At any rate, the BMAC’s frontal display of contempt for logic and rational method has not pitted any secularist against the BMAC position. For them n… - Koenraad Elst

Foreign correspondents in Delhi should realize that the Indian media and academia are entirely untrustworthy when it comes to reporting on the Hindu-Muslim conflict. When you report the truth about the democratic opposition in China or Tibet, you don't copy the People's Daily.. So, when you want to understand the Hindu backlash, you don't believe strictly partisan sources like the Times of India, or party-line historians like those from JNU or AMU.

In the Indian subcontinent, Muslims numbered less than 20% in the census of 1881, and more than 24% in the last all-subconti- nental census in 1941. After that, the difference in growth rate between Muslims and non-Muslims has even increased, as birth control became common among the latter, much less among the former. Now, every decade the Muslim percentage in the Subcon- tinent increases by about 1.5%, with the rate of increase itself in- creasing. In 1800, Muslims were 1 in 7, in 1850 they were 1 in 6, in the 1880s they became 1 in 5, around 1950 they were 1 in 4, and shortly after the year 2010 they will be 1 in 3. Already, militant Muslims are talking of Akhand Bharat, a kind of re-unification, and especially Bangladesh suggests that there should be an open bor- der: the perspective of numerically overtaking the Hindus at least in parts of India is beckoning. In truncated India, Muslim population has officially grown 3% in forty years (from less than 10% to nearly 13% in 1951-91), and Muslim leaders claim that the true figure of Muslim population is about 3% higher. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal too, the Muslim percentage has continually increased (a small de- crease in Pakistan between 1971 and 1981 is explained by the fact that Ahmadiyyas were officially stamped non-Muslims in 1974). 225

In India, the negationists have managed what European negationists can only dream of: turn the tables on honest historians and marginalize them. People who have specialized in adapting history to the party-line, are lecturing others about the political abuse of history. By contrast, genuine historians who have refused to tamper with the record of Islam (like Jadunath Sarkar, R.C. Majumdar, K.S. Lal) are held us as examples of communalist historywriting in textbooks which are required reading in all history departments in India.