Return of the Infidel: A Review

This is one book I would request all avid book lovers to read.

In the 28^th edition of “Connecting Matter” (28CM), our Saturday event at Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Mass Communication and Journalism (NIMCJ), we had invited senior journalist-author Virendra Pandit in December 2017 to tell us all about his latest book, Return of the Infidel, released in New York in September 2017.

What really turned out for us was an hour-long enriching and stimulating experience in an ocean of knowledge. In a question-and-answer format, streamed live on Facebook, he spoke at length about the cyclical nature of human history, rise and fall of civilizations and culture. Thank you very much sir for joining in the program. Thanks are also due to my students Amar Thakkar and Shyam Sardhara for managing #Fblive.

All I would like to say is that I really felt charged up and marveled at the vast area the book covers. It not only goes into the detailed Indian history with a new perspective but also delves into the history of China and Japan, the three Asian nations that have seen revival in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Return of the Infidel dissects these nations’ history along Darwinian lines and suggests that Christianity and Islam came to them as catalysts when these Asian societies faced stagnation. Once rejuvenated, these societies bounced back on the world stage. Interestingly, these are all countries whose people worshipped more than one god (India and Japan) or were atheists who worshipped ancestors (China). The One God-worshipping Christianity and Islam called these nations infidels. And they are now returning!

Mr Pandit’s book talks about different aspects of religion, terrorism and how history often repeats itself, and that violent movements like the Crusades, Inquisitions and World Wars, and now terrorism, actually remove the deadwood from human societies.

His book also discloses how Lord Krishna became a Designer God, why Akbar the Great did not solve the Ayodhya problem, how and why Mahatma Gandhi virtually prodded M A Jinnah to demand and get Pakistan and why their contemporaries Mao Zedong and General Tojo of China and Japan, respectively, also worked with the same objective: exit of Christian and Muslim powers from the infidel lands!

It was interesting to know that his next book is about the survival of Homo sapiens and how Nature harvests our ‘surplus population’ to make the survival of the fittest possible.

Thank you so much sir for giving this opportunity to interact with you on this unusual topic.

Shashikant Bhagat, Faculty, NIMCJ, Ahmedabad.