While Hindu activists are always treated like animals in a zoo, never allowed to speak for themselves, always condemned to be judged by what someone … - Koenraad Elst

For a scientist, the place where findings are published, or the name of the author, or any other social circumstances of their publication, are of absolutely no consequence to the correctness of their contents. Only for party-line historians like those of JNU,, who count more on power positions than on facts to convince people, the argument of authority is all-important. So, if in my book I have chosen to analyze at length (and partly repeat) the arguments given in the course of a debate conducted on the opinion page of the Indian Express, this does not in any way diminish the value of these arguments. I cannot help it that a number of the documents, facts and insights presented by people like Prof. A.R. Khan, Prof. Harsh Narain and Mr. A.K. Chatterjee, have been ignored in nicely published books by prestigious authors like the JNU historians, Prof. R.S. Sharma and Mr. A.A. Engineer. So I prefer genuine facts published to cheap paper to the distortions on the shiny paper of Prof. Gopal's own book.

One consequential instance in India was the Ayodhya scholars’ debate in the winter of 1990-1991, organized by the Janata (Left-populist) government headed by Chandra Shekhar. This was won hands down by the scholars affirming the existence of a Hindu temple underneath the Babri Masjid, first against a delegation of Muslim leaders unfamiliar with historical methodology, selected by the Babri Masjid Action Committee, then against a group of Marxist academics called in by that same Committee for saving the day. The latter’s position was but an elaboration of the official orthodoxy created by a group of academics from JNU when they issued a statement, The Political Abuse of History (1989), denying the existence of temple remains underneath the Babri Masjid. It had been taken over as Gospel truth by most of the academic and journalistic India-watchers in the West, including Truschke’s mentors. They kept the lid on the debate’s outcome... After Court-ordered excavations in 2003 had definitively confirmed the existence of the temple, acknowledged in the Court verdict of 2010, they have all turned conspicuously silent on Ayodhya.

In normal circumstances, it is not a court's business to pronounce on matters of history, but then whom else could you trust to give a fair opinion when the professional historians were being so brazenly partisan?