Mumbai: Due to a shortage of funds, Mahatma Gandhi International University at Wardha has dropped the Urdu subject from the institute. The Urdu Department was rumoured to be merged with the Hindi Department.
Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Hanuman P Shukla told Times of India, “The UFC circular stops us from engaging guest lecturers to teach a subject. Now, Urdu will be taught as comparative Indian literature.”
However, while such an indigenous language has been eliminated from the university, foreign tongues like Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and French face no such danger.
Though a few people like Urdu columnist Hassan Kamal and Mumbai Congress Minority Department’s Vice Chair Mudassar Patel commented negatively on the move.
Kamal lamented that with the New Education Policy placing more emphasis on mother tongues, Urdu should not have met this fate.
Patel asked that the university restore the course as well especially with some of the foreign languages intact.