As a general rule, you can predict what the secularist position on any issue will be once you know what the militant Islamist position is. From justi… - Koenraad Elst

[Robert Zydenbos said: Hindu nationalists are] the scum of the earth.

This sophisticated verbiage cannot conceal that the book's approach is merely the standard secularist version propagated by Indian establishment historians since decades. There is nothing new and provocative about a book that claims to explain communalism without touching on its single most important determinant, viz. the doctrine laid down in Islamic scripture, and that blurs the clear-cut process of India's communalization by Islam with the help of scapegoats like colonialism.

We should of course not take Mukhia’s word for it (the eminent historians have a well-established reputation for mendaciousness), and “numerous” is certainly an exaggeration, but it remains possible. .. Anyway, I would like to see the secular improvement, e.g. how do you translate the frequently-used Arabic verb q-t-l, Persian kushtan, both meaning “kill”. There aren’t too many nuances to that, are there? Elliott’s translations were correct, but yes, they were selective. .. So be it, but historians have other sources for their history-writing and are not parrots of a party or movement. The main exception are the Indian secularists, whose conclusions are invariably those desired and taught by the Nehruvian rulers... As a matter of fact, 60,000 may just happen to be a good number, for the documented cases of temple destruction (and they already run into the thousands) are necessarily only a fraction of the more everyday cases, which must have been even more numerous. But we as historians can only deal with documented cases, especially since these are difficult enough. Indeed, of the ca. 2,000 cases listed by Sita Ram Goel, and more than 20 years after having been out in the open, not one has been refuted by Prof. Mukhia and his school... Needless to say, my arguments have never been refuted by anyone. Secular historians are so sure about controlling the information flow through education and the media that they don’t bother to interfere when their falsehoods are exposed... Half-literate secularists keep on repeating this story a decade after it has been refuted in my paper... The eminent historians have blood on their hands. .. Maybe the more abstruse elements in the narrative were subject to mistranslation, but the relation between Hindus and Muslims was pretty straightforward and hard to mistake for friendship.