Author from Bihar who drew from Nehru and became toast of BJP

Contemporary Hindi writers have questioned how much the BJP knows about Dinkar. They say Dinkar’s caste, Bhumihar, has become electorally relevant for the BJP. About his book Sanskriti Ke Char Adhyaya, which BJP leaders have been promoting, writers say it is almost an antithesis to saffron ideologies. “Maybe the Sangh Parivar is fascinated by the word sanskriti. Otherwise, they would have recognised that this book examines history from a Nehruvian perspective,” says Prabhat Ranjan, who hails from Bihar and teaches Hindi literature at Delhi University.

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A few months ago, the ministry had asked the Sahitya Akademi to organise a grand event for the “golden jubilee” of Sanskriti Ke Char Adhyaya (1956) as well as Dinkar’s Parashuram Ki Pratiksha (1963) which had turned 50 nine and two years earlier. Akademi officials said even the PMO pursued the matter. The Akademi wrote back celebrations would make no sense now. Also, Sahitya Akademi chairperson Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari told The Indian Express, “We told them (the ministry) that the Akademi belongs to all 24 languages. We had already celebrated his (Dinkar’s) birth centenary, so there was no point celebrating the anniversary of any book.”

Bihar BJP leader C P Thakur’s view of this is, “A golden jubilee need not be celebrated the same year. You can do it until 10 years later.”

The government did hold big events of its own, the main one inaugurated by Modi at Vigyan Bhavan. The PM spoke about the “golden jubilee” of the two books. He quoted from a letter Dinkar had once written, in which he had urged voters to ignore caste and vote for the best candidate. Similar programmes were held in several parts of Bihar, leading to questions about the timing.

Around the same time, RSS organ Panchjanya also devoted an entire issue to Dinkar. And the main venue at the recent Vishwa Hindi Sammelan, held in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, was named after Dinkar.

Thakur rejected the view that the BJP is targeting Bhumihar votes. “It has nothing to do with politics. Bhumihars in any case vote for the BJP. Aur kise vote dega?”

Incidentally, 2015 is the golden jubilee of another book by Dinkar, Lokdev Nehru, an intimate biography of Jawaharlal Nehru in which Dinkar called the first prime minister “Lokdev” (people’s god).

In Sanskriti Ke Char Adhyaya, which had won Sahitya Akademi award in 1959, Dinkar goes against prevailing rightist views and acknowledges the influence of Mughal and British rule in shaping the Indian mind. “Hindutva and Islam experienced a new life after they came in contact with Europeans,” he writes. The char adhyaya or the four chapters of Indian culture, in his view, are the “entry of Aryas into India”, the revolt of Buddhas and Jainas followers against the prevailing Hindu way of life, the arrival of Islam and finally that of the British.

The book borrows its historical framework largely from Jawaharlal Nehru’s Discovery of India and, significantly, remains perhaps the only Hindi book whose preface the first prime minister wrote. According to an anecdote in circulation in Hindi literary circles, when Nehru teased Dinkar when he received the Akademi Award, reportedly saying half the award belonged to him too.

Ranjan, the Hindi teacher, calls the BJP efforts “a blatant attempt to misappropriate the caste of a writer who stood against caste politics”. “Perhaps the Sangh Parivar has not read Sanskriti ke Char Adhyaya at all,” he says. “Its framework is largely based on Discovery of India. It goes against what the RSS has been preaching so far.”