One imagines the scornful secularist reaction if the Vishva Hindu Parishad had based its Ayodhya claims on a dream; yet, the numerous Christians in I… - Koenraad Elst

When the medieval Muslim invaders brought the term into India, they used it to mean: any Indian except for the Indian Muslims, Christians or Jews. It did not have a specific doctrinal content except “non-Abrahamic”, a negative definition. It meant every Indian Pagan, including the Brahmins, Buddhists (“clean-shaven Brahmins”), Jains, other ascetics, low-castes, intermediate castes, tribals, and by implication also the as yet unborn Lingayats, Sikhs, Hare Krishnas, Arya Samajis, Ramakrishnaites, secularists and others who nowadays reject the label “Hindu”. This definition was essentially also adopted by VD Savarkar in his book Hindutva (1923) and by the Hindu Marriage Act (1955).

Unlike in the case of the Buddha, the monotheistic tag has stuck to Zarathustra. In non-specialist circles, the received wisdom nowadays is that he was a kind of Iranian Moses and that his religion may also have influenced the Israelites in a pro-monotheistic sense.

A retired Indian Army commander has explained to me how an intervention force well within India's capacity, could have stopped the Chinese in Eastern Tibet. It would have been a war, but it would have been a genuine war of independence, and the number of casualties would have been far less than the lakhs of Tibetans that have by now been killed by the Chinese occupation force. Short, for such a noble cause, a prime minister with a kshatriya spirit would have gone in. And failing that, he could have opened a diplomatic offensive. But he chose to totally betray Tibet.... In his dealings with Pakistan too, he tried to "see their viewpoint also", and consequently made concessions of which millions of Hindus have suffered the consequences (handing over pieces of territory, stopping the reconquest of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir when it was succeeding, refraining from efforts to enforce the Pakistani part of the Nehru-Liaqat pact)... Some will not even grant him the essential Brahmin attribute: thought. All his writings are full of borrowed thought.