Hindu nationalists push education agenda in India’s government
Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s conservative Bharatiya Janata Party swept to power last summer, he appointed a little-known historian as chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, which funds all serious historical scholarship in the country.
Critics said that Yellapragada Sudershan Rao’s greatest qualification was his closeness to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a 5-million-member Hindu nationalist organization where Modi began his political career.
A few months into his appointment, Rao recruited three RSS officers to the council. At the same time, he proposed that the institute view the Indian mythological scriptures—the Ramayana and the Mahabharata—as historical fact.
