While wandering through the halls of academia he discovered the works of a group of highly regarded American professors who have written scholarly tomes on Hinduism that make it sound like a mix of voodoo and pornography.

Hindu gods and religious symbols have been put through Freudian analysis to establish such bizarre conclusions as Ganesha’s trunk representing a “flaccid phallus” and his love of sweets as a desire for oral sex. He also has Oedipal problems!

This Freudian analysis goes beyond the gods to actual Hindu religious practices, and it is then that these scholars show not just their abysmal ignorance but their deliberate distortion of reality.

They teach students in American universities that Brahmins drink menstrual blood and other human fluids and that this is Tantra. They teach that Shiva temples are dens of vice where priests routinely murder and rape unsuspecting pilgrims.

Malhotra became passionately engaged in proving that this view of Hinduism was nonsense and the result of his efforts is a book, sponsored by his Infinity Foundation, called Invading the Sacred. It comes out next week.

As someone who believes that an Indian renaissance will only happen if we go beyond the taboos of ‘secularism’ and teach our children about India’s civilisation, I found the book worthwhile reading. It made me realise that the reason why dodgy scholars from a distant land have succeeded in becoming ‘experts’ on our civilisation is because our own scholars do not tread in this territory for fear of being branded with that much reviled word — Hindutva.

... contd.