I appreciate the Rama's efforts to bring to light the topic of how the BJP government is encouraging efforts to re-discover the history of India through scientific, archelogical, political and religious means in her article 'A Hindu Quest for Some Holy Water'. However, what is dissappointing is that although Rama has given us reactions from people on both sides of the coin, the 'tone' of her article is certainly biased towards believing that what the 'secular' historians mention is the truth. She gives the impression of being sympathetic to the cause of the pseudo-secular individuals, who form a small minority in India today. The overwhelming population of India has voted the psuedo-secularists (mainly Congress party) out in 1996. But these psuedo-secularits today fail to realize the ground reality, and seem to live in their own world.

I would like to counter some of the text she writes:

but could also confirm fears among India's secular historians that the country's Hindu-nationalist ruling party is trying to rewrite history to suit its agenda.

How can scientific, archeological and linguistic evidence 'confirm fears' about the truth of a civilization? Shouldn't it confirm the 'truth'? What are the 'secular historians' afraid of? The truth?

That predominance, however, did not prevent India from embracing secularism when it achieved independence in 1947 and enshrining it in the country's first constitution.

By making this statement, Rama shows her ignorance about India's history. India is probably one of the world's oldest secular state. Infact secularism is a concept deeply enschrined in Hinduism. It is Hindus that let people who were persecuted in their land take refuge in India - e.g. Parsis, Jews, Tibetans etc. Hinduism is one of the most tolerant religion in the world. Unfortunately, many people took advantage of this - starting from the Moghuls and Turks, then the British, and after partition, the psuedo-secular politicians.

Ruled by the staunchly secularist Congress party for most of the past five decades, India pursued policies designed to ensure equality for Muslims, Christians and followers of other minority religions.

This is absolutely false. The Congress has been one of the most psuedo-secular and communal party in India. Under the garb of being secular, it has gone to extreme lengths to appease minorities. It has orchestrated the worst communal riots in India. Its leaders encouraged terrorism in Punjab, which lead to the deaths of lakhs of people and permanently scarring the relations between Hindus and Sikhs. It took no action when ethnic cleansing of Hindus took place in Kashmir valley. Fed up with such policies, the Indian public saw a ray of hope in BJP, which promised in its manifesto a Uniform civil code for all Indians, scrapping Article 357 which gives seccionist rights to Jammu & Kashmir and deporation of 2 crore illegal Bangladeshi migrants. That it did not act on any of these issues, is another story, with coalition politics being one the reasons for it.

The BJP-led coalition set about a slow but systematic program to place historians sympathetic to Hindu-nationalist ideology in charge of research institutions and to introduce changes in history textbooks in schools.

Rama gives a impression that changes in history textbooks have to do just with ideology. However, they are much more than ideology - they are to do with the truth. No one has exposed these historians more than the renowned journalist Mr. Arun Shourie. In his book 'Eminent Historians: Their line, their fraud", he has exposed how corrupt these historians are, and how they have distorted our history to suit their ideology. So infact, the re-writing of history books is more to do with the truth than just ideology. I would also like to mention that there is nothing wrong in re-writing history. It has happened all around the world, even in America.

While I do not support changing history just on idelogical grounds, I would like the present and future generation to know what the truth is. And any effort in this direction should be hailed, and not criticized. Especially in a free thinking and liberal country like USA, which has been a pioneer in research and scientific studies.