The BJP-led Madhya Pradesh Government has issued a directive making it mandatory for colleges across the state to incorporate books authored by leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), into their curriculum.

The order, issued by the M. P. Higher Education Department, has sparked a political slugfest, with opposition parties criticising the move as an attempt to promote a divisive ideology and the state government under the BJP saying that an anti-national ideology was being pushed earlier.

In a letter addressed to the principals of all government and private colleges, Dr. Dhirendra Shukla, a senior official of the Higher Education Department, instructed the institutions to purchase a set of 88 books. The list includes works penned by prominent RSS leaders such as Suresh Soni, Dinanath Batra, D Atul Kothari, Devendra Rao Deshmukh, and Sandeep Waslekar, all of whom are associated with Vidya Bharti, the educational wing of the RSS. Other authors include Indumati Katdare, Kailash Vishwakarma, Ganeshdutt Sharma, Satichchandra Mittal, BG Unkalkar, VK Gupta, Devi Prasad Sharma, Harishankar Sharma, Bajranglal Gupta, Rakesh Bhatia and Vasudev Sharan Agarwal.

While three of these books have been authored by Suresh Soni, maximum 14 books in the 88-strong list have been penned by Dinanath Batra, the former general secretary of Vidya Bharti.

It may be recalled here that Batra, who is considered one of the biggest RSS ideologues on education, had some years back reportedly proposed to remove revolutionary Punjabi poet Avtar Pash’s poem “Sabse Khatrnaak” from Class XI Hindi textbook Aaroh. Some years back, the Gujarat government had reportedly introduced books penned by Batra for its primary and upper-primary school students.

The list further includes at least ten books written by Dr Atul Kothari (ABVP’s former general secretary) and national secretary of Shiksha Sanskriti Uthan Nyas, which too is an affiliate of the RSS.