In December, India and France quietly reached an agreement for France Muséums Développement (FMD) to help develop the Yuga Yugeen Bharat National Museum in Delhi, which would replace the current National Museum of India. The museum will span 1.67 million square feet across several current government buildings which will be redeveloped for the new purpose.
Announced in 2023, the YYBNM is the passion project of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been widely criticized for mainstreaming an exclusionary Hindu nationalism. As part of his Hindutva political project, Modi’s right-wing BJP government has sought to exclude or minimize the country’s sizable minority communities from textbooks and history books, historical landmarks and tourist attractions, and even the official name of the state. Modi and the BJP often use Bharat, a Sanskrit and Hindi word for India that many have said reinforces Hindu supremacy.
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The new museum’s name uses Bharat instead of India and translates to “the museum of timeless and eternal India.” The intention there was made clearer last month, when Indian news outlet the Wire published an investigation into the museum’s development. It uncovered an internal document detailing plans for the museum that repeatedly refers to India as Bharat and which contains various historical inaccuracies and seemingly politically-motivated wordings for historical events. One historian, Supriya Varma, who has taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told the Wire that the document contained “a very outdated framework of archaeology and history.” The descriptions of certain events, the Wire found, reflect Modi’s speeches, most notably referring to 12th-century migrations from Central Asia as “invasions.”
So far FMD’s role in YYBNM’s development has been stated to include “a comprehensive feasibility study, encompassing museum case studies, interpretive planning, and building programming.” The head of FMD, Hervé Barbaret, clarified to Le Monde this week that “the French bring the methodological dimension, feasibility studies to the Indians, but we do not intervene in the subject matter and the choice of works.” But Barbaret’s—and by extension FMD’s—distancing from YYBNM’s content is not as absolving as he thinks. After all, France has a recent history of providing legitimacy to museums in autocratic countries by lending its global reputation and its museums’ brands.
In 2018, the country signed a 10-year, €30 million ($32.4 million) per year deal to help Saudi Arabia develop AlUla, a desert region filled with 30,000 historical sites. That project, which has seen France aide in the development of luxury lodging, fine-dining, and arts and cultural exhibitions, is at the center of Saudi Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Sud’s mega-plan to modernize the kingdom and draw international tourists. The Centre Pompidou, France’s national museum of modern art, signed a separate agreement to develop a contemporary arts space in AlUla, as Devorah Lauter reported for Art in America two years ago. The AlUla project has drawn scrutiny for alleged graft and money laundering of involved Saudi officials, to say nothing of the optics of signing a ten-year-deal with Salman’s repressive government the same year it murdered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Go back further and there is, of course, FMD’s landmark $1 billion, 30-year-agreement with the United Arab Emirates to develop and support the Louvre Abu Dhabi in 2007. (The agreement was extended in 2021 for an additional ten years and $186 million.) While less immediately contentious, the deal has faced criticism due to alleged labor abuses during construction and, more recently, an investigation into antiquities acquisitions that led to charges against the Louvre’s former president and a curator for fraud and money laundering.
The controversy around France’s deal with India may appear more ambiguous to a Western audience. Is it France’s concern if the YYBNM decides to portray a skewed history of India that privileges Hindu culture and a Hindutva ideology, even if its role is limited to “specific areas of technical collaboration,” as the Indian Ministry of Culture laid out in a December press release?
Barbaret told Le Monde that he doesn’t think so. “Today, nothing leads us to think that Indians will want to erase India’s Muslim or Buddhist past or the British presence,” he said.
But Barbaret’s optimism seems misplaced. The development of YYBNM, given the Wire’s reporting, aligns with Modi’s broader efforts to use museums and cultural institutions to recast national identity. Since 2016, the National Museum has been led by Buddha Rashmi Mani, best known for a 2003 archaeological survey that found a 10th-century temple beneath the site of the Babri Mosque. That mosque was demolished by Hindu extremists in 1992, leading to riots that killed over 2,000 people. The survey findings—disputed by many archaeologists—were used to justify the construction of a new Hindu temple. Last year, ahead of general elections, Modi inaugurated the new temple built on the site. Attacks by Hindu nationalist mobs on Muslims and other minorities followed.
The BJP has initiated several redevelopment projects in Delhi, demolishing the Hall of Nations in 2017 and, in 2023, rebranding the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Society to the more generic Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library Society. At the time, Indian opposition politician Jairam Ramesh wrote that the move was part of Modi’s “single-point agenda of denying, distorting, defaming, and destroying” the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Republic of India’s first prime minister.
While France’s role in YYBNM may seem like the neutral application of technocratic expertise, the context demands scrutiny. Museums are an ideological battleground, as President Donald Trump has made so abundantly clear in recent months through executive orders and funding cuts seemingly intended to compel institutions to close DEI offices and to drop what he has called “a divisive race-centered ideology.” Maybe Trump’s next move will be the establishment of a brand new national network of museums with his preferred ideology, with the assistance of France.
After all, one of the first leaders to make a state visit to the White House this year was none other than Modi. A couple weeks later, French President Emanuel Macron made a visit.