bengaluru in a bold and progressive move the newly revised curricul um of bengaluru central university bcu has included short stories on sexual minorities and folk tales on male perversities and patriarchal hegemonythe unpalatable offering one of the translated short stories exploring sexuality urbanization and class from kannada writer vasudhendras mohanaswamy has been included in the recently published additional english textbook for first year undergraduate courses timesviewinclusiveness is more or less an alien concept in indian society where gender religion caste and disability still remain a barrier to equality the lgbtq community is historically discriminated against and its important to get the conversation going to end the stigma bcu deserves appreciation for setting a precedent as this small yet significant step will go a long way in creating a more diverse educational environment lgbtqinclusive curricula at school and college levels will help educate people at a vulnerable age when some of them realise a schism between the gender assigned at birth and their true identityin the story the protagonist struggles with his loneliness which is part of his undisclosed sexual identity he prays for unmistaken companionship which would help him thrive in this world where he longs for a sustainable relationship the textbook summarises the chapter further asks students to discuss the protagonists life in the context of his sexual identity and sociocultural practices depicted in the story the textbook will be taught to 40000 students in all the first semester courses coming under the faculty of arts commerce and science of 244 ug colleges under bcu move to make students openmindedbcu authorities said the story was included with an objective to make students more open and unbiased about sexuality in the bu pg courses gender studies is a compulsory subject while the first semester talks about gender as binary the second one moves on to discuss its multiplicity and judith butlers theory of gender while were doing it at the postgraduate level we thought its important to make some reference at the undergraduate level as well we dont intend to make an overnight revolution but this is an attempt to make students openminded bengaluru as a society is also more liberal and we did not want to keep students in the dark said chitra panikkar professorchairperson department of english bangalore university and chairperson of the ug board of studies for bcuthe ba english textbook has hanchi from poetscholar ak ramanujans collection of folk stories it narrates the hardships a girl goes through because shes beautiful men including her brother cast their lecherous eyes on her and she is later subjected to accusations of adultery when she gets married these stories were discussed several times at the board meetings the review board had also sent back hanchi for reconsideration some opposed it as the girl appears all forgiving but we took the call to have it included as its a folk story and these genres carry such messages the stereotypes it perpetuate need to be discussed she added as a