New Delhi: From declaring Akbar a “rapist” to claiming that it was not the Wright Brothers who invented the aircraft, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Madan Dilawar has veered into one controversy after another since taking charge as Rajasthan’s school education minister this January.
The six-term MLA has been on a mission to push the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and to brandish his credentials as that of a Hindutva leader. In some political circles, he is even referred to as Rajasthan’s Narottam Mishra, who served as home minister in the previous Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government in Madhya Pradesh.
According to political analyst Rajan Mahan, “Dilawar has been a firebrand leader of the BJP since its early days, although he was not a very big leader during the tenures of (Bhairon Singh) Shekhawat and (Vasundhara) Raje.”
“The Hindutva flavour was not the main ingredient of his politics earlier, but now Hindutva is the core focus. Over time, he has risen the ranks and tries to consolidate the party’s strength ahead of polls, particularly in the Hadoti region, which is an RSS stronghold,” Mahan told ThePrint.
A cabinet colleague of the minister added, “Dilawar was in the Bajrang Dal and was a close associate of Pravin Togadia. After the 1989 riots (in Kota), he was among those accused of making provocative speeches.”
“The Ram temple agitation gave many hardline Hindutva leaders a platform and Dilawar by raking up one controversy after another seized the opportunity. Being a Dalit also helped him climb up the ranks in the BJP.”
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Madan Dilawar on Akbar & Wright Brothers
During a curriculum review meeting in Jodhpur Tuesday, Dilawar trained his guns at Akbar declaring that the 16th-century Mughal ruler was a “rapist” and to “take his name in India is a sin”.
“When we were students, we read that Akbar was great. I was also taught this, but I have also heard that he used to hold ‘meena bazaars’, pick up beautiful girls and women, and rape them… How can a rapist be great,” he was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
The minister also said a panel would review school textbooks to cleanse them of any content that ‘shows national heroes in bad light’.
To the chagrin of several historians have contended that to see Akbar in the same light as Aurangzeb or Babur is an unfair comparison, leaders of the Hindu Right have at times termed all of them “invaders”.
On Wednesday, Dilawar courted yet another controversy when he claimed that it was not Orville and Wilbur Wright but an Indian by the name of Shivkar Bapuji Talpade who flew the first unmanned aircraft, in Mumbai, but the incident was not recorded since the country was under colonial rule.
“Whenever we talk about the making of aeroplanes, the Wright Brothers’ name appears, but it is not true. The truth is that an Indian named Talpade had already invented an aircraft before the Wright Brothers,” he said at the closing ceremony of Rajasthan Vigyan Mahotsav in Jaipur.
In January, a video from 2019 showing Dilawar went into circulation on social media in which the minister was seen praying to god to bring illness and misfortune to those who do not dispose of single-use plastics.
Earlier this month, he said parents were partly to blame for the rising instances of student suicides in Kota. Children who have no interest in engineering or medical studies are being pressured to become engineers or doctors which is resulting in them taking drastic steps, he said at the time.
Suspension of Muslim, Dalit teachers
Last week, Dilawar acting on a complaint from an outfit identified as the Sarva Hindu Samaj ordered the suspension of two Muslim government school teachers in Kota district for allegedly promoting ‘religious conversion’. In its complaint, the outfit claimed that a former girl student, a Hindu at the time, was referred to as a Muslim in the school register.
In a video statement, the minister declared that he would not allow state-run schools to become “dens of conversion”.
It was only after students of the Khajuri Odpur government school staged a protest demanding the reinstatement of the teachers that one of the suspended teachers clarified that this was a case of ‘mistaken identity’. According to a report by The Indian Express, the girl in question had eloped with a Muslim man from the village which led to the confusion.
The school principal too affirmed that he had not come across any case of ‘religious conversion’ so far.
Dilawar was once again accused of ‘acting arbitrarily’ after he ordered the suspension of a Dalit government primary school teacher for ‘hurting religious sentiments’ by refusing to put up a picture of the Hindu deity Saraswati during the Republic Day function at her school in Baran district.
According to reports, the teacher had put up pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar and Savitribai Phule during the function to which some villagers reacted by asking her why there was no picture of Saraswati. This led to an argument in which the teacher said Phule should be given due respect for promoting the importance of education and asked what role the Hindu deity had played in this regard. The villagers, in turn, declared that the teacher’s remarks were an affront to ‘Hindu religious sentiments’.
A video of the argument reached Dilawar who announced the teacher’s suspension at a public function in Kishanganj on 22 February, saying that action had been taken against “those who give weightage to themselves so much that they question the contribution of Goddess Saraswati”.
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‘Surya Namaskar’ circular
In a repeat of a 2015 order by the then Vasundhara Raje government, the state secondary education board issued a circular on 23 January making it mandatory for all government and private schools to make a 10-minute session of ‘Surya Namaskar’ part of the morning assembly.
A group called the Rajasthan Muslim Forum moved the Rajasthan High Court against the order but the court refused to entertain the petition.
Dilawar reiterated the decision on 15 February before displaying his ‘Surya Namaskar’ skills along with students at a school in Jaipur as part of a world record bid in which nearly 1.3 crore students and teachers across the state performed the exercise. The minister also said that no teacher or faculty member will be allowed to perform puja or namaz during school hours and that action will be taken against any school that refuses to comply with the state government’s circular mandating regular ‘Surya Namaskar’.
Even in 2015, the move was met with criticism from outfits claiming to represent the Muslim community but opposition to it eventually lost steam.
Headline hunter, Bajrang Dal roots
Madan Dilawar started his political career with the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and was first elected to the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly in 1990 from Atru seat.
Dilawar retained his seat in 1993, 1998 and 2003 when he was appointed as minister of social welfare in the Vasundhara Raje government. He was also a minister in the government of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (1993-98).
He unsuccessfully contested from the Baran-Atru assembly seat in 2008, did not contest in 2013, but won from the Ramganj Mandi seat on a BJP ticket in 2018. He retained the seat in the assembly polls held last year.
On 22 January, after the consecration ceremony at the Ram temple in Ayodhya, Dilawar vowed to have only one meal a day till the time a similar temple for Krishna was erected at the ‘Krishna Janmabhoomi’ in Mathura.
He made a similar pledge during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement in the 1990s, vowing not to wear a garland till the time a temple for Ram would come up at the disputed site in Ayodhya. When the temple was thrown open to the public on 22 January this year, Dilawar received two garlands, one weighing 34 kg and another 108 ft in length, from his supporters.
Before that, in February 1990, Dilawar had vowed not to sleep in a bed till the time Article 370 was not scrapped.
“Dilawar knows what is praised within the organisation and the RSS. The parent organisation (RSS) wants to replace Muslim rulers with Indian heroes in school textbooks. Not only does it help the party expand the reach of its ideology but it also helps with polarisation. Dilawar is only working by the book. He knows how to retain attention and consolidate his political clout,” a state BJP functionary told ThePrint on condition of anonymity.
Rajasthan Congress spokesperson Swarnim Chaturvedi, however, said “targetting Akbar before the polls is part of BJP’s Hindu-Muslim project”.
“Experts and academicians decide the textbook syllabus and Dilawar is questioning his own central government’s NCERT syllabus. He is questioning Modi ji. The BJP should look into it,” he added.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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