[newbie] Bash and Aliases problem

[prabhakar+nitika]

Hi everyone:

I am trying to set up some aliases for frequently used commands. 
I have tried adding them to ~/.bashrc and /etc/profile and /etc/bashrc,
but have not had any luck in getting bash to recognize the aliases.
Would there be any reason at all that my ~/.bashrc would not get 
read by bash. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I am doing wrong 
here??

Thanks
prabhakar