New Delhi: Long before he became a prominent voice in Indian civilisation studies, academic Michel Danino was a curious teenager in France, immersed in mathematics, science, and engineering and yet restless for something deeper. Scientific laws fascinated him, but what truly preoccupied his mind was a timeless question: what is the purpose of life?
By age 16, Western philosophies no longer satisfied his search. Then he discovered India—through the teachings of spiritual masters like Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Ramana Maharshi. “They were people who knew the answers—not because they had reasoned them out, but because they lived them,” Danino recalls.
Soon after, he came across the writings of Sri Aurobindo. “Something even more complete and fulfilling,” he would later reflect. Danino decided to “devote” his life to this path. It was a deeply personal yet imperative decision, and he never looked back.
In 1977, when he was just 21, he left France and moved to India, drawn by the vision of Auroville, a community dedicated to spiritual and human evolution in Puducherry.
Forty-eight years later, Danino, an indologist, is in the spotlight as head of the committee drafting the new NCERT social science textbooks. The recently released Class 8 textbook drew criticism for portraying Mughal and Delhi Sultanate eras in a negative light.
Many who know him describe Danino as a man of “pure academics” who understands Indian civilisation “better than many Indians”.
“He is not Indian by origin, but has gone the extra mile to make Indians aware of what India truly is,” Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, former BJP Rajya Sabha MP and former Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) head, who has known Danino for over 15 years, told ThePrint.
But there are also some who view Danino’s ideas as “extreme” and influenced by Hindutva ideology.
A former IIT Gandhinagar postgraduate student requesting anonymity said, “He often cites the Vedas and Puranas, and his theories—like horses in the Indus Valley Civilisation—are not widely accepted. While not explicitly ideological, his views tend to align with the Right and looks like he is close to the BJP-RSS ecosystem.”
Countering the criticism, professor P. Kanagasabapathi, who has known Danino since his own academic days, told ThePrint, “He has always been deeply committed to meaningful research and is a man of pure academics.”
Kanagasabapathi is also a vice president of the Tamil Nadu BJP. “Even now, when we meet, he (Danino) never brings up politics despite my active political role,” he added.
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From Honfleur to Auroville
During the mid-1970s, the international community of Auroville—founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa, a French, who came to be known as the ‘Mother’ and spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo—was gaining attention in France and neighboring countries.
Danino, born in Honfleur, France, was also deeply influenced by it.
“It was a ‘utopia’ perhaps, but I found it a powerful attraction and adventure. I took the leap at the age of 21 and moved to India. It was surprisingly easy for me to make that decision, and I’ve never regretted it,” Danino told ThePrint.
During his five-year stay at Auroville between 1977 and 1982, Danino co-founded a small bilingual magazine with friends to document life and developments within Auroville. He also worked with Auromitra—a trust formed by J.R.D. Tata and others to support Auroville—where he documented eco-restoration and farming projects. In addition, he assisted in shaping the community’s early collective organization and took part in distributing books related to the ‘Mother’ and her teachings.
In 1982, he moved to the Nilgiris with his companion Nicole, who had come to Auroville in 1974. He stayed in Ooty and then moved to Coimbatore.
“This new phase focused more on the translation and publication of works related to Sri Aurobindo, the ‘Mother’ (especially the 13 volumes of her agenda) and her confidant Satprem. Parallely, my own study of Indian civilisation deepened and I started exploring its origins not only through texts but also through archaeology and ancient history,” Danino recalls.
He briefly taught at Amrita University in Coimbatore around 2007, followed by a stint at IIM Ranchi. Later he joined IIT Gandhinagar in 2011 as a visiting faculty.
He received Indian citizenship in 2004 and was honored with the Padma Shri, the country’s fourth highest civilian award, in 2017 in the Literature and Education category.
‘On the Trail of the Sarasvatī’
Long before the term Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) became widely known through the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Danino was already pioneering efforts to integrate India’s civilisational knowledge into education. In 2012-13, he helped prepare an elective IKS course for CBSE, titled ‘Knowledge Traditions and Practices of India’, co-editing its two-volume textbook for classes 11 and 12.
Reflecting on his work, Danino noted, “My studies of Indian civilisation and its cultural accomplishments soon made me realize that it gave knowledge a very special place, to the extent of divinizing it.
“Knowledge generation and transmission were central to the growth of Indian civilisation, and for this to be possible, knowledge needed to be codified into coherent systems.”
He added, “Some 25 years ago, I became concerned by how disconnected most young Indians were from this immense intellectual, artistic, literary, spiritual, scientific, and technological heritage.”
At IIT Gandhinagar, Danino launched an IKS course in 2016 and also began teaching a course on the history of science and technology in India, which had become one of his major subjects of focus.
He was also instrumental in the creation of the Archaeological Sciences Centre at IIT Gandhinagar, which he currently coordinates.
In 2010, he published a book titled The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvatī, in which he makes a compelling case for identifying the now-dry Ghaggar-Hakra river system with the ancient Sarasvatī river described in the Rigveda. However, his view differs from many other historians.
In her 2004 book ‘Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300’, Vol. 1, historian Romila Thapar wrote, “The identification of the Ghaggar with the Sarasvatī mentioned in the Rigveda is controversial. Furthermore, the early references to Sarasvatī could be to the Haraxvati Plain in Afghanistan … Once the river had been mythologised by invoking the memory of an earlier river, its name—Sarasvatī—could be applied to many rivers, which is what happened in various parts of the subcontinent.”
Danino said that, regrettably, this is a common situation in India. Those raising objections often do so for ideological reasons without studying the subject in depth. They rely on slogans that are then endlessly repeated, he contended.
“For example, nearly every article on the Sarasvatī river dismisses it as ‘mythical’ without good reason. The river is clearly described in several ancient texts, including detailed accounts of its disappearance and pilgrimage sites along its remaining course. There is nothing ‘mythical’ about it,” he said.
He also addressed the charge that those promoting the identification of the Ghaggar river with the ancient Sarasvatī are motivated by Hindutva or RSS ideology. “But this is false. In my book, I listed dozens of Indian and foreign Sanskritists (a scholar of Sanskrit language), geographers, archaeologists, and geologists, who have supported this identification since the mid-19th Century.”
Under Danino’s committee, the newly released NCERT textbooks refer to the Harappan civilisation by alternative names, including Sindhu-Sarasvati Civilisation, an approach that some scholars caution against, warning that it conflates archaeological evidence with textual or ideological narratives.
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Critic of impact of colonisation on education system
Before he headed NCERT’s committee on developing textbooks “rooted in Indian ethos” as prescribed under NEP and National Curriculum Framework 2023, Danino was a vocal critic of the impact of colonisation on India’s education system.
In his essay titled ‘Effects of Colonization on Indian Thought – Part 1’, published on 7 August, 2016, on the website Pragyata, Danino wrote, “Almost all Indian history taught today in our schools and universities has been written by Western scholars, or by native historians who have adopted the views of the colonial masters.”
He also criticised the introduction of English education to young children before they have any grounding in Indian culture or history.
The essay further states, “The real facts of the destruction wreaked in India by Muslim invaders and some Christian missionaries must be kept outside textbooks and curricula, since they contradict the ‘tolerant’ and ‘liberating’ image that Islam and Christianity have been projecting for themselves.”
In an opinion piece in The New Indian Express in May, 2018, Danino had highlighted how India’s scientific and technological heritage—created by ancient civilisations—was being largely ignored. He had noted that standard Indian history textbooks offered nothing comparable, philosophy departments focused mostly on Western thought, and psychology departments overlooked the entire yogic understanding of the human being.
In an op-ed in The Hindu in January 2015, he had argued that mainstream history books on classical India—such as D.N. Jha’s Ancient India (1998, revised edition) and Romila Thapar’s The Penguin History of Early India (2003)—are almost entirely silent on the country’s scientific achievements. “If our history books did justice to genuine, well-documented, and well-studied scientific and technological accomplishments,” he had written, “there would be no room left for the fantasisers.”
Some academics believe that Danino’s thinking aligns with the current BJP-led government’s ideological direction, which may have influenced his appointment as head of the social science textbooks panel. “He always talks about taking pride in India’s ancient history and civilisation—and since that’s the government’s core idea, he must have automatically become a good choice for them,” said a history professor from the University of Delhi, who wished to remain anonymous.
Responding to such claims, Danino denied any political or ideological influence on his work, saying, “Personally, I would not have accepted to work under any sort of political or ideological pressure.”
Meanwhile, he has written several other books—Indian Culture and India’s Future and Sri Aurobindo and India’s Rebirth (editor, Rupa, 2018). He is a life member of various academic organisations, including the Indian Archaeological Society, the Indian History and Culture Society, the Indian Society for Prehistoric and Quaternary Studies, and the Indian Society for the History of Mathematics. He has also previously served as a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research.
Danino emphasised that his educational activities were carried out independently of whichever party was in power. For example, in 2005, he had conducted a survey of 11,000 schoolchildren on the presence of cultural content in school education, and the NCERT had published a paper in 2008 summarising the findings. Another example is the ‘Knowledge Traditions and Practices of India’ course that he had prepared for CBSE in 2012–2013.
“It is unfortunate that, for some, any engagement with Indian heritage and civilisation is immediately seen as an indication of Hindutva leanings,” he said.
‘Perfectionist who respects contrary views’
Ankita Nair, who completed her PhD on Kutiyattam under Danino between 2018 and 2023, recalls him as a perfectionist and lifelong learner.
“Actually, Michel sir wasn’t my original supervisor, he was my co-supervisor between 2016-18. When my main supervisor left, I approached others who refused due to lack of knowledge on Kutiyattam. Michel sir, however, did not refuse.
“He was genuinely eager to understand. He’s a perfectionist—always questioning. A hard taskmaster in a good way, never taking things at face value. Even near the end of my PhD, he kept pushing me to defend my arguments. Even if he doesn’t agree with my views sometimes, he would never dismiss them,” she said.
Kutiyattam is a Sanskrit theatre believed to have originated in Kerala more than 2,000 years ago.
Nair added that Danino is proud of Indian culture but doesn’t glorify it blindly. “I remember his lecture about two kinds of writers on India: those who glorify everything, and those who dismiss India entirely. He stressed the need to strike a balance.”
Ridhhi Garg, Danino’s student at IIT Gandhinagar from 2016 to 2018, said his Indian Knowledge Systems course sparked her interest in history despite her English background. “He won’t say anything without proper references or give flippant ideas. His inspiration from Shri Aurobindo shows in his values,” she told ThePrint.
Garg said that these days, if someone is studying ancient history, people often assume you’re aligned with a certain ideology. They’re not even interested in what your actual work is about. “I faced those same prejudices. My thesis under Danino sir was on Vedic-Puranic mythology–people assumed it was about Hindutva. But it was nothing of the sort,” she said.
V.N. Prabhakar, an associate professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences department (jointly with Earth Sciences) at IIT Gandhinagar, has known Danino for over a decade. “As an individual, I’ve found him to be one of the most well-read people, with a deep understanding of every aspect of Indian culture and civilisation. I used to attend his lectures and talks regularly. He’s someone who genuinely appreciates diverse perspectives.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)