The inclusion of the yet unrealized Jio Institute in India’s centers of educational excellence is a parable for the crisis of higher education policy in India. An investigative series on the state of Indian universities broadcast on NDTV India, one of India’s leading news networks, showed that numerous colleges had no toilets, no teachers and no exams for years on end. Baba Bhimrao Ambedkar University in the northern state of Bihar, which has 200,000 students, has not held exams since 2015.

While none of these decades-old structural problems have been addressed, Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has exacerbated the crises of higher education. The few central universities that had a culture of independent research and critical thinking have come under consistent assault since Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party took charge.

Education has been a prime target of the B.J.P.’s parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, known as the R.S.S., whose self-professed aim is to establish a Hindu nation. For this to happen, the R.S.S. argues that Indians must be made to understand their glorious, ancient Vedic Hindu heritage.

School textbooks in Indian states ruled by the B.J.P. governments are being rewritten to erase India’s “Muslim past” or reduce the centuries of rule by Mughal emperors and other Muslim rulers to one of darkness and enslavement. Historical convention has always held that Mughal ruler Akbar defeated Rajput ruler Maharana Pratap in 1576. Textbooks in the northern state of Rajasthan now tell students that it was Maharana Pratap who won because he managed to run away from the battlefield. Even the Taj Mahal, India’s most famous monument, built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, has not been spared, with one B.J.P. member of Parliament claiming it was originally a Hindu temple.

While the government is obsessed with making it into world rankings in science and technology, the B.J.P.’s leaders display a shockingly poor understanding of science. Satyapal Singh, the junior federal minister for education, recently claimed that Charles Darwin was wrong because no one had actually seen an ape turn into a man. He drew on creationist literature for scientific support. A few years back, Mr. Modi described the mythical elephant head of Ganesha, a much-loved Hindu God, as an example of the ancient Indian skill of plastic surgery.

Many of the academics the Modi government has appointed to lead national research institutes or universities have no peer-reviewed publications. However, they are longstanding members of the R.S.S., as is Mr. Modi. And they have publicly expressed their admiration for the prime minister. In turn, these university chiefs have brought in their own people, overriding longstanding academic conventions around recruitment.