By Stephen Knapp
I say this with some jest because I never personally made it into the movies, but my name and writing did. It was in September of 2025 when I got some messages on my facebook page about how they were finally releasing a movie called “The Taj Story.” This was encouraging to me because now they were addressing the controversy on whether the Taj Mahal was actually built by the invading Muslims, like Shah Jahan, or whether it had been a Shiva temple or Vedic palace, built by the indigenous people of India. I was not sure how they were going to address the topic, but no matter, it should be interesting. It turned out that some people called it propaganda, others considered it simple entertainment, but others took it more seriously. When the movie was released, starring the noted Indian actor Paresh Rawal and directed by Tushar Amrish Goel, it played to packed movie houses all across India for several weeks, starting in October.
Only later when the movie arrived for showings in America, did I find out I was actually mentioned in the film. I had a friend in Houston who saw it and told me that my name was in the movie. WOW! That was interesting.
Then it was showing at a nearby movie house outside of Detroit when some friends and I went to see it. The movie starts with a scene of some workers who were repairing a wall in the Taj Mahal and one of the workers looks through the hole they are working on and into a room. He points a flashlight into it and sees something amazing and tells his supervisor, but his supervisor tells him something, and they simply patch up the hole and keep quiet.
I thought the movie was quite good and was made up of many scenes taking place in the court as they argue various views on the Taj Mahal. In the last court scene, the main actor takes a book and presents it to the judges and explains, “This is a book by Stephen Knapp which gives all the information on the Taj Mahal.” Then he reads a line from my book, while the opening scene of the movie is played again, stating how they found Vedic deities sealed in a room within the Taj, but were forced to keep quiet about it.
Of course, when my name comes up in the film, my friends and I got piqued. However, the movie does not present a final conclusion, but offers much information and many viewpoints that should be considered about the real origins of the Taj Mahal.
I had worked on this subject for many years, collected a number of articles by other writers, along with many photos showing the Vedic influence recognized in the Taj Mahal that have now circulated throughout the internet, and presented my own research, all of which can be found on my website (www.stephen-knapp.com), which drew in a lot of traffic. I then compiled it all into a Kindle Ebook, called “The Taj Mahal: It’s Alternative History as a Vedic Temple,” the sales of which spiked up for several weeks after the release of the movie. But for me, the real awesomeness is that after all of this work, up to the point of even playing a part in this particular movie, realizing it has made such a contribution to the fascination and motivation to review this topic is what makes me most happy. It is simply my part in helping promote the dynamic nature of what Vedic culture has offered to the world for centuries.