ABSTRACT
In Indian universities, syllabi revisions and curricular reforms are central to the project of destabilisation of an erstwhile colonial English education system, and emergence of a new post-Independence academic discourse that seeks to represent caste, class, gender, and minority issues. The syllabus becomes a site of contestation where inclusions mark legitimacy. This paper argues that the emerging pedagogical interventions in curriculum are part of a global market for ethnic goods and the otherness of an Indian text enhances its commercial value. Courses on ‘popular literature’ which functions with an assumption that they destabilise the canonical English literary studies are then deeply embedded within a series of ideological operations that simultaneously appropriate and critique the Western cannon, and require new epistemological formulations. The paper focusses on Durgabai Vyam and Subhash Vyam’s graphic novel, Bhimayana: Experiences of Untouchability (2011), a prescribed textbook for the course ‘Popular Fiction’ in University of Delhi, and argues that once Bhimayana enters the classroom, it becomes a pedagogical tool and participates in a series of ideological inflections that alters the resonances of the category ‘popular’.
