LIBERAL APPREHENSIONS that the sweeping victory of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in General Election 2014 would result in tampering and messing with school curriculums, are proving to be justified in Gujarat where a BJP government has been in power since 2001.
On June 30 the Gujarat State School Textbook Board (GSSTB) issued a circular gifting a set of eight books authored by Dina Nath Batra, member of the executive council of Vidya Bharati — the education wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu revivalist and cultural organisation and ideological and spiritual mentor of the BJP — to 42,000 primary-secondary schools across the state as “supplementary literature”. “They will be provided free of cost to all government primary and secondary schools, public libraries and will also be available at the GSSTB office in Gandhinagar,” says the circular.
Comments Dr. Bharat Pandit, director of GSSTB: “These books have several references from our rich history and they will help students develop moral values which should be considered an integral part of education. We hope that students will benefit from them.” 50,000 copies of each of these books have reportedly been distributed.
Described as a retired school teacher with uncertain academic antecedents, Batra shot into the national limelight when he filed a lawsuit in 2010 against US-based author-historian, Wendy Doniger for “insulting Indians” in her book The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009). Batra’s plaint, which described the book as “shallow, distorted, non-serious presentation of Hinduism filled with heresies”, prompted Penguin India to recall and pulp all copies in fulfillment of a Delhi court-backed settlement.
By any yardstick, Batra’s credentials as a historian and intellectual are questionable. In one of his books endorsed by GSSTB with a foreword by prime minister Narendra Modi, he writes that the Indian map should include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Burma as they are all a part of Akhand Bharat. “Undivided India is the truth, divided India is a lie. Division of India is unnatural and it can be united again…”
In another title Shikshan nu Bhartiyakaran (‘Indianisation of Education’), he advises against the celebration of birthdays with cakes and candles because it’s a western practice. “Instead, we should follow a purely Indian culture by wearing swadeshi clothes, doing havan, reciting Vedic mantras such as Gayatri, distributing new clothes to the needy, feeding cows, distributing prasad and ending the day by playing songs produced by Vidya Bharati,” he writes. Batra also describes black people as “negroes” who are “violent” and “half-baked criminals”.
The reaction of academics and the intelligentsia to the content of Batra’s books endorsed by the Gujarat state government ranges from amazement to contempt. “This is absurd. If education is about training children how to think, this approach won’t work,” commented eminent historian Dr. Romila Thapar in The Hindustan Times (July 28).
“The contents are so absurd that any reaction would seem superfluous,” comments Dr. Irfan Habib, professor emeritus of Aligarh Muslim University.
With the 13-year-old BJP government in Gujarat headed by Modi until 60 days ago approving such over-the-top textbooks for impressionable school children, and now that the chief minister has become prime minister, it’s hardly surprising that alarm bells are ringing in Indian academia.
Suverchala Kashyap (Vadodara)