Through his works he argued against the communal distortions of history including challenging popular beliefs of the sanctity of cow and Indian beef eating tradition.

His eldest brother Devendra Narayan Jha was doctor and retired as assistant director, state Falaria control, Bihar health Services and died in 1990.

[4] In doing so, he was a group of historians who believed that post independence India's nation building efforts hinged on a professional attempt at writing history.

[3] He was an author of multiple history text books for India's National Council of Educational Research and Training, the organization which developed the textbooks and course curricula for Indian schools.

Sharma, Suraj Bhan, and Athar Ali, making a case that there was no evidence to prove that the Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya, was built over a temple at the same site.

[11] The findings were documented in Ramjanmabhoomi-Baburi Masjid: A Historians’ Report to the Nation (1991) which he co-wrote with [11][12] The mosque was demolished a year later by right wing activists.

[13] He quoted religious and non-religious texts from ancient periods to dispel the prevailing belief that cow was holy and its meat not a part of historical Indian consumption.

[9] Jha was accused by BJP politician, Arun Shourie of distorting the history of the destruction of Nalanda University in 12th century AD.

[22][23] Jha has received death threats over his book The Myth of the Holy Cow in which he outlined the practice of eating beef in ancient India as documented in Vedic and Post-Vedic texts.

Since Hindus consider the cow holy and deny the claims of beef consumption during Vedic period, the Hindu activist groups created controversy over his book.

But some right-wing politicians and groups of religious fanatics, without reading a single page, termed it ‘blasphemous’, demanded my arrest and succeeded in obtaining a court order restraining the circulation of the book, and a self-appointed custodian of ‘Hinduism’ even sentenced me to death.