But in 1989-92, that option was thwarted by the offensive of Babri ultras, and by this I don’t mean the warriors for Islam but the conformistic intel… - Koenraad Elst

It also contains blissful nonsense about communal amity in places where the original sources only mention enmity. Thus, it says that Bahmani sultan Tajuddin Firuz extracted tribute payments and the hand of the king's daughter from the Hindu bastion Vijayanagar after two military campaigns, and that this resulted in "the establishment of an apparently amicable relationship between the two rulers". Jawaharlal Nehru considered the induction of Hindu women in Muslim harems as the cradle of composite culture (his euphemism for Hindu humiliation), but it is worse if even the venerable Encyclopedia considers the terms of debate as a sign of friendship. At any rate, the article goes on to observe naively that peace lasted only for ten years, when Vijaynagar forces inflicted a crushing defeat on Firuz. In this case, the more circumspect form of negationism is at work: keeping the inconvenient facts out of the readers' view, and manipulating the terminology.

Finally, there is one more kind of India-watcher or India-fan in the West, with a typical and remarkable attitude to the Ayodhya affair: the"seekers". Some people staying in India for spiritual things, and who were told that I was writing about this Ayodhya affair, immediately came out with their superior scorn for such unspiritual quarrels: "What are those Kar Sevaks going to Ayodhya for? To lay the second brick?" What these people should realize, is that the society which has allowed ashrams to flourish, has only survived because it also had a martial component. Why are they not going to Afghanistan for yoga? because Hinduism in Afghanistan got militarily defeated and annihilated. Because Islam, which in their own woolly world-view is just as true as any other religion, has weeded out the kind of Pagan practices that they come to India for. If there is a part of the world left where the gurus can continue their traditions, it is because Hindus have fought. It is a non-violent part of the same martial tradition, that today Hindus are asserting themselves in Ayodhya.

. Yet, secular and leftist Westerners are nonetheless heirs to Christian strategies and modes of thinking. Thus, many of the Christian Saints have a narrative of martyrdom, and usually it is that which made them Saints. The early Church deliberately spread or concocted martyrdom stories, for it empirically found these successful in swaying people towards accepting the Christian message.