"The situation in India is far worse than it is in other countries. The French Marxist scholar Maxime Rodinson's biography of the Prophet, Mohammed, is freely available abroad: its English edition is published by Penguin. It traces the revelations which appeared from time to time - specially the ones pertaining to personal law - to the personal dilemmas the Prophet was facing at that turn: such an exercise by an Indian scholar would be shouted down, and his book banned. Ali Dasthti's, Twenty Three Years to which I have referred earlier shows in graphic details how the Prophet's attitude to one thing after another - to power, to the Jews, to those who did not fall in line, to women - changed after his position in Medina became secure... The same book, had it been written by an Indian, would have called forth demands for a ban, demands which would certainly have prevailed."