Looked at from the point of view of Islam, it was a dazzling period indeed. Islam acquired an empire over a large country full of unrivalled riches. … - Sita Ram Goel

Muslim historians credit all their heroes with many expeditions each of which “laid waste” this or that province or region or city or countryside. The foremost heroes of the imperial line at Delhi and Agra such as Qutbu’d-Dîn Aibak (1192-1210 A.D.), Shamsu’d-Dîn Iltutmish (1210-36 A.D.), Ghiyãsu’d-Dîn Balban (1246-66 A D.), Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî (1296-1316 A.D.), Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51 A.D.), Fîruz Shãh Tughlaq (135188 A.D.) Sikandar Lodî (1489-1519 A.D.), Bãbar (1519-26 A.D.) and Aurangzeb (1658-1707 A.D.) have been specially hailed for “hunting the peasantry like wild beasts”, or for seeing to it that “no lamp is lighted for hundreds of miles”, or for “destroying the dens of idolatry and God-pluralism” wherever their writ ran. The sultans of the provincial Muslim dynasties-Malwa, Gujarat, Sindh, Deccan, Jaunpur, Bengal-were not far behind, if not ahead, of what the imperial pioneers had done or were doing; quite often their performance put the imperial pioneers to shame. No study has yet been made of how much the human population declined due to repeated genocides committed by the swordsmen of Islam. But the count of cities and towns and villages which simply disappeared during the Muslim rule leaves little doubt that the loss of life suffered by the cradle of Hindu culture was colossal.

Another great writer who led me on It this stage was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. I had read all his novels but had never been able to understand why he had been honoured as a rishi. I myself was a novelist and had already written several humane stories. I thought that a novelist dealt with the dimensions of human character and mapped the heights it could scale and the depths to which it could sink. Why should we foist the title of a rishi on this poor fellow? That way rishis will be available a dime a dozen. My doubts about Bankim Chandra being a rishi were removed when I read the second volume of his Collected Works in Bengali. His insights into the innermost core of Hindu culture were a revelation. His Ramayaner Alochona made me see the monstrosities of modern Indology, more than ever before. I immediately translated this masterpiece into Hindi.

Kautilya has elaborated in his Arthashastra the psychological principles which alienate some people from their own society, and lead them straight into the lap of those who are out to subvert that society. The first group of people who can be alienated are the maneevarga, that is, those who are conceited and complain that they have been denied what is their due on account of birth, brains or qualities of character. (...) the Church was instinctively employing the psychological principles propounded by Kautilya. ...Christian missionaries could find quite a few and easy converts amongst these upper classes precisely because the Church had declared war on their society. ... By the time the French, the British and the Dutch appeared on the Eastern scene, Christianity had been found out in the West for what it had always been in facto power-hungry politics masquerading as religion. The later-day European imperialists, therefore, had only a marginal use for the Christian missionary. He could be used to beguile the natives. But he could not be allowed to dictate the parallel politics of imperialism. ... The field for the Christian politics of conversion has become considerably smaller in Asia due to the resurgence of Islam, and the triumph of Communism... It is only in India, Ceylon and Japan that the missionary continues to practice his profession effectively.