The most telling illustration has been provided by the silence over the new archaeological findings. .... When the findings of the excavations which … - Arun Shourie

But here in India a simplistic recitation of the earlier phrases and categories remained enough. It is not just fidelity to the masters, therefore, which characterizes the history writing by these eminences. It is a simple-mindedness!
But there is an additional factor. Whitewashing the Islamic period is not the only feature which characterizes the work of these historians. There is in addition a positive hatred for the pre-Islamic period and the traditions of the country. Over the years entries about India in Soviet encyclopedias, for instance, became more and more ductile. They began to acknowledge ever so hesitantly that the categories and periods might need to be nuanced when they were extended to countries like China and India. They began to acknowledge that at various times there had been an overlapping and coexistence of different ‘stages’. And, perhaps for diplomatic reasons alone, they became increasingly circumspect – careful to avoid denigrating our traditions.
In the standard two-volume Soviet work, A History of India, for instance, we find more or less the same characterization of the different periods in Indian histories as we do in the volumes of our eminent historians. But the Soviet volumes have none of the scorn and animosity which we have encountered in the volumes of our eminent historians.

Furthermore, we are instructed, when we do come across instances of temple destruction, as in the case of Aurangzeb, we have to be circumspect in inferring what has happened and why.... the early monuments – like the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in Delhi – had to be built in ‘great haste’, we are instructed...Proclamation of political power, alone! And what about the religion which insists that religious faith is all, that the political cannot be separated from the religious? And the name: the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, the Might of Islam mosque? Of course, that must be taken to be mere genuflection! And notice: ‘available materials were assembled and incorporated’, they ‘clearly came from Hindu sources’ – may be the materials were just lying about; may be the temples had crumbled on their own earlier; may be the Hindus voluntarily broke their temples and donated the materials? No? After all, there is no proof they didn’t! And so, the word ‘plundered’ is repeatedly put within quotation marks!
In fact, there is more. The use of such materials – from Hindu temples – for constructing Islamic mosques is part of ‘a process of architectural definition and accommodation by local workmen essential to the further development of a South Asian architecture for Islamic use’. The primary responsibility thus becomes that of those ‘local workmen’ and their ‘accommodation’. Hence, features in the Qutb complex come to ‘demonstrate a creative response by architects and carvers to a new programme’. A mosque that has clearly used materials, including pillars, from Hindu temples, in which undeniably ‘in the fabric of the central dome, a lintel carved with Hindu deities has been turned around so that its images face into the rubble wall’ comes ‘not to fix the rule’. ‘Rather, it stands in contrast to the rapid exploration of collaborative and creative possibilities – architectural, decorative, and synthetic – found in less fortified contexts.’ Conclusions to the contrary have been ‘misevaluations’. We are making the error of ‘seeing salvaged pieces’ – what a good word that, ‘salvaged ’: the pieces were not obtained by breaking down temples; they were lying as rubble and would inevitably have disintegrated with the passage of time; instead they were ‘salvaged ’, and given the honour of becoming part of new, pious buildings – ‘seeing salvaged pieces where healthy collaborative creativity was producing new forms’.

On the other hand, when sticking to the text is what will advance the judgment, they become strict constructionists. Some of the most conspicuous instances of this can be found in judgments relating to Article 30, the article that deals with the ‘right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions’. The country had been partitioned on the cry that Muslims will never be secure in a united India. The framers were naturally keen to reassure the minorities that they would be free to preserve their religion, language and culture. Accordingly, Article 29 was enacted guaranteeing them and assuring them of this freedom. In case they wanted to set up institutions for safeguarding their language, culture, religion, Article 30 was enacted assuring them that ‘All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.’ The context made the purpose clear: minorities would have the freedom to set up such institutions as they thought would best preserve their culture, religion, language. But, given what has been the climate of discourse since the framing of the Constitution, the judges became literalists. Minorities would have the right to set up and manage ‘educational institutions of their choice’ irrespective of the purpose for which the institution was set up. Thus, engineering colleges and dental colleges set up by a family of, say, Muslims would have freedoms from state regulation and oversight that engineering and dental colleges set up by run-of-the-mill Indians would not.