduate Curriculum Framework.

Younus added: “Delhi University is a central university created by an Act of Parliament. It is not a private shop. It has a constitutional responsibility to protect India’s linguistic and cultural diversity.”