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| A screen grab of a YouTube video of Mysore retired professor K S Bhagwan |
Staff correspondent, September 1, 2015, NewsCrunch
After Kannada writer Kalburgi's murder, fellow rationalist K S Bhagwan, who was threatened by a Bajrang Dal activist, is in limelight.
But K S Bhagwan, who has been living under police cover in Mysore since February this year, is unperturbed.
Speaking to The Indian Express K S Bhagwan, says he started facing threats 35 years ago, when he wrote a book on Shankaracharya. He had described the Kerala religious leader as the father of Hindu fundamentalism for denying education to lower castes and women.
A retired English literature lecturer from Maharaja’s College in Mysore, K S Bhagwan, 70, is a regular in the seminars and conferences where he takes on various dogmas without inhibition.
In February this year, he had triggered a huge controversy at a function organised by an association of SC/ST government employees in Mysore.
Saying Bhagawad Gita was a dangerous treatise, he had volunteered to burn it. It took all the persuasion skills of the State Revenue Minister V Srinivas Prasad to stop him from actually doing so.
K S Bhagwan was responding to BJP leader and Central Minister Sushma Swaraj's call to declare Bhagawad Gita a national book.
His actions received wide publicity and Hindu groups went on protest prompting Mysore police to put him under security.
The Mysore police had placed a City Armed Reserve (CAR) van with five to six police personnel outside Prof. Bhagwan’s residence. They now plan to make a fresh threat assessment and scale it up if required, reports The Hindu.