Reply to comment by R. Bilham on ‘‘Interpreting the style of

[1] The source of the 1897 earthquake is central to longstanding controversies about the genesis of the Shillong Plateau and the shortening of the Indian plate at the foot of the Himalaya. Debate on the location and geometry of the 1897 rupture began during the lifetime of R. D. Oldham, a leading geologist during the British colonial period. For nearly 100 years, the 1897 earthquake was attributed to a hypothetical, north dipping fault proposed to extend from the Himalayan thrust system. Instead, Bilham and England [2001] invoked a south dipping fault, which they called the Oldham fault. They further proposed that the Oldham fault is one in a pair of reverse faults of opposing vergence that raised the Shillong Plateau as a pop-up structure. Our paper [Rajendran et al., 2004], while supporting the south dipping geometry, pointed out that the hypothetical Oldham faul