Hindus dominating should not surprise us in a country that has a population that is 80 per cent Hindu but it surprises Ramachandra Guha. Either he is a very dodgy sort of historian, the kind that have an ideology into which they fit their history, or he lives in an India that is a figment of his imagination.

In the India in which I grew up everyone had Muslim friends and if he bothered to do a little research before he wrote his articles, Guha may notice the number of Muslims there are in law, business and the upper echelons of life in general. He might notice also that in villages across India, Hindus and Muslims live together and ethnic tensions have been so rare that when communal violence spread into rural Gujarat in 2002 it was almost the first time this happened.

What depressed me about breakfast in old Delhi was not the absence of Muslims, but the desperate poverty in which they live and the way in which the most historical part of Delhi is being allowed to slowly die of criminal neglect. It never used to be this way. When I rang the MP from Chandni Chowk, Kapil Sibal, to ask about this, he said he had grand plans of restoration and municipal improvement and we would soon see results.

There is going to be a massive car park on the edge of the old city to keep cars from parking in its narrow lanes, and foreign architects and restoration experts are being brought in to revive that part of Delhi that was once Shahjehanabad. May it happen soon, because the neglect amounts to vandalism. I cannot think of another country where this would be allowed to happen.

... contd.