Scholars contest whether the Hindu perceptions and apologetic attempts to rationalize the Buddha within their fold are correct. Though an avatar of Vishnu, the Buddha is rarely worshipped like Krishna and Rama in Hinduism. According to John Holt, the Buddha was adopted as an avatar of Vishnu around the time the Puranas were being composed, in order to subordinate him into the Brahmanical ideology. Further adds Holt, various scholars in India, Sri Lanka and outside South Asia state that the colonial era and contemporary attempts to assimilate Buddha into the Hindu fold are a nationalistic political agenda, where "the Buddha has been reclaimed triumphantly as a symbol of indigenous nationalist understandings of India's history and culture".