New Delhi:
Activist-author Dinanath Batra, who invited massive criticism for having American scholar Wendy Doniger's book pulped on grounds that it insulted Hindus, is now rooting for changes in school history books.
Mr Batra told NDTV that he has written to the central government asking them to get the "balance" back in history-writing. "I met Smriti Irani and asked her to change the syllabus," he said today.
"These books are the work of Marx and Macaulay's sons (sic). The books are not rooted to the culture of the land," he added.
The Gujarat government has recommended one of his books, "Shiksha Ka Bharatikaran (the Indianisation of Education)" for the state's 42,000 school libraries, but not as mandatory reading.
Speaking to NDTV, he tore into what he described as skewed history teaching in schools.
"Why are there just two lines on Maharana Pratap and two pages on (Mughal emperor) Akbar? Historians have made heroes of somebody like Aurangzeb," he said.
The retired schoolteacher, who once worked for schools run by the BJP's ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was in the spotlight in February this year for his lawsuit against author historian Wendy Doniger's "The Hindus: An Alternative History."
Publisher Penguin India was forced to destroy copies of the book as part of a Delhi court-backed settlement and was pilloried by authors and activists for its capitulation.
Mr Batra had moved court in 2011 arguing that Ms Doniger's book insults Indians, especially Hindus, and is a "shallow, distorted, non-serious presentation of Hinduism filled with heresies".
He also petitioned in 2012 against the Civil Services Exam Aptitude Test, which is currently at the centre of angry protests by students in Delhi. Civil services aspirants say the preliminary test gives English-speaking candidates an unfair advantage.
"The government is not handling the issue well," he told NDTV, "All Indian languages should be treated equally. If English paper is not compulsory for mains, why should it be for prelims?"