For all these reasons one would expect a host of studies on fatwas. But then one would reckon without our intellectuals. It is yet more proof of the … - Arun Shourie

A dialogue for serving its third purpose could be held only in January 1994 when Arun Shourie, the noted journalist and scholar, was invited by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) to present a “Hindu assessment” of missionary work in India. But unfortunately for-the managers of this “dialogue”, it went out of hand and misfired. Ever since, the giant Christian establishment in India has been smarting with the hurt which Arun Shourie has caused. The uproar he has raised can be compared only with the uproar which had followed the publication of K. M. Panikkars’ Asia and Western Dominance in 1953. Missiology has been mobilizing its arsenal of apologetics and polemics in order to control the damage that has been done to Christian claims and pretensions...
The CBCI was celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation, and holding a Seminar at Ishvani Kendra, a Catholic seminary in Pune. Almost all the Catholic big-wigs in India were present when Arun Shourie gave his talk on 5 January 1994...
By the time the paper was fully elaborated, it had acquired the size of a book. Arun Shourie published it in early May 1994 under the title, Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas. ... Meanwhile, Arun Shourie had written several articles on the subject in his syndicated column which appears in more than a score of newspapers published in several languages all over the country. The articles evoked a lively discussion in the Maharashtra Herald of Pune.

And so on indefinitely. The effect of all this will be obvious: when you take a problem to them, the ulema can facilitate your way or thwart it by invoking one authority rather than the other. Simultaneously they, joined this time by the apologist, will insist that we, in particular the non-Muslims, must never cease to believe that the shariah is a clear and definite code, that it is a divinely ordained, and therefore an eternal and unchanging code!

The organisers had invited Arun Shourie to give the Hindu assessment of the work of missionaries in India. Arun Shourie addressed the Archbishops, Bishops and others on 5 January 1994. ... The organisers asked Arun Shourie to write a paper based on his talk.... As the controversy snowballed... [they] invited several senior churchmen to discuss Missionaries in India on a public platform with Arun Shourie.