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Pak students to protest Rushdie books' inclusion
The proposed inclusion of two famous works of India-born author Salman Rushdie in the additional courses for MPhil and PhD at the University of Peshawar has stoked the ire of students and teachers.
The proposed inclusion of two famous works of India-born author Salman Rushdie in the additional courses for MPhil and PhD at the University of Peshawar has stoked the ire of students and teachers.
The students are planning protests at the university campus and elsewhere in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province over the inclusion of two of the Booker Prize winner Rushdie's works Midnight's Children and Shame by the Department of English and Applied Linguistics.
The department's faculty board had approved these books in the curriculum for additional courses for MPhil and PhD.
A proposal was submitted to the dean of the faculty of arts and humanities for approval by the Academic Council of the university, The News reported today.
The Academic Council, which met recently with the acting vice chancellor Qibla Ayaz in the chair, approved the proposal "without even discussing it", the report said.
It further said that the students planned the protests as they considered Rushdie a "notorious blasphemer".
A member of the Academic Council expressed ignorance about the matter.
He said that the Academic Council had met after three years and the body had a lot of things to do.
"We could do nothing but approve each and everything. This also must have been approved without discussion," the unnamed official told the daily.
Earlier this year, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan decided not to attend an event in India after learning that Rushdie would be present too.
