People (...) have to make choices in life, and in their decisions there will always be a dark side available for foul mouths to pick on. - Koenraad Elst

But because this blatant special pleading was in the service of the established theory and not of some “far- fetched” alternative, nobody objected. Well, I'd say: Occam's Razor applies.

He doesn’t find it difficult to show that the term “Hindu” is fairly recent and introduced by Muslims in the catch-all sense of “any Indian non-Muslim”.

A prastha is an open space, a clearing in the forest where you go and settle, a “colony”. Thus, a vanaprastha, an elderly person who withdraws from society, is “one who goes and settles in the forest” or “one who has the forest as his colony”.