Politics by legal means: Sanskrit pressure group is the new Dinanath Batra in town

In 2010, Dinanath Batra sent a legal notice to the editor of a newspaper, protesting a story on Hindu terrorism.

A few years later, when Batra became the head constable of India’s book police, the The Hindu editor N Ram was asked about the legal notice and his reaction to it by Mint. “Wonder what it was,” he said, perfunctorily dismissing Batra and his legal threat.

Unfortunately, Penguin wasn’t quite as blase, choosing instead to cave in the face of Batra’s lawsuit against Wendy Doniger’s history text, The Hindus. Ever since Batra tasted blood by getting Penguin India to pulp Wendy Doninger’s book, the threat of legal action has become the most potent weapon for those eager to get their fiat imposed on the academic discourse and meddle with school and university curricula. Batra alone has filed 10 legal cases so far against authors and academic institutions. He proudly claims that he got his way every time except when he was partially repulsed by the NCERT for challenging 75 “objectionable” passages in its textbooks.

Now we have a new Dinanath in town: The Sanskrit Shikshak Sangh (SSS)—a group of teachers and scholars that got the government to ban German as the third language in Kendriya Vidyalayas. Much as Penguin, the Modi government chose to buckle under their pressure rather than allowing the SSS lawsuit run its course through the courts.

Emboldened by its victory, the group is threatening to go to court once again. This time to get teaching of foreign languages banned in private schools.

One of their interesting arguments in favour of Sanskrit is that its scholars never think of committing suicide because of the moral values the language imparts. “Teaching the core values of Sanskrit should be made compulsory — even if for only up to 10 marks — in all courses, be it in schools or courses like engineering, MBA, etc,” SSS president DK Jha told the Indian Express.

In any other country, such facile arguments would have been instantly laughed away as fantasy. But not in today’s India.

If the recent events are an indication, this is how the events will pan out: The SSS will mount pressure through people like Batra and academicians with links to the RSS on the government, which will be followed by a lot of hand-wringing in the HRD ministry over their inability to fight a legal battle, and finally private schools will be made to ban foreign languages and adopt Sanskrit.

It may not be welcome, but it is not surprising when publishers and writers cave in under pressure. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter Upinder Singh, a professor of history, had summed it up poignantly when talking about one of Batra’s legal notices.

In 2008, Batra had moved court against for getting AK Ramanujam’s famous essay on the various version of Ramayana from Delhi University’s history syllabus. Speaking to the Mint, Manmohan Singh’s daughter Upinder Singh, who had helped design the syllabus, said: “It is very demoralizing for scholars who have to deal with legal notices, lies, brow beating just for doing their work.”

Penguin cited threats to its employees as one reason for settling out of court. In India, being right, or even on the right side of the law is hardly a guarantee of well-being.

But why should a government and its ministries be so eager to cave under the first sign of pressure?

There could be just one explanation for the BJP’s refusal to counter the legal threats of such organizations: their agenda is in congruence with the core philosophy of the RSS. There may also be a case for suspecting that such organizations have actually been propped up those who wish to tweak our cultural and academic discourse for the benefit of the proponents of Hindutva. A thorough probe of the organizations leading the campaign could throw up some embarrassing facts.

But, it would be wrong to blame just the BJP. A few years ago, Rajasthan’s Ashok Gehlot government had leaned on organizers of the Jaipur Literature Festival to stop Salman Rushdie from attending a session. (In fact he was not even allowed to speak via a video chat from London). Gehlot bent over backwards to appease Muslim groups who had threatened to go to court against Rushdie.

Pusillanimity runs deep into the veins of our politicians. Pity them? Don’t. Their cowardice is just a fig leaf to cover their political agendas and vote-bank compulsions.