Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the state in which Agra is located, said on Monday that he would not allow India’s Muslim rulers to be lionized with such a museum and that the building would instead be named for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, a 17th-century Hindu warrior-king.

“How can Mughals be our heroes?” Mr. Adityanath asked, according to a government transcript of his remarks. As if to drive home the point that in today’s India, Hinduism and patriotism are increasingly entwined, he added, “the very name of Shivaji will invoke a feeling of nationalism and self-esteem.”

Mr. Adityanath, a member of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, is so hostile to recognizing the country’s Muslim history that when he took office in 2017 he considered excluding images of the Taj Mahal from the state’s tourism brochures.

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Shahid Siddique, a Muslim and former member of Parliament, said the museum controversy is the latest example of Hindu nationalists attempting to eradicate Muslim history. “Agra is not a city of Shivaji,” he said of the Indian king whose name the museum will now bear. “But in the city of Taj, the city of Mughals, you cannot have a Mughal Museum,” he said, with a note of incredulity.1

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• 1. Hindu Nationalists say Muslims are playing the victim by complaining about the museum. Vinod Bansal, a Hindu nationalist leader, described the Mughals as foreign invaders who conquered India in order to to loot it, and as such should not be hailed as national heroes.