‘Arrey bhai, but why don’t you write on Hindu fatwas?,’—that from a prominent intellectual who carries a haloed name. There is nothing like the fatwa… - Arun Shourie

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‘Arrey bhai, but why don’t you write on Hindu fatwas?,’—that from a prominent intellectual who carries a haloed name. There is nothing like the fatwa among Hindus—but surely even our intellectuals know that. The point of such admonitions is different. In this view of the matter, a Hindu should stay clear of writing on Islam. Rather, that if he writes about matters Islamic or Muslim, he should only pen Hosannas—’the religion of tolerance, equality...’—he should only write books ‘understanding’, that is explaining away the ‘Muslim mind’. At the least, if he just has to allude to some unfortunate drawback in it, he must attribute it to some special time and place and exculpate Islam from it! Even more important, he must make sure that he ‘balances’ his remark about that point in Islam with denunciation about something in Hinduism, anything—the caste system, dowry deaths, looking upon foreigners as malechh, at least sati if nothing else fits the bill!