india

Updated: Feb 14, 2015 22:09 IST

RSS ideologue Dinanath Batra on Saturday said that sex education will “pollute” young minds and hence must not find space in the “improved and Indianised” education system that the government wants to introduce.



Batra, a controversial educationist and author, is known for his self-proclaimed agenda of recasting India’s history from the perspective of the Hindu rightwing.



“Instead, we should focus on character building among the student community. You cannot imagine how a woman teacher or a girl student would react to such an expression (sex-education) in a class,” Batra told HT on the sidelines of a function in Karnal.



He was of opinion that the mere expression of the word ‘sex’ would lead to attention deviation of the “innocent minds”.



The president of the RSS-backed Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, Batra has been roped in by the BJP government in Haryana to head a panel of experts to suggest changes in the state’s education system.



He added that he has given detailed suggestions to the human resource development ministry for brining value-based changes in education.



However, Batra is not the first man from the saffron brigade to trash the concept of sex education.



In 2013, then Union health minister Harsh Vardhan too had courted controversy by suggesting that sex education in schools should be banned.



Though he had later clarified that he supported “pedagogy that is scientific and culturally acceptable,” activists had seen his views as an extension of the RSS beliefs.