What the UGCRC Doesn’t Want Students to Read: Meena Kandasamy’s ‘Touch’

As part of UGC’s Learning Outcome-Based Curriculum Framework (LOCF) for undergraduate programmes, the Delhi University decided to update the syllabi of several courses this year. The process began in January and many changes have been made since then. However, it seems like DU’s curriculum row is not going to be resolved anytime soon.

According to the Indian Express, The UGCRC asked the English department to replace poet Meena Kandasamy with Premchand and Amitav Ghosh with RK Narayan. The commitee has also asked the department to remove any reference to the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and Jan Natya Manch.

The English department has refused to accept any of these changes. The Indian Cultural Forum supports this decision and celebrates the work that all of us—students, and all other citizens—must continue to read.

The following is the poem 'Touch' by Meena Kandasamy.

Have you ever tried meditation? Struggling hard to concentrate, and keeping your mind as blank as a whitewashed wall by closing your eyes, nose, ears; and shutting out every possible thought. Every thing. And, the only failure, that ever came, the only gross betrayal— was from your own skin. You will have known this.

Do you still remember how, the first distractions arose?.

And you blamed skin as a sinner; how, when your kundalini was rising, shaken, you felt the cold concrete floor skin rubbing against skin, your saffron robes, how, even in a far-off different realm— your skin anchored you to this earth.

Amidst all that pervading emptiness, touch retained its sensuality. You will have known this.

Or if you thought more variedly, about taste, you would discount it—as the touch of the tongue. Or, you may recollect how a gentle touch, a caress changed your life multifold, and you were never the person you should have been.

Feeling with your skin, was perhaps the first of the senses, its reality always remained with you You never got rid of it, You will have known this.

You will have known almost every knowledgeable thing about the charms and the temptations that touch could hold.

But, you will never have known that touch – the taboo to your transcendence, when crystallised in caste was a paraphernalia of undeserving hate.