Before it was hastily withdrawn on Monday morning, 12 hours after being issued, the official statement accompanying the Rajasthan government order to celebrate December 6 as Shaurya Diwas (Day of Valour) stated that it was decided upon instructions from School Education Minister Madan Dilawar.
There was further confusion after the Primary and Secondary Education Director, Sita Ram Jat, said he did not issue the order, even though the order was shared from the minister’s official WhatsApp group.
This is the second time this month that orders were issued for “celebrating” December 6, the day in 1992 when the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished, as Shaurya Diwas, but were later withdrawn, with Jat again saying that he did not issue any such orders. Dilawar, however, could not be reached for comments, with his staff saying that he left for engagements in Churu.
While the move might be interpreted as Dilawar testing the waters, the date holds significance for the minister. As per his biography on the official website of the state Assembly, “On October 30, 1990, he (Dilawar) participated in Kar Seva and satyagraha for Shri Ram Janmabhoomi.” He also served as state chief of Kesariya Vahini for the Ekta Yatra, led by Murli Manohar Joshi, and played “a key role with the Kar Sevaks at Shri Ram Janmabhoomi on December 6, 1992”.
Like his predecessor Vasudev Devnani, who also held the Primary and Secondary Education departments during Vasundhara Raje’s two tenures (2003-08; 2013-18), Dilawar has a Sangh background.
Born in 1959, Dilawar was first associated with the RSS sometime in his late teens and became a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the Sangh’s student wing. From 1986 to 1990, he led the Bajrang Dal as its chief in Kota district, before joining the BJP.
A controversial tenure
Beyond these now-withdrawn orders, Dilawar has remained in the headlines over the last two years, mostly for his statements, which have attracted criticism from various quarters. In February 2024, the Education department instructed that “surya namaskar” be held in schools, amid opposition from Muslim groups that said Muslims only pray to God, not His divine creations.
The same month, he suspended three Muslim teachers at a government school in Kota, alleging that a “conspiracy of religious conversion, love jihad, and Hindu girls are forcefully being made to offer namaz”. However, when The Indian Express visited the school, its staff, local education officials and several villagers denied any conversion attempts, with official inquiries eliciting no evidence beyond a few disputed student statements.
In June 2024, Dilawar said the heatwave “is the result of Congress’s kukarm (misdeeds)”, adding that the situation would have been different had trees not been cut during Congress rule and tree planting had been incentivised.
A six-term legislator, political correctness hasn’t been Dilawar’s strong suit. The same month, he stoked a controversy by saying he would get a DNA test conducted on tribal leader and MP Rajkumar Roat to verify his ancestry. Objecting to Roat’s stand that he and his supporters are not Hindu, Dilawar said, “Hain ke nahi hain, woh toh unke poorwajon se pooch lenge … aur Hindu nahi hain woh toh phir unke DNA ki jaanch kara lenge, unke baap ki aulad hain ke nahi woh (We will ask his ancestors whether he is a Hindu or not … and if (he says) he is not a Hindu, then we’ll get his DNA tested whether he is his father’s son or not).”
In July 2024, the Secondary Education Department’s annual academic calendar announced that Vir Savarkar Jayanti would be celebrated in schools on May 28 and Swarna Mukut Mastak Diwas would be celebrated on August 5 to celebrate the abrogation of Article 370, apart from Matr Pitr Diwas on February 14, and Surya Namaskar Diwas on February 4. On the Hindutva ideologue’s birthday, Congress state president Govind Singh Dotasra termed the move as “shameless”, saying his party “opposes the politicisation of education and imposition of a divisive ideology”.
Then, in September last year, the minister announced that the bicycles given to schoolgirls would be saffron, not black like during Congress rule. He reasoned that the colour of the bicycles was saffron under the previous BJP government (2013-18).
In October last year, speaking on female teachers, he said that “kai beheno ko dekhta hun, jo ache kapde nahi pehenti, poora shareer dikha kar ke school mein jaati hain (I see many sisters who do not wear proper clothes and go to school exposing their entire body),” which, he said, leads to “bad sanskaar (values)” among students.
This January, amid a spike in student suicides, he said that some cases were also due to “prem-prasang (love affairs),” prompting Dotasra to quip, “I fold my hands before Dilawar ji. I request the CM to save the state; make Dilawar the CM, but please hand over the education department to someone else.”
In March, Dilawar said Mughal emperor Akbar was a rapist and a looter. “It pains you and me so much what they used to teach about the great men (of the country). They tried to belittle Maharana Pratap. And Akbar, who used to set up ‘meena bazaar’, was a rapist, an invader and a looter, was called great. This was an insult to the country, of our great men. This cannot be tolerated,” he added.
In February last year, too, he had said that Akbar was not only a “rapist” but that “to take his name in India is a sin”. “When we were in school, we read that Akbar was great. I have also studied the same, but I have also heard that he used to set up ‘meena bazaars’, pick up beautiful girls and women, and forcefully rape them,” he said at the time.
This June, Dilawar stoked another controversy by saying that “main alag prakar ka aadmi hun, gaushalaon ke khilaf hun (I am a different kind of person, I am against cow shelters).” Later, he claimed he meant that several Congress leaders had used government money in the name of gaushalas and that he is against such gaushalas.
However, the biggest controversy of his current tenure was the Jhalawar school collapse. This July, the roof of a government school in the district collapsed, killing seven students and leaving eight critically injured. The incident prompted the Bhajan Lal Sharma government to order a probe and led to the suspension of five government teachers.