Dinanath Batra is a long-time RSS activist whose campaigns centre on the "Hinduisation" of education and censorship of material the Sangh Parivar considers offensive to Hindus or obscene. He is former general sectretary of Vidya Bharati and was a key adviser to the BJP's human resource development minister Murli Manohar Joshi at the time the NDA were in power.
Batra's campaigns have often been conducted via the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti. He led a successful campaign to get Penguin to withdraw and pulp all remaining copies of The Hindus: An alternative history by US academic Wendy Doniger. Additionally he has:
• Led a vigorous campaign for various changes to the school curriculum, designed, according to a former High Court judge to "create a generation of blind believers instead of a country of thinkers".
• Agitated successfully against the introduction of sex-education in schools terming it a "crime against youth".
• Campaigned successfully with the ABVP to get A. K. Ramanujan's essay Three hundred Ramayanas: five examples and three thoughts on translation removed from the Delhi University history syllabus in 2011, and stopped the publisher, OUP, printing the essay. (OUP later decided to reprint the essay).
References:
• The textbook vigilante, by Aarefa Johari.
• 'The Hindus' controversy: Getting Doniger trashed just one of his 'battles to save Hinduism', by Anubhuti Vishnoi, Indian Express, Feb 14th 2014.
• An Ice Age for Indian scholarship, apoorvanand writing on Kafila.