NEW DELHI – The Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi hadquietly appointed the committee of scholars about six months earlier torewrite Indian history. Details of its existence are reported here for thefirst time.

Minutes of the meeting, reviewed by Reuters, and interviews with committeemembers set out its aims: to use evidence such as archaeological finds andDNA to prove that today`s Hindus are directly descended from the land`sfirst inhabitants many thousands of years ago, and make the case thatancient Hindu scriptures are fact not myth.

Interviews with members of the 14-person committee and ministers in Modi`sgovernment suggest the ambitions of Hindu nationalists extend beyondholding political power in this nation of 1.3 billion people – akaleidoscope of religions. They want ultimately to shape the nationalidentity to match their religious views, that India is a nation of and forHindus.

In doing so, they are challenging a more multicultural narrative that hasdominated since the time of British rule, that modern-day India is atapestry born of migrations, invasions and conversions. That view is rootedin demographic fact. While the majority of Indians are Hindus, Muslims andpeople of other faiths account for some 240 million, or a fifth, of thepopulace.

The committee`s chairman, KN Dikshit, told Reuters, “I have been asked topresent a report that will help the government rewrite certain aspects ofancient history.” The committee`s creator, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma,confirmed in an interview that the group`s work was part of larger plans torevise India`s history.

For India`s Muslims, who have pointed to incidents of religious violenceand discrimination since Modi took office in 2014, the development isominous. The head of Muslim party All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen,Asaduddin Owaisi, said his people had “never felt so marginalised in theindependent history of India.”

“The government,” he said, “wants Muslims to live in India as second-classcitizens.”

Modi did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

INTO THE CLASSROOM

Helping to drive the debate over Indian history is an ideological,nationalist Hindu group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Ithelped sweep Modi`s Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014 and now countsamong its members the ministers in charge of agriculture, highways andinternal security.

The RSS asserts that ancestors of all people of Indian origin – including172 million Muslims – were Hindu and that they must accept their commonancestry as part of Bharat Mata, or Mother India. Modi has been a member ofthe RSS since childhood. An official biography of Culture Minister Sharmasays he too has been a “dedicated follower” of the RSS for many years.

Referring to the emblematic colour of the Hindu nationalist movement, RSSspokesman Manmohan Vaidya told Reuters that “the true colour of Indianhistory is saffron and to bring about cultural changes we have to rewritehistory.”

Balmukund Pandey, the head of the historical research wing of the RSS, saidhe meets regularly with Culture Minister Sharma. “The time is now,” Pandeysaid, to restore India`s past glory by establishing that ancient Hindutexts are fact not myth.

Sharma told Reuters he expects the conclusions of the committee to findtheir way into school textbooks and academic research. The panel isreferred to in government documents as the committee for “holistic study oforigin and evolution of Indian culture since 12,000 years before presentand its interface with other cultures of the world.”

Sharma said this “Hindu first” version of Indian history will be added to aschool curriculum which has long taught that people from central Asiaarrived in India much more recently, some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, andtransformed the population.

Hindu nationalists and senior figures in Modi`s party reject the idea thatIndia was forged from a mass migration. They believe that today`s Hindupopulation is directly descended from the land`s first inhabitants.Historian Romila Thapar said the question of who first stood on the soilwas important to nationalists because “if the Hindus are to have primacy ascitizens in a Hindu Rashtra (kingdom), their foundational religion cannotbe an imported one.” To assert that primacy, nationalists need to claimdescent from ancestors and a religion that were indigenous, said Thapar,86, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi for decades andhas authored books on ancient Indian history.

The theory of an influx of people from central Asia 3,000 to 4,000 yearsago was embraced during British rule.

India`s first post-independence leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, who promoted asecular state and tolerance of India`s Muslims, said it was “entirelymisleading to refer to Indian culture as Hindu culture.” That outlookinformed the way India was governed by Nehru and then by his Congress partyfor more than half a century. The rights of minorities – including theprohibition of discrimination based on religion – are enshrined in India`sconstitution, of which Nehru was a signatory in 1950.

Shashi Tharoor, a prominent member of the Congress party, said right wingHindus are “leading a political campaign over Indian history that seeks toreinvent the idea of India itself.” “For seven decades after independence,Indianness rested on faith in the country`s pluralism,” Tharoor said, butthe rise of Hindu nationalism had brought with it a “sense of culturalsuperiority.”

A HISTORY FOUNDED ON HINDU TEXTS

The history committee met in the offices of the director general of theArchaeological Survey of India, a federal body that oversees archaeologicalresearch. Among the committee`s 14 members are bureaucrats and academics.The chairman, Dikshit, is a former senior official with the ArchaeologicalSurvey.

Culture Minister Sharma told Reuters he will present the committee`s finalreport to parliament and lobby the nation`s Ministry of Human ResourceDevelopment to write the findings into school textbooks. The Ministry ofHuman Resource Development, which is responsible for education and literacyprogrammes, is also headed by an adherent of the RSS, Prakash Javadekar.

“We will take every recommendation made by the Culture Ministry seriously,”Javadekar said. “Our government is the first government to have the courageto even question the existing version of history that is being taught inschools and colleges.”

According to the minutes of the history committee`s first meeting, Dikshit,the chairman, said it was “essential to establish a correlation” betweenancient Hindu scriptures and evidence that Indian civilization stretchesback many thousands of years. Doing so would help bolster both conclusionsthe committee wants to reach: that events described in Hindu texts arereal, and today`s Hindus are descendants of those times.

The minutes and interviews with committee members lay out a comprehensivecampaign to achieve this, including the dating of archaeological sites andDNA testing of human remains.

Culture Minister Sharma told Reuters he wants to establish that Hinduscriptures are factual accounts. Speaking of the Ramayana, the epic thatfollows the journey of a Hindu deity in human form, Sharma said: “I worshipRamayana and I think it is a historical document. People who think it isfiction are absolutely wrong.” The epic tells how the god Rama rescues hiswife from a demon king. It still informs many Indians` sense of genderroles and duty.

Sharma said it was a priority to prove through archaeological research theexistence of a mystical river, the Saraswati, that is mentioned in anotherancient scripture, the Vedas. Other projects include examining artifactsfrom locations in scriptures, mapping the dates of astrological eventsmentioned in these texts and excavating the sites of battles in anotherepic, the Mahabharata, according to Sharma and minutes of the committee`smeeting.

In much the same way that some Christians point to evidence of an ancientflood substantiating the Biblical tale of Noah and his ark, if the settingsand features of the ancient scriptures in India can be verified, thethinking goes, then the stories are true. “If the Koran and Bible areconsidered as part of history, then what is the problem in accepting ourHindu religious texts as the history of India?” said Sharma.

Modi did not order the committee`s creation – it was instigated by Sharma,government documents show – but its mission is in keeping with his outlook.During the 2014 inauguration of a hospital in Mumbai, Modi pointed to thescientific achievements documented by ancient religious texts and spoke ofGanesha, a Hindu deity with an elephant`s head: “We worship Lord Ganesha,and maybe there was a plastic surgeon at that time who kept the head of anelephant on the torso of a human. There are many areas where our ancestorsmade large contributions.” Modi did not respond to a request from Reutersthat he expand on this remark.

Nine of 12 history committee members interviewed by Reuters said they havebeen tasked with matching archaeological and other evidence with ancientIndian scriptures, or establishing that Indian civilization is much olderthan is widely known. The others confirmed their membership but declined todiscuss the group`s activities. The committee includes a geologist,archaeologists, scholars of the ancient Sanskrit language and twobureaucrats.

One of the Sanskrit scholars, Santosh Kumar Shukla, a professor atJawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told Reuters he believes India`sHindu culture is millions of years old. Another committee member, RameshChand Sharma, former head of the linguistics department at the Universityof Delhi, said he would take a strictly scientific approach. “I don`tsubscribe to any ideology,” he said.

With an annual budget of about $400 million – an important source offederal funding for historical research, archaeology and the arts – theCulture Ministry is an influential place to start a campaign of historicalrevision.

After he was named culture minister in 2014 following Modi`s victory,Sharma, a doctor and chairman of a chain of hospitals, said he receivedguidance from the RSS. Sharma, a genial man with a wide smile, has aportrait of Bharat Mata, or Mother India, hanging above the doorway of ameeting room in his bungalow in central Delhi. Below it are portraits ofpast RSS leaders.

During the last three years, Sharma said, his ministry has organisedhundreds of workshops and seminars across the country “to prove thesupremacy of our glorious past.” The aim, he said, is to build a freshnarrative to balance the liberal and secular philosophy espoused by India`sfirst prime minister, Nehru, and furthered by successive governments formost of the nation`s post-independence history.

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, now controlled by Sharma`s ministry,these days mixes in sessions about right wing Hindu leaders and causes. Atone such event in 2016, the president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party,Amit Shah, took the opportunity to lambast Nehru as a man influenced by thewestern world. “We have always believed that our policies should have thesmell of Indian soil,” Shah said. It was time for a history of India thatconcentrates on “facts about our great past.” – Agencies