Dinanath Batra: The ‘educationist’ who waged war against knowledge

The RSS stalwart used lawsuits to pulp books and purge curricula on the grounds of making education ‘Indianness-centric’.

Dinanath Batra (left) receives a memento from RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at a programme commemorating the 125th birthday of RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar in Kolkata on April 01, 2015. | Photo Credit: SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH

Dinanath Batra has passed away. This should have been important news for India’s education world, but the tributes have not started pouring in yet.

Reporting Batra’s death, some newspapers called him an important educationist and an advocate of value-centric and Indianness-centric education. Calling people like Batra educationists is an insult to the word. What the newspapers did not write is what Batra’s Indianness-centric education actually meant, but that becomes clear when one learns that he was a long-time associate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

The founder of the RSS-backed Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti and Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas, Batra was also the head of the RSS’s educational institution Vidya Bharati. Today it has 12,000 schools and about 32 lakh students. When we learn about this association, we understand the true nature of the Indian-ness that Batra propagated.

One newspaper has written, quite rightly, that Batra is known in India’s education sector for his anti-education lawsuits. He was a habitual litigant, or rather, an ideological litigant. He filed several lawsuits against the books of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). He filed a lawsuit against a book by Wendy Doniger. The result of his lawsuit was that the publisher pulped all copies of Doniger’s book for fear of vandalism. Batra filed a lawsuit to remove A.K. Ramanujan’s famous essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” from Delhi University’s undergraduate history course, with the result being the university itself removed the piece from its course. The list of his lawsuits spans decades.

Batra’s consistent complaint in all these cases was that the books or texts were anti-Hindu or anti-Indian. Apart from the cases in which he was directly involved, people associated with his organisational network also filed cases copiously against historians, writers, and artists at different places. The world-famous artist M.F. Husain was their special target. There were nearly 100 cases against him across the country, a harassment that finally forced him to leave the country.

Batra was an important guide to the RSS in educational and cultural matters. His work clearly showcases the RSS understanding of India and of education. Batra wrote to NCERT that all Urdu, Arabic and Persian words should be removed from Hindi books. He started a campaign to remove the works of Avtar Singh Pash, Ghalib and Tagore from curricula. In 2006, a campaign was launched against the lessons of Premchand, Ayodhya Prasad Upadhyay (Hari Oudh), Pandey Bechan Sharma (Ugra), Mohan Rakesh, Sudama Pandey (Dhumil), Avtar Singh Sandhu (Pash), and M.F. Husain from Hindi books, on the claims that they were all anti-Hindu or anti-national. His campaign reached Parliament and created havoc in NCERT circles.

Batra’s campaign to purge textbooks of what he deemed “anti-Indian” elements knew no bounds. For instance, he once petitioned NCERT and CBSE about a lesson on M.F. Husain in a Hindi book which asked students to look for the works of major painters online to familiarise themselves with their art. Batra claimed that this would expose students to Husain’s paintings, which he believed insulted Hindu gods and goddesses. He said this would have a bad effect on the children. The then NCERT director Krishna Kumar rejected Batra’s demand. When CBSE considered instructing teachers to skip this exercise recommended in the lesson, curriculum committee members rejected the idea, finding insufficient arguments to support Batra’s demand.

Batra fancied himself an expert on all subjects and was recognised as one by the BJP government in Gujarat, which made 16 of Batra’s books compulsory reading in schools. Some of those books are as follows:

• Don’t blow out candles on your birthday. This is Western culture which should be avoided. Perform havan on the day and feed cows.
• While drawing the map of India, include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma in it. These are parts of undivided India (Akhand Bharat).
• Television was invented before the Mahabharata. After all, Sanjaya showed the Mahabharata war to the blind Dhritarashtra by telecasting it to him live.
• Books in the Paramdeep series claimed that childless couples will get children by serving cows.
• In the book Tejomay Bharat, Batra wrote that stem cell technology came to India with the Mahabharata, the proof being the birth of 100 Kauravas. Similarly, motorcars too came to India at that time.

Litigation strategy

Batra spent his entire life propagating such ideas to instil false pride among Hindus about their ancient greatness. While such nonsense is not legally defined as criminal, it carried an underlying aggression and violence. Batra consistently harassed professional historians and textbook writers through legal means. When confronted by Ravish Kumar in a TV discussion, Batra claimed innocence, stating that he only filed legal complaints, which was his constitutional right. However, as an RSS member, his legal actions were coordinated on ground with physical attacks by members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad or Bajrang Dal, while the BJP created an associated political drama in Parliament and State Assemblies.

This coordinated campaign combining legal, streetside, and legislative attacks created terror among academics and writers who, as individuals, struggled to counter such an organised assault.

The violent campaign even influenced foreign publishers in India, who began to avoid authors and subjects that Batra’s group might deem anti-Indian. Major publishers now routinely have books and essays legally vetted to avoid lawsuits from Batra-like figures.

Batra deserves to be remembered and researched to reveal how he became one of the biggest enemies of intellectualism, academic freedom, and independent intelligence. Perhaps this is a basic condition for joining the RSS. There also needs to be an assessment of how much damage Batra did to India. He sowed the seeds of idiocy, suspicion, and hatred towards others in generations of students who studied in thousands of Vidya Bharati schools nationwide. Batra must be held guilty for the anti-Muslim and anti-intellectual sentiments he sowed that have now become a feature of Hindutva warriors worldwide.

Tragically, India’s current national education policy under this government draws inspiration from someone like Batra who forced knowledge to go underground. Batra must have spent his last days with the satisfaction of knowing that his dream of bringing “cultural pride” to India’s Hindus was coming true. His organisation now wields tremendous influence. Its officials are welcomed respectfully at educational institutions and their recommendations shape education policies and textbooks.

The apex that Batra’s organisation and his ideas have reached in today’s India mark the high point for the man and his campaign. But can the same be said about India, which once prided itself on its intellectual traditions?

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at Delhi University and writes literary and cultural criticism.