The status quaestionis is still, more than ever, that the Vedic corpus provides no reference to an immigration of the so-called Vedic Aryans from Cen… - Koenraad Elst

Note that we need not agree with the Śāstrakāra-s that the varnāśramadharma is truly “Vedic”, for we do not find it in the first nine books of the Rg-Veda. Even in the tenth book, the last and youngest one, we find it mentioned only once, and there only in the vaguest use, viz. the Purusa Sūkta’s recognition of the existence of four functions in society, without any details of how their personnel is recruited nor of how they should conduct themselves vis-à-vis one another, the very stuff that is the main focus of the Śāstra-s. Like medieval and contemporary Hindus, the Śāstra composers may have considered as ”Vedic” everything they held sacred, regardless of whether a particular norm or custom is indeed traceable to the Veda-s.

One of the more disturbing and sterile approaches which Hansen has borrowed from his secularist sources, is the tendency to psychologize, and to bury hard facts under a cloud of psychobabble: "construct", "identities built around a threatening other", "domesticating public spaces", "myth of Hindu effeminacy".... The book contains some of the familiar tricks known from the M.J. Akbar school of Hindutva‑smearing, e.g. just as MJ Akbar once cleverly described Veer Savarkar as "a co-accused in the Mahatma murder trial" without mentioning that Savarkar was fully acquitted and not even indicted again in the appeals trial, we find Prof. Hansen casting suspicion on L.K. Advani by describing him as "indicted in a massive corruption scandal in 1996" (p.266) without mentioning that the investigation cleared him completely of the charges (which were minor, the "massive" scandal mainly pertaining to dozens of Congress secularists, as Hansen fails to explain).

I remember Vijay Prashad and Biju Mathew calling for a denial of any platform to myself, and big professors like Michael Witzel and Robert Zydenbos seconding this call; but I don't remember Wendy Doniger coming out in my support.... In most cases, the people clamouring "freedom of expression" on this occasion are very selective in their love of freedom, which they would gladly throw overboard as soon as it concerns the expression of an opinion less dear to them. I have the impression that Wendy herself is in this category too, but she may convince us otherwise by showing off her earlier acts of solidarity with besieged writers.