... Mr. Chowgule is a thoughtful exponent of the VHP argument on the Babari Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi controversy. He says that Babar's motive in constructing the Masjid in 1528 was to establish a symbol that would remind the conquered people of India who the master was and who the slave. That may well have been the case – in 1528. But today?

The 'Babaric' symbol, to coin a phrase, retained the offensive meaning imputed to it by Mr. Chowgule only as long as the reality it sought to symbolise. When Mughal rule disappeared, so did the potency of that symbol. Western countries have lived for centuries among Roman monuments constructed for exactly the same purpose, which remained, after the fall of the Roman Empire, as monuments, nothing more.

By 1992, the only symbolic importance the Babari Masjid had lay in our mind - in the importance we chose to give it. The attack on it, however, symbolised something else to Muslims in India and around the world, which is why I wrote of my sense of shame and sorrow at what Hindus had done in the name of their faith ..

When Mr. Chowgule writes that "it is natural that a free people should recover their own symbols," he appears to exclude non-Hindus from his definition of free Indian people. I admire Rana Pratap, Chhatrapati Shivaji and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi just as much as he does, but my admiration for Akbar, for Hyder Ali, for Tipu Sultan is hardly any less.

My sense of India's history embraces all their contributions (as well as those of a few South Indian figures the VHP never seems to mention, such as Krishna Deva Raya of Vijayanagar). To me, the attainment of freedom means more than just the freedom of us Hindus.

Let us not forget that Indian nationalism was explicitly constructed by our founding fathers as the nationalism of all Indians, irrespective of religion, language or race - in other words, Indian nationalism by definition, is not Hindu nationalism ....

We are a land of belonging rather than of blood. The very idea of India is of one land embracing many - despite differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, costume and custom. To reduce Indian nationalism to Hindu nationalism is to buy into the "two- nation theory" that divided the country in 1947.

Nothing could be more ironic than for Indians who deplore Partition to advocate a view mirroring the argument for that very Partition. (Source: The Indian Express, 5 July, 1998)