Crap jobs and bidets

Courtesy Swapan Dasgupta, this utterly corrupt example of how to review an author--Amitava Kumar, in this case--whose views you disagree with:
1) Call him names. "Poseur" will do just fine, because that makes people laugh without you having to justify it.
2) Hide your own bigotry by taking refuge in denial:
From Swapan's review: "The India Kumar explores is riddled with hate, intolerance, petrified Muslims and provincial Hindus reeking of bigotry. Take this as a sample of his post-riot Gujarat: 'There was now not even one Muslim business left in Gujarat. Men with beards were not being served in the restaurants as well as shops in the entire state.' His conclusion is stark: 'For any ordinary Muslim in India, the difficulty of ever crossing over into a larger community of the nation is a challenge.'
This is not Gujarat; this is not ‘secular’ India; this is a caricature."
I wish I could be as sanguine as Swapan about the fallout of the Gujarat riots. But unfortunately, I read. Things like this: "...[F]ormer Intelligence chief R B Sreekumar that senior BJP leaders pressured policemen not to take action against VHP leaders named in post-Godhra riot cases." And I wonder why we're not allowed to see films like this.
3) Stress Kumar's outsider status by mentioning that he was part of the "September influx" to US universities, even if it means ignoring his frequent visits to and journeys in the country he grew up in.
(Anoothi Vishal has a distinctly different perspective--she writes:
"[Kumar] now views issues such as the Hindu–Muslim relations within India not from safe academic distances, a 'pseudo-secularist' viewpoint as many would say, but through the prism of personal experience."
4) And if all else fails, call him a traitor: draw a comparison, apparently in all seriousness, between the Patna boy who became an academic and a writer, and Dhiren Barot aka Abu Eissa al-Hindi, who was arrested recently for planning a terrorist strike in New York.

I have only two more things to add. The first is that Swapan Dasgupta's opinions are in line with his beliefs--you might disagree strongly with his erudite bigotry, but it's only what you'd expect from him. By commissioning him to review Kumar's Husband of a Fanatic, Outlook's looking not for an honest review, but for cheap controversy. (Yes, I'm rising to the bait, but I'm trying to quit smoking. It makes me even tetchier than usual.)
And two is that faced with a book called Husband of a Fanatic and a review titled 'A Pilgrimage of Denial', Google's automatic ad-supplying software worked wonders. The legend says: "Washing with Water: Hand held bidets for wudhu and istinja from POUNDS 19.99 delivered."* This is where the Google ad on the page led to at the time I signed in, and never has my warped sense of humour been so adeptly tickled.

* The ad may change over time, depending on what the bright boys in the Google backroom dream up.