Papier Mache Artist

The mission is to change the country,  and the man on the job is Dinanath Batra, eightysomething and enthusiastic about “building character” and “changing the education system”. He does this by contesting  books that run counter to how he thinks India’s cultural history, mythology, epics, heroes, villains and freedom fighters must be seen and be represented. Anything he deems inappropriate—rather, incongruent with his view—he takes to the cleaners. That he was advisor to the NDA’s HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi in 2001 may give an indication of which way he leans politically.

It was Batra’s civil suit against The Hindus: An Alternative History, by Wendy Doniger, that led to Penguin abandoning the author and agreeing to withdraw, recall and pulp all copies of the book in an out-of-court settlement with his Shiksha Bachao Andolan. While Penguin crawled instead of fighting it out, Batra rejoiced. He believes free speech comes with a restriction: it must be true to the character of the country.

Not for him poet-scholar A.K. Ramanu­jan’s essay Three Hundred Ramayanas, with its layered interpretations. Three years back, Batra was instrumental in having it taken off the BA (History) syllabus of Delhi University (DU). A line on Sita being born from Ravan’s garbh (womb) had had him fuming. Not for him NCERT textbooks that referred to Aurangzeb as a saint or Shivaji as a bandit. “Is this how history should be taught to impressionable students?” he asks.

As for Doniger, he says he read the book of 700-plus pages and followed it up with a protest in front of the US Embassy in Delhi during which he courted arrest. He says Doniger ignored a court summons. He connects the book and the sort of views it propagates to many of the country’s troubles. “Most of the rapes that are happening in the country are because of wrong inter­pre­tations of the epics. For instance, there is a mention of Kunti being raped by Surya, the sun god. Is this what has been taught to us?” he asks.

“If you want to change the country, you have to begin by changing  education,” he says. Besides upholding a saffron-tinged view of history, he zealously pushes for education in one’s mother tongue. “Mother tongue, Gandhi said, is like mother’s milk, which imparts strength and character,” he says. “It’s important that primary education be imparted in the mother tongue.”

His vision of appropriate curricula for students made him contest the NCERT textbooks for Std IX in 2008. He filed suits against the NCERT and the HRD ministry, protesting some passages in the history section that he thought objectionable. The NCERT refused to comply and Batra had to retreat.

Not one to rest licking his wounds, he then trained his guns at DU for choosing the Ramanujan essay for its history students. Batra moved court, which directed the academic council of Delhi University to arrive at an appropriate deci­sion. The BJP’s youth wing, the ABVP, protested the essay and attacked the history department of the university. The academic council withdrew the book.

Batra’s zeal to introduce “Indianness” in education and his pride in our “glorious, ancient past” makes him pick and choose targets he perceives as threats to the system, leaving little room for dissent, contestation, or varied interpretations. There is only one view which is “correct” and it is the way Batra and those who are in agreement with him see it. No prizes for guessing the political colour of that world view.

Batra says he now plans to go after ano­ther book by Doniger, On Hinduism, published by Aleph. He has read it and says it has objectionable paragraphs des­cribing Sita’s birth and takes potshots at revered figures from the Mahabharata. Will Aleph stand by the author?