Hindu Nationalism

"Mathew Mar Gregorios, the Bishop of the Syrian Independent Orthodox Church, believes that ‘love jihad’ is a reality and that the time has come for youngsters to stand up and fight this evil. “You should see the number of messages I get daily from parents of girls on my phone. There is a rampant conversion of Christian girls into Islam in the Malabar region. Since I am heading a Church denomination here, I have my limitations to talk about it openly,’’ the Bishop tells HT. ‘Love jihad’ is a misnomer because it’s a conversion ploy, not love, he says. “In most cases that I have seen personally and intervened too, it’s just the pretence of love. Once married, the girl gets abandoned most of the times. Conversion is the only motto and it is aimed at increasing the numbers of one community. Some people have even alleged an IS link to all this, which needs to be probed.’’"

"Joseph Kallarangatt, Bishop of the Palai diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church, alleged that those who claim that ‘love jihad’ doesn’t exist in Kerala are “blind to reality.” “Such people, be they politicians or those from social and cultural spaces, media may have their own vested interests. But one thing is clear. We are losing our young women. It is not just about love marriages. It’s a war strategy to destroy their lives,” he claimed... “Like in other parts of the world, there is a section of Muslims in Kerala who want to create animosity between communities and spread religious hatred. Jihadis are using different means to spread Islam and they are into targeting young non-Muslim girls for the same,” he said citing examples of Nimisha, a Hindu girl, and Sonia Sebastian, a Christian girl, who got converted to Islam after falling in love with Muslim men and finally joined the dreaded Islamic State in Syria. He further elucidated, “In a democratic country like ours, since it’s not easy to use weapons to destroy people of other faiths, jihadis are using means which are not easily identifiable. In the view of jihadis, non-Muslims are to be destroyed. When the objective is an expansion of their religion and the destruction of non-Muslims, the means they use are of different forms. Two of such widely-discussed means today are love jihad and narcotics jihad."

"Launching Demographic war: Seducing and marrying Hindu girls and displaying them as proud jihad trophies i.e., jihad through “love”;"

"The spate of organised religious conversions and using the victims for terror activities by trapping them through ‘love jihad’ has shown the Christian community is a soft target for Islamic radicals."

"It is important that the home ministry takes note of this alarming trend and order a probe by the National Investigative Agency and bring in an effective law to curb such fraudulent activities of radicalised elements."

"The fears expressed by the parents are not misplaced, given the experiences in similar cases in the past. Reports suggest out of 21 persons who joined the IS from Kerala, five were converted from Christianity." He quotes information published by Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference's Commission for Social Harmony and Vigilance, where it is said "around 4,000 girls have been subjected to conversion since 2005 (till 2012) after they fell in love". The victims were sexually harassed or had to spend the rest of their lives in a pathetic condition without any freedom”."

"The Christian girls in Kerala are targeted by ‘Love Jihad’. They can be easily victimized. The growing tendency of religious conversion prove this”."

"Our demand is that no girl should undergo this trauma. I feel that ‘Love Jihad’ is spreading rapidly."

"There are some cases which have come up that need to be addressed, we should definitely address it. If something like this is taking place, we should address it... There are some issues and apprehension about this. The government should clearly come out about what has happened and if there are any such cases (of ‘love jihad’), they should be addressed and stopped."

"This is an organised crime. There is money coming from the Gulf and other countries to enable a gang of Muslim men trap Hindu women, marry them and then use them for crime including terror."

"We have seen how the sufi divine Khwaja Hasan Nizami in his Daiye Islam had instructed the Muslims on the ways to convert Hindus to Islam. His over-enthusiasm cautioned the Hindus. The instructions did not remain a secret, the book was translated and the Hindus found out how and why secret kidnappings, abductions and seductions of Hindu girls by Muslims in almost every town and city of northern India had become the order of the day. Hindus, individually and through their organisations, began to exercise vigilance. They began to undo such dirty attempts by rescuing Hindu girls, widows and orphans and bringing the offenders to book."

"Of the many pamphlets and brochures in Urdu instructing Muslims in the ways of converting Hindus, only one may be examined to give an idea of the stuff contained in such literature. It is the Daiye Islam (Propagation of Islam) by Khwaja Hasan Nizami. Hasan Nizami was a sufi divine connected with the dargah of Nizamuddin Awliya of Delhi. The pamphlet teaches the Muslims the quickest and comprehensive way of converting Kafirs to Islam. The Khwaja exhorted Muslims of all categories from the highest to the lowest, to serve the cause of Islam by helping in the conversion of non-Muslims to Islam. In this missionary endeavour Zamindars and Nawabs, doctors and prostitutes, ekka players and bangle sellers were all invited to make their contribution. Muslim lawyers and doctors were to influence their Hindu clients to convert. Nawabs and Zamindars were to pressurize Hindu tenants under them to become Musalman. The prostitute was required to exert her influence on her Hindu visitors and admirers into becoming Muslims. The bangle seller was to seduce young Hindu girls and the ekka driver was to seduce away Hindu ladies and children. Such a recipe was neither spiritual nor edifying but it fitted with the Muslim mentality. The pamphlet recorded wide sale among Muslims. The Nizam of Hyderabad fixed an allowance for the Khwaja and other Muslims Chiefs and Zamindars followed suit. Muslim magistrates, police and excise inspectors and other influential officials were found working according to the plan laid out by this sufi devotee of Islam."

"“If the believers are concerned with such a scenario, then you cannot fault them for it. Though officially, the diocese has not taken a stand, we are concerned. So if there are people working towards stopping such a thing what is wrong in supporting them.’’"

"There is a dark sexual obsession about allegedly ultra-virile Muslim male bodies and overfertile Muslim female ones, that inspire and sustain the figures of paranoia and revenge."

"There is also the perpetual fear of a more virile Muslim male body that lures away Hindu girls, a kind of penis envy and anxiety about emasculation that can only be overcome by doing violent deeds."

"Love jihad, yes, I see what’s happened in Kerala. How Hindus are being tricked in a marriage and how they suffer…not only Hindus, Muslims, the Christian girls are being tricked in a marriage. Now that sort of a thing I certainly will oppose.”"

"While the Left dismisses these occurrences as a figment of the ‘right-wing imagination’, the cases are real. The dead bodies are also real and the threat is imminent... It is because of the narrow definition of a term like ‘Love Jihad’ that the Left is now attempting to twist it to allege that the term Love Jihad is simply used because ‘extremist Hindus’ are against inter-faith marriages, whereas, the phenomenon is far from being about consensual relationships. It is for these reasons that OpIndia has now decided to do away with the term ‘Love Jihad’ in its parlance and reportage. There is no ‘Love’ in Jihad and even if accept the term along with its problematic syntax, it fails to capture the severity of the Jihad that is being waged by sections of radical Muslims that specifically target non-Muslim women. We believe that the term ‘Grooming Jihad’ is far more appropriate since it encapsulates within itself all categories of crimes that keep women at the centre of this Jihad. Non-Muslim women are being groomed to accept their own subjugation at the hands of Muslim men. They are kidnapped, raped, lured, converted to Islam, punished and brainwashed. There is no ‘Love’ in these crimes against humanity. There is no ambiguity that it is a form of Jihad. It is time to call it what it is – Grooming Jihad."

"Kashmir is not Pakistan where Sikhs can be forced to convert, we won't allow this to happen. Jathedar Akal Takht Sahib has written a letter to Lieutenant Governor of Jammu & Kashmir to bring a law against 'Love Jihad'."

"It is a cause of great worry that Christian girls are the most targeted lot. The CBI, the NIA and the IB have all reported that such cases are occurring in the state and the country. It is saddening and worrying that despite the existence of a mechanism to counter efforts by religious terrorist groups to entrap gullible girls, these are not being tackled efficiently."

"The Islamic State has been luring Christian women as part of their international agenda of hunting down Jewish and Christian women... In the next few months, we will sensitise families and girls through our pious organisations so that they are educated enough not to fall into this trap."

"As if this is not enough, there is a deliberate and organised design to convert Kargil's Buddhists to Islam. In the last four years, about 50 girls and married women with children were allured and converted from village Wakha alone. If this continues unchecked, we fear that Buddhists will be wiped out from Kargil in the next two decades or so. Anyone objecting to such allurement and conversions is harassed... Therefore, to protect the religious and cultural identity of the Ladakhi people, an anti-conversion law must be enacted for Kargil as is presently in force in states like Arunachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh."

"Love jihad shouldn’t be viewed only from the love angle, but addressed at a broader level. This is not to target any particular community. Secular political parties should at least accept that love jihad exists here. A small group of people in the state is continuously getting radicalised and it has its links to international and global Islam. It varies in names, but people and leadership of these groups are almost the same... It’s a major problem we’ve been facing for many years, but secular political parties in Kerala are not interested in discussing these issues. It’s part of their politics. Every death and killing that happens in the state is sidelined as a “isolated” incident. A series of killings have taken place and yet no mainstream party in the state has addressed the issue. There have been reports that the radical groups were involved in the killings and the government has all the details... “Even today we received phone calls from worried Christian parents seeking help and counselling for their daughters. It’s not about getting married to someone from another religion. In these cases, we don’t see them living happily after the marriage. We’ve been monitoring the issues. The police themselves have revealed in many cases that girls have gone missing after marriage or they have joined the Islamic State and were being used as sex slaves. That means it was not love. Love has been used as a weapon."

"Indians may recall that such death sentences against people who have insulted the Prophet, have been carried out earlier this century: against Arya Samaj propagandists Swami Shraddhananda and Pandit Lekh Ram, and against Rajpal, the writer of the Rangila Rasool (more or less Playboy Mohammed). This was a book on the sex life of the Prophet and his wives, certainly insulting, and as a criticism of Islam rather beside the point, but understandable as a reaction against a similar vilifying Muslim pamphlet about Sita. These murders had the desired effect, for the Arya Samaj became less straightforward in its criticism of the Prophet."

"The [Arya Samajs'] defiant stand against Islam was increasingly reaping the whirlwind... A pamphlet of the local Sanatana Dharma Sabha... contained an anti-Islamic poem. Frightened by the first Muslim protests, the Hindu minority convened and passed a resolution "regretting their error and requesting pardon". To appease the Muslim protesters, the authorities arrested Jiwan Das... Nevertheless, on 9 and 10 September 1924, Muslim mobs raided the Hindu neighbourhood, killing dozens of Hindus... The most outstanding Arya Samaji of the twentieth century, Swami Shraddananda, was killed by one Abdul Rashid.... When Abdul Rashid was hanged... Muslim clerics all over India held prayer-meetings for his martyred soul. Dr. Ambedkar testifies: "The leading Muslims, however, never condemned these criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs."... In 1933, another Arya Samaji, Nathuramal Sharma, was taken to court for publishing a similar pamphlet as Lekh Ram's... in the courthouse itself he was murdered by one Abdul Qayum."

"It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans... This was followed by the murder of Lala Nanakchand, a prominent Arya Samajist of Delhi. Rajpal, the author of the Rangila Rasool, was stabbed by llamdin on 6th April 1929 while he was sitting in his shop. Nathuramal Sharma was murdered by Abdul Qayum in September 1934. It was an act of great daring. For Sharma was stabbed to death in the Court of the Judicial Commissioner of Sind where he was seated awaiting the hearing of his appeal against his conviction under Section 195, 1. P. C., for the publication of a pamphlet on the history of Islam. .... This is, of course, a very short list and could be easily expanded. But whether the number of prominent Hindus killed by fanatic Muslims is large or small matters little. What matters is the attitude of those who count towards these murderers. The murderers paid the penalty of law where law is enforced. The leading Moslems, however, never condemned theses criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs and agitation was carried on for clemency being shown to them. As an illustration of this attitude, one may refer to Mr. Barkat Ali, a Barrister of Lahore, who argued the appeal of Abdul Qayum. He went to the length of saying that Qayum was not guilty of murder of Nathuramal because his act was justifiable by the law of the Koran. This attitude of the Moslems is quite understandable. What is not understandable is the attitude of Mr. Gandhi. (p. 157)"

"The Arya Samaj was the first Hindu movement to take up a bold stand in this context. Maharshi Dayanand himself had showed up Muhammad for the sort of man he was. Soon after, however, the Arya Samaj was silenced effectively by a series of murders, notably that of Pandit Lekhram and Swami Shraddhananda. The British were inclined to permit fair criticism, particularly that which was based on Islamic sources. But they could not prevent Muslim assassins from taking the law in their own hands."

"The only component of the current [of Hindu revivalism] which could be called 'fundamentalist', i.e. seeking to revive Scripture as normative for today's society and attacking those co-religionists who have allegedly deviated from scriptural purity, is the Arya Samaj ... still standing out as a progressive movement. In the case of Hinduism, it so happens that many of the traditional inequalities, injustices and unwholesome customs of Hindu society are not attested in Vedic scripture, and even less so in the Arya Samaj's own understanding of it. This made it possible to present a programme of social equality as a return to the Vedas."

"In the Arya Samaj, girls get the complete Vedic initiation, as apparently they used to in the Vedic age itself."

"Whenever a Muslim called upon the Muslim society, he never faced any resistance-he called in the name of one God ‘Allah-ho-Akbar’. On the other hand, when we (Hindus) call will call, ‘come on, Hindus’, who will respond? We, the Hindus, are divided in numerous small communities, many barriers-provincialism-who will respond overcoming all these obstacles? “We suffered from many dangers, but we could never be united. When Mohammed Ghouri brought the first blow from outside, the Hindus could not be united, even in the those days of imminent danger. When the Muslims started to demolish the temples one after another, and to break the idols of Gods and Goddesses, the Hindus fought and died in small units, but they could not be united. It has been provided that we were killed in different ages due to out discord. Weakness harbors sin. So, if the Muslims beat us and we, the Hindus, tolerate this without resistance-then, we will know that it is made possible only by our weakness. For the sake of ourselves and our neighbour Muslims also, we have to discard our weakness. We can appeal to our neighbour Muslims, `Please don't be cruel to us. No religion can be based on genocide' - but this kind of appeal is nothing, but the weeping of the weak person. When the low pressure is created in the air, storm comes spontaneously; nobody can stop it for sake for religion. Similarly, if weakness is cherished and be allowed to exist, torture comes automatically - nobody can stop it. Possibly, the Hindus and the Muslims can make a fake friendship to each other for a while, but that cannot last forever. As long as you don’t purify the soil, which grows only thorny shrubs you can not expect any fruit."

"“At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.” (pp.8-9)]."

"Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of the Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for freedom."

"I do not regard business as something evil or tainted, any more than it is so regarded in ancient spiritual India.... All depends on the spirit in which a thing is done, the principles on which it is built and the use to which it is turned. I have done politics and the most violent kind of revolutionary politics, ghoram karma, and I have supported war and sent men to it, even though politics is not always or often a very clean occupation nor can war be called a spiritual line of action. But Krishna calls upon Arjuna to carry on war of the most terrible kind and by his example encourage men to do every kind of human work, sarvakarmani. Do you contend that Krishna was an unspiritual man and that his advice to Arjuna was mistaken or wrong in principle?... I do not regard the ascetic way of living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine.... The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmani, is un-Indian, European or western and unspiritual."

"There was not the idea of 'interest' in India as in Europe, i.e., each community was not fighting for its own interest; but there was the idea of Dharma, the function which the individual and the community has to fulfil in the larger national life. There were caste organizations not based upon a religio-social basis as we find nowadays; they were more or less guilds, groups organized for a communal life. There were also religious communities like the Buddhists, the Jains, etc. Each followed its own law'Swadharma'unhampered by the State. The State recognized the necessity of allowing such various forms of life to develop freely in order to give to the national spirit a richer expression.... Then over the two there was the central authority, whose function was not so much to legislate as to harmonize and see that everything was going on all right. It was generally administered by a Raja; in cases it was also an elected head of the clan, as in the instance of Gautama Buddha's father. Each ruled over either a small State or a group of small States or republics. The king was not a law-maker and he was not at the head to put his hand over all organizations and keep them down. If he interfered with them he was deposed because each of these organizations had its own laws which had been established for long ages.... The machinery of the State also was not so mechanical as in the West... it was plastic and elastic.... This organization we find in history perfected in the reign of Chandragupta and the Maurya dynasty. The period preceding this must have been a period of great political development in India. Every department of national life, we can see, was in the charge of a board or a committee with a minister at the head, and each board looked after what we now would call its own department and was left free from undue interference of the central authority. The change of kings left these boards untouched and unaffected in their work. An organization similar to that was found in every town and village and it was this organization that was taken up by the Mahomedans when they came to India. It is that which the English also have taken up. The idea of the King as the absolute monarch was never an Indian idea. It was brought from Central Asia by the Mahomedans.... The English in accepting this system have disfigured it considerably. They have found ways to put their hand on and grasp all the old organizations, using them merely as channels to establish more thoroughly the authority of the central power. They discouraged every free organization and every attempt at the manifestation of the free life of the community. Now attempts are being made to have the cooperative societies in villages, there is an effort at reviving the Panchayats. But these organizations cannot be revived once they have been crushed; and even if they revived they would not be the same.... If the old organization had lasted it would have been a successful rival of the modern form of government.... You need not come back to the old forms, but you can retain the spirit which might create its own new forms.... It has been a special feature of India that she has to contain in her life all the most diverse elements and assimilate them. This renders her problem most intricate.... The 'nation idea' India never had. By that I mean the political idea of the nation. It is a modern growth. But we had in India the cultural and spiritual idea of the nation..."

"On the other hand, the evidence submitted by the AIBMAC was no more than a pile of papers, most of them being newspaper articles written by sundry scribes and prolific in polemics rather than hard facts or rigorous logic. There was no covering note containing the conclusions which could be drawn from the various “documents”. The VHP scholars -who examined the pile, discovered that apart from raising numerous irrelevent issues, the “documents” took contradictory stands even on the non-issues they raised. All sorts of theories advanced by all sorts of cranks and crackpots had been thrown together, without so much as a thread of unity running through them at any point."

"The Stalinist clique which advertised itself as Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) historians had been carrying on a campaign for quite some time on points that were totally irrelevent to this central issue. What was worse, the clique was ignoring altogether the hard evidence presented by a number of eminent historians and archaeologists. The press by and large, particularly the Times of India group of publications, had been playing up the Stalinist statements as if they were the only ones on the subject. The Indian Express was the only national daily to publish some well-informed articles on what Islamic iconoclasm had done to Hindu places of worship in general and to the Ramajanmabhoomi Mandir at Ayodhya in particular. The government announcement, therefore, did serve the purpose of silencing the Stalinists for some time. They were stunned by the prospect that the other side too was going to get a hearing, and that an amicable settlement of the dispute might be reached."

"The last jihad against the Hindus before the full establishment of British rule was waged by Tipu Sultan at the end of the 18th century. In the rebellion of 1857, the near-defunct Muslim dynasties (Moghuls, Nawabs) tried to curry favour with their Hindu subjects and neighbours, in order to launch a joint effort to re-establish their rule. For instance, the Nawab promised to give the Hindus the Ram Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid site back, in an effort to quench their anti-Muslim animosity and redirect their attention towards the new common enemy from Britain. This is the only instance in modern history when Muslims offered concessions to the Hindus; after that, all the concessions made for the sake of communal harmony were a one-way traffic from Hindu to Muslim."

"[Mir Rajjab Ali further complained that] when the Moazzin recites Azaan, the opposite party begins to blow conch... [he wanted] the newly constructed Chabootra.. demolished [and that he] will not blow the conch at the time of Azaan."

"A large force [of Muslims was] determined to destroy and ruin the Hunuman Ghurrie which is inhabited by Hindoos and is peculiarly sacred in their estimation, his lieutenant called Moulavee Saheb is even still more diabolically inclined and ready for strife."

"What matters if a dozen of their shrines were destroyed and their pollutions adorned with mosques? But the destruction of a mosque was an offence of the deepest hue; from all times it had been punished by mutilation, nay by death."

"A Muslim chronicler, drawing from numerous sources, made this statement on the outcome of the confrontation: ―Ultimately, on Zilqadda 1271 AH [July 1855], for the tenth or twelfth time, nearly two or three hundred Muslims gathered at Babri Masjid which is situated inside the Sita ki Rasoi [Sītā‘s kitchen]. ... In short, the turbulence [of 1855] reached such a stage that apart from the mitigated mosque at Hanuman Garhi, the Hindus built a temple in the courtyard of Babri Masjid where Sita ki Rasoi was situated."

"When Hindus believe that the place of birth of Lord Rama was within the disputed site of the Ayodhya temple, such belief partakes the nature of essential part of religion and is protected under Article 25 of the Constitution (right to profess one’s religion), the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court has held. ... Such an essential part of religion is constitutionally protected under Article 25."

"If the question referred is answered in the affirmative, namely, that a Hindu temple/structure did exist prior to the construction of the BM, then government action will be in support of the wishes of the Hindu community. If in the negative (...) government action will be in support of the wishes of the Muslim community."

"In November 1989, Muslims in Bangla Desh destroyed more than 200 Hindu temples, on the pretext of reacting against the Shilanyas in Ayodhya... Moreover, during this anti-Hindu violence, many women were raped, some people killed and many wounded, and many shops looted and burned down. In November 1990, another forty or fifty temples were razed or burnt down in Bangla Desh. Or at least, those are the figures given by the secularist press. The Hindu-Buddha-Christian Oikya Parishad, the Bangla minorities' association, reported that in the a village in Chittagong district more than fifty Hindu women had been raped, two killed, and that hundreds of temples had been damaged or burnt down. ... Both the opposition parties and the Hindu-Buddhist- Christian Unity Council of Bangla Desh have alleged a strong government involvement in the communal violence...: "We directly blame the president for these heinous anti-human incidents... they were staged in a planned way under a blueprint in co-operation with law-enforcing agencies." ... In Pakistan too, Muslims used the Ayodhya news as an occasion for temple-burning, rape, murder, and looting... in Dera Murad Jamali, "the police was unable to control the mob", which ransacked fifteen shops belonging to Hindus and set a temple on fire. Little was said about the large-scale outbursts in sindh. In Latifabad and Hyderabad , at least three temples were destroyed, in neighbouring Siroghat the Rama Pir temple was looted and set on fire, etc. Islamic student organizations also took the occasion to attack a Christian school and church in Peshawar.... In Nepal, the Hindu kingdom, some five Hindu temples were burnt down by Muslim gangs, who had probably come over from Bihar. No official protests from any side have been reported."

"A case in which the English version of a major book by a renowned Muslim scholar, the fourth Rector of one of the greatest centres of Islamic learning in India, listing some of the mosques, including the Babri Masjid, which were built on the sites and foundations of temples, using their stones and structures, is found to have the tell-tale passages censored out; The book is said to have become difficult to get;... Evasion, concealment, have become a national habit. And they have terrible consequences... A curious fact hit me in the face. Many of the persons who one would have normally expected to be knowledgeable about such publications were suddenly reluctant to recall this book. I was told, in fact, that copies of the book had been removed, for instance from the Aligarh Muslim University Library. Some even suggested that a determined effort had been made three or four years ago to get back each and every copy of this book... Each reference to each of these mosques having been constructed on the sites of temples with, as in the case of the mosque at Benaras, the stones of the very temple which was demolished for that very purpose have been censored out of the English version of the book! Each one of the passages on each one of the seven mosques! No accident that. .... why would anyone have thought it necessary to remove these passages from the English version-that is the version which was more likely to be read by persons other than the faithful? Why would anyone bowdlerise the book of a major scholar in this way?... Their real significance- and I dare say that they are but the smallest, most innocuous example that one can think of on the mosque-temple business-lies in the evasion and concealment they have spurred. I have it on good authority that the passages have been known for long, and well known to those who have been stoking the Babri Masjid issue. That is the significant thing; they have known them, and their impulse has been to conceal and bury rather than to ascertain the truth....The fate of Maulana Abdul Hai’s passages-and I do, not know whether the Urdu version itself was not a conveniently sanitised version of the original Arabic volume-illustrates the cynical manner in which those who stoke the passions of religion to further their politics are going about the matter. Those who proceed by such cynical calculations sow havoc for all of us, for Muslims, for Hindus, for all. Those who remain silent in the face of such cynicism, such calculations help them sow the havoc. Will we shed our evasions and concealments? Will we at last learn to speak and face the whole truth?"

"“On reading the papers the BMAC had filed as ‘evidence’, I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to over-awe or confuse the government etc. by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap.”"

"Such forgeries, such allegations are the standard technology of this school. Fabricating conspiracy theories is their well-practised weapon. And they have a network… They were the intellectual guides and propagandists of the Babri Masjid Action Committee... These leftist ‘historians’ had attended the initial meetings. They had put together for and on behalf of the Committee ‘documents’. It had been a miscellaneous pile. And it had become immediately evident that this pile was no counter to the mass of archaeological, historical and literary evidence which the VHP had furnished, that in fact the ‘documents’ these guides of the Babri Committee had piled up further substantiated the VHP’s case. These ‘historians’, having undertaken to attend the meeting to consider the evidence presented by the two sides, just did not show up! It was this withdrawal which aborted the initiative that the government had undertaken of bringing the two sides together, of introducing evidence and discourse into the issue. Nothing but nothing paved the way for the demolition as did this running away by these ‘historians’. It was the last nail: no one could be persuaded thereafter that evidence or reason would be allowed anywhere near the issue. ... His bias is evident in the fact that he totally blacks out the absolutely disgraceful concoctions that the Marxist historians put together for the All Indian Babri Masjid Action Committee – … the shameful way they dodged the archaeological evidence, pretending that they had not examined it, that they had not met the archaeologists concerned – when in fact they had met the principal one just the day before, and how, when it became evident to all that the ‘documentary evidence’ which they had complied for the Babri Action Committee just did not match what was submitted on behalf of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, they just failed to turn up at the final meetings. It was this failure to turn up for the meetings that led to the breakdown of negotiations, and killed all prospects of a negotiated settlement."

"I was appaled when I saw what the AIBMAC had furnished. It was just a pile of papers. You were expected to wade through them and discover the relevance they had... I read them dutifully, and was soon convinced that the leaders of the All India Babri Masjid Committee and the intelectuals who had been guiding them had themselves not read them. It wasn't just that so much of it was the stuff of cranks: pages from the book of some chap to the effect that Rama was actually a Pharaoh of Egypt... It was that the overwhelming bulk of it was just a pile of court papers—... and it was that document after document in this lot buttressed the case not of the All India Babri Masjid Committee but of the VHP! They show that the mosque had not been in use since 1936... On reading the papers the AIBMAC had filed as "evidence", I could only conclude, therefore, that either its leaders had not read the papers themselves, or that they had no case and had just tried to overawe or confuse the government etc. by dumping a huge miscellaneous heap."

"The evidence submitted by the AIBMAC was no more than a pile of papers, most of them being newspaper articles written by sundry scribes and prolific in polemics rather than hard facts... All sorts of theories advanced by all sorts of cranks and crackpots had been thrown together, without so much as a thread of unity running through them at any point... Four of the AIBMAC experts... advanced the strange claim that they were independent scholars and should be heard as such... [Later] the AIBMAC experts failed to turn up. That was the end of the first serious effort made by the Government of India to get the the two sides together for finding an amicable settlement of the Ayodhya dispute."

"[Irfan Habib's] commitment to the Babri Masjid could be gauged from the fact that under his Chairmanship, ICHR was accused of functioning as a wing of the BMAC. Suraj Bhan admitted in Court that during Professor Habib's tenure, ICHR sanctioned him a grant for "exploration" at Ayodhya."

"It was perhaps indicative of the relative strengths of the two parties that while the evidence submitted by the VHP was published for the peoples' perusal by July 1991 (History Versus Casuistry), documents submitted by the BMAC are yet to be made public... It seems apparent that if the BMAC documents had then been presented for public scrutiny, much of the fizz would have gone out of the Left campaign."