Growing up, I used to love hearing my mother tell me the stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, two of ancient India's greatest epic poems. Heroes like Krishna, Rama, and Arjuna were my role models and integral parts of my cultural identity. The great war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas and Rama's fourteen year trek through the jungles of India and Lanka were not just fanciful children's stories to me; this was Indian history, according to our tradition. But once I entered grade school, I was taught our history was wrong.

According to the Western view of Indian history, the Mahabharata was probably just a petty skirmish between tribes, if it ever happened at all, and Rama most likely never even existed. In fact, the only thing definitive the textbooks said about Indian history was that a group of tall, fair-skinned nomads called Aryans invaded India, displacing the native population and creating the current Indian culture.

What these textbooks said greatly undermined my belief in my culture. It meant that all the stories I heard as a child were just fantasy; it meant that my culture was founded by violent barbarians; it meant that everything my culture had accomplished was lessened because it had a foreign origin. Needless to say, I, as a thirteen year old boy, was not flattered by this picture of my nation's past.