A long journey

Mr Thackeray is not your regular bigot, claiming that people turn into cannibals by eating eggs or that caressing cows can cure cancer

In late 2010, a controversy rocked the verdant campus of the University of Mumbai. A student demanded that a novel — Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, published in 1991 and nominated for the Booker Prize — be removed from the syllabus. Students demanding less reading material is a constant in any university in the world. What is less common is the university accepting such a demand as the University of Mumbai did. Using special powers vested in him, the then vice-chancellor, Rajan Welukar, removed the book from the syllabus. After all, this was not just any another student, he