Mangaluru: In face of stiff opposition to Mattaru Vittal Hegde’s ‘Maguvina Tandhe’ lesson prescribed for second BCom students, Mangalore University has withdrawn the same. The lesson, according to right-wing students’ organization ABVP, “encourages illicit relationships in society and hence not suitable for students”. Get health insurance for family @ETInsureET INSURE

The university, through an order issued by the registrar late on Tuesday, has said that the lesson has been forthwith withdrawn from the prescribed text. The lesson ‘Maguvina Tandhe’, a story by Hegde written in 1939, features in Kannada text ‘Nudi Nupura’.

In a joint statement, Mrunal Adyar, city secretary of ABVP, and Keshav Bangera, state vice-president, stated that MU has continued in its vainglorious ways of selecting Kannada lessons for textbooks for students. The board of studies apparently has forgotten the controversy generated by a similar episode last year, the duo stated.

When read in its totality, the lesson stresses on illegal physical experiments, has sexually explicit content and talks about extra-marital relationships. “This is an affront to Indian familial values and moralistic living,” Mrunal said, wondering how such a content can be taught in classrooms. According to them, the lesson has not taken into consideration what students in their adolescent age need, and what is right or wrong for them from their maturity point of view.

Such lessons are the reflection of grotesque mindset of self-proclaimed intellectuals and such people and their views will have a bearing on the moral fabric of society.

Inclusion of such lessons in textbooks is a deliberate attempt to misguide students and vitiate their healthy minds with impure thoughts. This will also pave the way for destroying family as an institution and such lessons have no place in textbooks that university prescribes, they said.

Going a step further, ABVP demanded that the university not only withdraw the lesson, but also ‘Nudi Nupura’ in toto as well, and act against the textbook formation committee for repeatedly putting the university in an embarrassing position.

The voice of opposition raised by the teaching community to such lessons is a welcome development, the organization added. Incidentally, the university communiqué did not mention the reasons for withdrawing the lesson.