Gupta (a prominent archaeologist and Chairman of the Indian Archaeological Society) and Dr. D. Devahuti of the National Museum, New Delhi, and inaugurated by then Prime Minister Morarji Desai accompanied by eminent scholars such as Prof. Lallanji Gopal (of BHU), Prof. B. P. Sinha (head of History at Patna University), Prof. Khalid Ahmed Nizami (head of History at Aligarh Muslim University), Prof. G.C.
When the Janata government of 1977-79 (including the former Jan Sangh) was elected, it blocked the Towards Freedom Project of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) claiming that the history textbooks promoted by the ICHR suffered an ahistorical Marxist ideological distortion.
According to its chairperson Prof. D. Devahuti, "one had to free oneself from Western categories like, for instance, that of class struggle, and resume 'indigenous frameworks of interpretation'."
The book sought to free itself from 'imperialist and Marxist' approaches while simultaneously avoiding Hindu or Muslim communal biases in order to foster writing a more 'objective history' from a postcolonial, nativist, and an Indian point of view rather than a foreign one.
Historian D.P Singhal further vehemently criticised Marxists, finding them a growing and unhealthy influence on Indian universities and their history departments.