Ban sought on Bipan Chandra’s book

It refers to Bhagat Singh as a ‘revolutionary terrorist’

A rare historical photograph of manacled Shaheed Bhagat Singh talking with someone during detention in jail.

Hindutva activist Dinanath Batra has written to HRD Minister Smriti Irani to get the late historian Bipan Chandra’s book India’s Struggle for Independence “banned, recalled from everywhere and destroyed.”

Expressing outrage at reports that the book — published in 1987 and in existence as a reference book for history at Delhi University — refers to Bhagat Singh as a “revolutionary terrorist,” Mr. Batra’s letter also demands action against officials of Delhi University’s Directorate of Hindi Medium Implementation for publishing it in Hindi for university usage and “legal action against the authors.”

Mr. Batra got Wendy Doniger’s book TheHindus: An Alternative History pulped more than a year ago.

Co-authors of Bipan Chandra’s book, Professors Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan, clarified that the word ‘revolutionary terrorist’ did not have a pejorative meaning when the book was written in the 1980s.

An HRD Ministry official told The Hindu , “As of now, the Ministry has just forwarded a similar complaint by Bhagat Singh’s family members to Delhi University.”