There must be at least three hundred foreign correspondents posted in Delhi, which should vouch for a variety of opinion. But if you give them a subj… - François Gautier

I have never hidden behind a pseudonym to say what I think. I have been one of the rare western journalists to defend Hindus. I have done it openly, in my own name, with dedication and courage and that has cost me a lot.

Now compare this with the attitude of the BBC during the Kargil war. Most of us foreign correspondents know by now that the Pakistanis are training, arming and financing Kashmiri mujahidins. We also know that Pakistan is sponsoring international terrorism, whether in New York or in Sinkiang and is a closed ally of the Taliban, one of the most fundamentalist and dangerous forces in the world today. Yet, for the last 10 years, the BBC has kept on with the old refrain : " India SAYS that Pakistan is training Kashmiri militants, an accusation which Islamabad refutes". By insisting on mouthing this absurd statement, even during the Kargil war, when the whole Western intelligence knew that most of the militants manning the heights were Pakistani soldiers in civil, the BBC thought that it is practising impartial journalism. But who are they fooling ? Everybody is aware of the strong Leftist bias of the BBC (nothing wrong in being Leftist, as long as you don’t pretend to be impartial), who has always defended Muslims separatists all over the planet, whether it is the Palestinians, the terrorists in Chechenya, or the Kashmiri militants. Unfortunately, the BBC has so much of a reputation in the world (and indeed their documentaries are first class), that it shapes the opinions of our editors in Paris or Bonn, who in turn put pressure on us to report on "Hindu fundamentalism", or the "poor persecuted Kashmiris".

Nevertheless, they did their fair share of harm to India, which has not yet really recovered from two centuries of Raj. Their brutality, whether the hangings of Indian nationalists, or the incredible ferocity which followed the great Indian Mutiny, or the massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, are today part of history. They ruled for two centuries with the unshakeable conviction of their own racial superiority which made Fitzjames Stephen, the philosopher of the Indian Civil Service, say: “Ours is essentially an absolute government, which has for base not the consent of the Indians, but their conquest. It does not want to represent the concept of the indigenous population of life and government and can never do, because then it would represent idolatry and barbarism. It represents a belligerent civilisation and nothing could be more dangerous than to have in one’s administration, at the head of a government founded on conquest—implying in all points the superiority of the conquering race, its institution, its principles, that men who hesitate to impose themselves openly.”