This sophisticated verbiage cannot conceal that the book's approach is merely the standard secularist version propagated by Indian establishment hist… - Koenraad Elst

At any rate, the Mendacious Media only hand out such plum posts to people whom they deem ideologically reliable, i.c. “secularist”.

The causes of two other riots are stated in the well-known indeterminate terminology: "Alleged misbehavior with a girl of the other community". but the two remaining riot causes, the only ones clearly saying which community was attacked (and leaving little doubt as to which community attacked), are these : "Stoning of Holi procession passing a place of worship", and "Alleged murder of the president of VHP, Kheda District, by persons belonging to other community". One might of course start blaming any possible (I hasten to prefix alleged) provocative slogans uttered by the processionists and by that local VHP leader; but normally, people who start the violence, like throwing stones or committing murder, are held responsible for these acts, and at least partly responsible for the reactive violence which they may trigger. It is humanly quite feasible to listen to objectionable and insulting slogans without having a knee-jerk reaction of throwing bombs. It is a free human decision to react with violence. At worst, slogans can be a reason for violence ; given human freedom, they can never be the cause. This fake excuse of the provocative slogans leading mechanically to stone-throwing and worse, is used routinely by biased reporters. For another example, on October 30 there was a riot in Bijnor, with officially 14 people killed, others say 55. A procession with about 100 women members of Durga Vahini had gone out to the Ghanta Ghar area. "There they raised communal slogans, resulting in stone-pelting and bomb-throwing." This cheap excuse for a pre-planned bomb attack is even contradicted by other information in the same article.... This case proves that newspapers keep on blaming the slogan-shouters even when it is crystal-clear from their own information that the violence was premeditated and engineered by the other side.

Unlike in the case of the Buddha, the monotheistic tag has stuck to Zarathustra. In non-specialist circles, the received wisdom nowadays is that he was a kind of Iranian Moses and that his religion may also have influenced the Israelites in a pro-monotheistic sense.