[tptacek]

If by "the west" you mean the USA, I doubt you could find 1 American in 10 who could establish in a simple 10-question quiz that they knew the difference between Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. More than half might not know whether Hindus are a religion or an ethnicity. Hindus are definitely not singled out for special derision, beyond the garden-variety xenophobia that characterizes --- well, most of the whole world.

Perhaps this might be surprising, but I learned to appreciate Hinduism in Jesuit Catholic high school, in a mandatory comparative religion course. It wasn't especially thorough, but they did make us read the Bhagavad Gita.

(I have no idea whether this narrative about the Pakistani nuclear program is credible; I just wanted to call out the anti-Hindu bias thing from your comment.)

[flangloria]

I'm not talking about the average American or the average westerner. Most of them are cheerfully ignorant and also mostly welcoming and curious, just like the rest of the planet, and that is just fine. It is the academics who carry a pronounced bias, which is mostly the result of not bothering to visit the places concerned, or not talking to enough people. Which is what I said in the first place.

As far as the narrative is concerned, the main problems are the parts which deal with the motivations of the actors involved. The writer just basically goes about it as if writing a novel divorced from the facts and is just irresponsible.