Sometimes I think stories are all we've got.

We tell stories about our own lives, who we are and where we're from, why we did something or why we planned to.

And we know, don't we, that those stories change. The ones we told our parents

are different from the versions our children here. Those we tell friends or write on a job

application are something else again. Every account contains elements of truth and fiction,

and they all serve a purpose. They exist to make sense of the randomness around us. We need them

and not just as individuals. Countries need stories, religions, civilizations. Wars and religious

schisms emerge from apparently irreconcilable differences over how groups of us view land,

people, resources.

Whose version of the tale do you believe? That's why history is so contentious,

because different iterations give different people power. The story really matters.

I'm Rosie Bloor, and today on the Weekend Intelligence, my colleague Leo Morani examines a great Hindu epic, the Mahabharat.

The mythological tale is thousands of years old and thousands of pages long.

But where might the events of this great drama have occurred?

In India today, the Mahabarad is at the centre of a reckoning,

Who Controls the Past?

I want to tell you a story. Actually, I want to tell you a story about a story and about the people who believe it is a true story.

It is a story of gods and of kings, of the grandest palaces and the most wonderful illusions,

and of a war to end all wars.

It is a story of the morality of battle and of the descent of our world into Kalyug, the age of darkness, the age that we live in now.

For 75 years, archaeologists have been excavating across North India

to look for the places and events mentioned in it.

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