In my study of the Ayodhya controversy, I noticed that the frequent attempts to conceal or deny inconvenient evidence were an integral part of a larg… - Koenraad Elst

I have written thousands of pages on that very subject, on that which outsiders call “Hindu fundamentalism”, and I have several times promised a symbolic euro if anyone could substantiate the common accusation that I, not even a Hindu, am a Hindu “fundamentalist”. That euro is still with me, so I can award it to Wallis if he finally does the job. Among civilized people, allegations come with evidence instead of with “bile” and “vitriol”. He may also try to explain away my own publications thematising specific criticisms of Hindutva. The difference with the secularist and especially the Western theses about Hindutva is that my critique is based on primary knowledge, not on hearsay from partisan sources.

To be sure, the usual suspects are bound to oppose this civilizational viewpoint. With their studied superficiality, the secularists view India as a hodge-podge of “communities”, of which a very recent one, concocted by the “Orientalists”, is Hinduism. Just as I finish this article, my attention is drawn to a French magazine celebrating the appointment of an Indian secularist historian to the Collège de France with an interview. There, he speaks out against the very notion of a Hindu civilization. The whole is not real, only the fragments are. The notion of an over-arching civilizational unity and long-term continuity may be obvious in China, and get applause there, but in India it is “communal!” (Ch 18)

The sudden denial of this history by a circle of Marxist historians was not based on any new evidence but purely on political compulsions. It seems that their long enjoyment of a hegemonic power position in academe had gone to their heads, so they thought they could get away with crude history falsification.