NEW DELHI — The Indian government’s National Sanskrit Institute, whose headquarters are in a run-down section of western New Delhi, has the hallmarks of a long-neglected state project.

Unattached electrical wires dangle down its facade, and one of its senior scholars, Ramakant Pandey, greeted a recent visitor in a fluorescent-lighted office under a slowly revolving ceiling fan, his mouth stained bright red with paan, as betel is known in Hindi.

It felt like an office that did not receive many visitors. Still, Mr. Pandey was not downhearted.

“Good times are coming,” he said.

This summer marks a changing of the guard, as a new group of elites led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi set themselves up in government-issued bungalows in the capital, displacing the anglophone intelligentsia clustered around the Indian National Congress.