COMMUNICATION The RSS Coup in the ICHR: Its First Fruits THE Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan has published a series of volumes, The History and Culture of the Indian People, under the general editorship of R C Majumdar. Brought out with lavish government and private support, the volumes have given a picture of India's past that has been widely criticized as being parochial ^ind narrow-minded in the extreme. In the very first volume (The Vedic Age) a scholarly chapter on the Aryan migration? is followed by a note claiming that India was "the original home of the Aryans/51 When the series comes to medieval times, it gives free reign to a frighteningly outspoken communal approach that reaches its culmination in a nakedly inflammatory chapter "Facts of History."2 Illustrative of the kind of history the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan volumes propagate, a few choice passages from the book are given below. Nor did the Muslims ever moderate their zeal to destroy ruthlessly the Hindu temples and images of God, and their attitude in this respect remained unchanged from the day when Muhammad bin Q^asim set foot on the soil of India till the eighteenth century AD when they lost all political power.3 As can be easily imagined the Hindu attitude towards the Muslims was one of sullen bitterness. The Hindus resented the Muslim conquest of India and wistfully looked for the day when the name Aryavarta, the land of the Aryas, as appellation of their country, would once more be justified by the extermination of the rnlechhas (Muslims).4 Whether we look at the intrinsic importance of the posts or the number of them filled up by the subject people, the Hindus were in much worse condition after three hundred years of Muslim rule than the Indians after one hundred years of British supremacy.5