The list of contents shows that Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and Modi’s predecessors as chief minister have received passing mention. Ninety per cent of the capsule — a 3ft-by-2.5in stainless-steel cylinder expected to last between 200 and 1,000 years — devotes itself to Modi’s alleged achievements.

The Congress has threatened to dig out and destroy it whenever the party comes to power — as the Janata Party government had done to Indira’s capsule in the late 1970s — saying Modi’s capsule merely betrays his “obscene obsession with himself”.

“The material is mostly about Modi and his tenure of the past few years,” state Congress president Arjun Modhwadia said. “It seems as though from Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel to Jivraj Mehta (Gujarat’s first chief minister) and Keshubhai Patel (Modi’s predecessor), nobody has contributed to the state’s progress.”

Senior BJP leader Yamal Vyas dismissed the allegations, saying: “After all, Modi has been Gujarat’s longest-serving chief minister. If there is more material in the time capsule relating to his period, that’s only natural.”

The capsule’s 14 printed documents and 29 compact discs “reflect Modi’s desperation to seek ways of immortalising himself”, said social scientist Gaurang Jani.

Gandhian activist Prakash Shah said the capsule’s contents show that Modi is a “megalomaniac” who believes that “Gujarat ends and begins with him”.

Ironically, Indira faced similar charges after burying a time capsule outside the Red Fort gates on August 15, 1973, carrying material commissioned by the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and prepared by S. Krishnaswamy, a history professor with Madras Christian College.

The material was to describe India’s progress in the first 25 years after Independence but was said to have focused mainly on the lady who would a couple of years later be worshipped in the slogan: “India is Indira and Indira is India.”

In response to that capsule, journalist Cho Ramaswamy is said to have planted his own time capsule 10 feet below the ground with copies of his satirical journal Thuglak.

According to reports, Krishnaswamy’s text incorporated paraphrased versions of Encyclopaedia Britannica and government handouts, vetted and burnished by the education and social welfare ministry. It led to a war of words between the author and T. Badrinath, Tamil Nadu commissioner for archives and historical research, to whom a copy of the documents was sent.

Badrinath condemned the contents with the comment: “The journey from a-history to anti-history is short. Shorter still is the journey to fancy. The shortest, however, is the journey to collective lies....”

Among the claims Badrinath attacked was one that India had eliminated the threat of famine.

In a letter to The Hindu, Krishnaswamy accused Badrinath of taking a jaundiced view of history. Deliberately or unwittingly, he revealed a secret: that the capsule ran into 30 pages. Indira denied any knowledge of the contents and the ICHR demanded an explanation from Krishnaswamy for “breaching secrecy”.

Union minister and Congress member S. Jaipal Reddy today refused to compare Modi’s capsule with Indira’s, saying merely: “Time capsules are not required in a democracy. If there are to be capsules, they should record scientific achievements and facts and not socio-political issues, which lend themselves to different interpretations at different points of time.”

BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad justified Modi’s capsules: “After all, Gujarat has a chequered history from Gandhiji, Patel and Jivraj Mehta (to Modi). It is India’s fastest-growing state, so the new initiatives must be recorded for posterity.”

He added: “Hers (Indira’s) was a personal eulogy; his (Modi’s) is an objective account.” Some media reports have said Mayavati is planning a time capsule of her own, suggesting the possible birth of a new trend among Indian politicians to try and immortalise themselves for posterity.

In the US, many institutions and research organisations have been burying time capsules since the early 20th century, often with specific instructions on when they are to be dug out and unlocked — ranging from periods as small as 25 years to 1,000 years.

Many time capsules were buried in the erstwhile USSR too, with messages to the people of future communist societies.

Four time capsules are now travelling in space, with a fifth to be launched next year aboard the KEO satellite. It will carry messages for humans around the year 52,000 when the satellite is to return to Earth.

But time capsules have their critics, who say the material they carry is more often than not merely “useless junk” that tells little about the people of the time.