Generations of Indians have been nurtured on simple-minded narrations of events and developments, with the result that new Indians are a bewildered people. They do not know why we are where we are. Is it in our star, they ask. Perhaps we were always like this. They tell themselves.

However, had our post-independence narrations been more truthful, these new Indians could have known that we were not always "like this".

That is why we call upon today's near-global audience to join this public probe in the last phase of the life of a great Indian. Blatant efforts have been made to misrepresent him - to conceal facts in the musty vaults of secret archives in order to spawn myths of modern demonology. History has been portrayed in monochrome.

Those who succeed in a power struggle generally take all. In the short run this is understandable and also acceptable. But history must not be made the hand-maiden of power.

In modern times, attempts at rewriting history have not succeeded. Knowledge and information are no more the preserve of a narrow stratum. An expanding section of our global society has access to information which in the past was closed to them.