NEW DELHI: M Nageswara Rao , who's taken interim charge of the Central Bureau of Investigation CBI ), is reputed as a champion of Hindu cultural assertion besides being close to key members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ( RSS ).He took over at the agency after director Alok Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana , feuding with each other and trading accusations of corruption, were sent on leave pending an inquiry.Rao has also been working with various organisations on causes such as freeing temples from state control, scrapping laws that “favour the minority and discriminate against Hindus” and lobbying the government for a ban on beef exports that these groups believe is necessary to maintain the “cultural fabric of the country,” said people who know him well. The interim CBI chief did not reply to ET’s calls and text messages.Rao is believed to be particularly interested in the areas of ‘Hindu renaissance’ and often attends events of influential think tanks such as the India Foundation and Vivekananda International Foundation. He is also known to share a cordial relationship with RSS pracharakturned-BJP leader Ram Madhav , who runs India Foundation.Rao is said to have been among the seven key people who helped formulate the Charter of Key Hindu Demands that was issued by a group of activists and scholars on September 23 and which they said would be presented to the Prime Minister soon. The genesis of this was an August 25 event organised by the Srijan Foundation at Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) in New Delhi that Rao attended.The foundation, according to its website, aims to rebuild and revitalise Indian civilisation and “change the anti-Hindu and anti-national narrative of the leftist-Marxist historians by telling Indian history from point of view of Indians”.After the talk, Rao had spent about two hours brainstorming with the small group — mostly academics, professionals and Hindu activists — on the issues that they thought needed to be raised. Former internal security undersecretary RVS Mani confirmed his presence at the meeting but didn’t elaborate on Rao’s participation.Another person, on condition of anonymity, said Rao had presented numbers and talked about how beef exports were leading to increased smuggling of cattle in India. Others present, however, said Rao had presented nuanced points on how some laws have to be amended to ensure the rights of the Hindus are not denied. India does not allow legal export of beef, that is, cow meat. Exports of buffalo meat, sometimes confused for beef, are allowed.The group has demanded an immediate ban on the exports that “will break the backbone of the beef mafia operating in the country and eliminate the social friction which keeps on arising from time to time”. The group has also demanded that Jammu and Kashmir should be broken up into three parts and that Article 370 and Article 35A be scrapped.A postgraduate in chemistry from Osmania University in Hyderabad, Rao undertook research at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, before joining the Indian Police Service (IPS). He joined the CBI in 2016 and was joint director before his elevation as interim director.“Rao was part of the collective effort that went into framing the Hindu charter of demands,” said Bharat Gupt, former Delhi University associate professor. “He was just one of the many contributors. And we have no political or administrative links. We were there to speak for equality and not take anything away from the minorities. The moot point was how to de-colonise the Indian minds and come up with ways to voice against laws that discriminate against the majority community.”Among the most important demands was ending “legal and institutionalised discrimination against Hindus by the Indian state”, he said. “We want to petition the government to discuss and pass minister Satyapal Singh’s private member’s Bill in the winter Parliament session,” Gupt said. “That will ensure equal rights to Hindus on par with minorities in the matters of running educational institutions without interference of the state and removal of government control of Hindu temples.”Srijan Foundation founder and tech entrepreneur Rahul Dewan said the group has also demanded a ban on all foreign contributions except those by Overseas Citizens of India (OCIs) in their personal capacity by repealing the existing Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act and enacting a new one. “There is no symmetry in the way these donations are made,” he said. “Also, the state cannot be incentivising people to convert. We have also asked for a ban on beef exports. We won’t monitor what people eat in Kerala or Northeast. But a moral position on adopting a beef ban will not cost the country much.”When asked about Rao’s role in drafting the charter, Dewan confirmed his presence at the first two meetings in August and September but he said he had no role to play in the final draft. “Initially there were seven-eight people. And we took inputs from 15 more people with a shared Google document. The drafting was done with ideas from Sankrant Sanu, reading Koenraad Elst’s papers and going through Satyapal Singh’s Bill,” he said.Another person who took part in a 12-hour brainstorming session on September 22, ahead of the charter release the next day, said Rao had paid a cursory visit to the venue at Hotel Ibis in Aerocity. “He had already told us because of his official post, he cannot be participating openly in our events,” the person said.