Former Vice President Hamid Ansari on Sunday said some “inventors” were attempting to “rewrite history”, reported PTI. “History is history,” Ansari said at the launch of a book on Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi. “It has to be read. You can draw lessons from it, you can draw encouragement from it or you can just read it as a college student preparing for term examination. History cannot be changed.”

Ansari talked about HG Wells’ book Time Machine, which mooted the idea of a technology by which one could go back to the past. “Well, it was a great success,” he said. “But today, I notice another set of inventors, not writers. Inventors [are] trying to create a time machine by which you can go back in history and rewrite history. Now, such an effort is not going to succeed.”

Ansari’s comments come at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government has been accused of “rewriting history”. History textbook content has been debated a lot recently, with critics accusing the right-wing administration of trying to portray a skewed version of history.

Ansari said the book, titled Jawaharlal Nehru: An Illustrated Biography, was a “relevant contribution to our own legacy, our own freedom struggle, the great leaders who guided it and the different phases of modern India that we have been through”.

The book on Nehru was launched by former President Pranab Mukherjee. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was also present on the occasion. “History of modern India is closely associated with a few personalities, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is one of them,” Mukherjee said, according to The Indian Express.