RSS’ Dinanath Batra, who pulped Doniger’s book on Hinduism, dies
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue Dinanath Batra who single-handedly pulped American scholar Wendy Doniger's book on Hinduism passed away in the national capital on Wednesday. Batra was 94 and died after a prolonged illness.
Former chief of RSS run school network Vidya Bharati, which today runs 12,000 schools with 32 lakh students, Batra was best known for the legal battle he waged against Penguin India for its 2010 publication of Doniger's book ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History’
Batra took Penguin to court through the education activist organization, Shiksha Bachal Andolan Samiti he founded. The publisher finally settled the matter with him by withdrawing the controversial book from the Indian markets in 2014.
Penguin not only consented to stop publishing, distributing and selling Doniger's work in the country, it also agreed to destroy existing copies in the stock.
Batra had objected to the book as un-Indian and to its interpretation of Hinduism from a sexual lens.
अपना सर्वस्व शिक्षा को समर्पित करने वाले शिक्षा संस्कृति उत्थान न्यास के संस्थापक अध्यक्ष व शिक्षा बचाओ आन्दोलन के राष्ट्रीय संयोजक मा. दीनानाथ बत्रा जी के निधन का समाचार अत्यन्त दुःखद है। वे एक आदर्श शिक्षक और उच्च कोटि के शिक्षाविद थे। शिक्षा क्षेत्र में उनका योगदान अतुलनीय है।… pic.twitter.com/frvmr2Z9YN
— RSS (@RSSorg) November 8, 2024
Throughout life, Batra worked to resist the introduction of sex education in Indian schools, terming such content as against Indian values.
On June 30, 2014, the BJP-led government of Gujarat issued a circular declaring six textbooks authored by Batra to be part of the state education curriculum as supplementary literature. In 2014, the BJP-ruled Haryana roped in Batra to advise revamp of education in the state.
Rich tributes poured in for Batra who was principal of the first ever school the RSS established in India under its Vidya Bharati network.
This was Geeta Senior School at Kurukshetra of which Batra remained a headmaster for years.
Prior to this Dinanath Batra, born in Dera Ghazi Khan in undivided India, was headmaster at Dayanand Anglo Vedic School in Punjab's Dera Bassi.
A prolific writer and petitioner (he had filed at least 10 lawsuits on various issues concerning education, books and textbooks), Batra had in 2006 taken the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to court in a PIL which raised 70 objections to contents of secondary school history and social science syllabus.
Among these objections was the description of Shaheed-e-Azam Sardar Bhagat Singh, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, among other freedom fighters as revolutionary terrorists.
Atul Kothari, chief of the Shiksha Sanskriti Uthan Nyas, another RSS-linked educational organisation founded by Batra, said the late leader's body would be kept at the Narayan Vihar office of the Nyas for last respects.
The Nyas in a statement said Batra had dedicated his life to the cause of imbibing education with Indian values and Indian-ness.
"The National Education Policy of 2020 is a culmination of his lifelong efforts in the field," the Nyas said in its tributes.
