Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but I'm not counting four wins in World Championship matches for Anand.

Anand < Kasparov, 1995. Challenges and loses.
Anand > Kramnik, 2008. Wins the title 6½–4½. (#1)
Anand > Topalov, 2010. Wins 6½–5½ for his first defence. (#2)
Anand >= Gelfand, 2012. Draws 6-6, tiebreak win. (#3)

That looks to me like four World Championship matches, 2 clear wins and one a drawn defence in classical games... however, since he won on tiebreaks (as much as it galls me to have rapid chess in a World Championship match), we have to consider him to have won it. In any case, he succeeded in defending the title from a surprisingly strong, well-prepared Gelfand.

To even play 4 World Championship matches as either challenger or defender is an incredible feat in and of itself; there's no reason to give false inflationary numbers to try to beef up an already impressive achievement.

And, by the way, the clear wins came over Kramnik and Topalov, who surely must be considered 2 of the absolute strongest players (along with Kasparov and Anand himself) of the mid-late 1990s and 2000s. Due to consistency over time, and longevity at the top, I think the World Champion has shown himself the reliable - if not overwhelming - superior of everyone who was active during his best years, barring Kasparov. So I'm not giving these numbers because I don't like Anand (he's one of my absolute favourite players ever), but because facts is facts.

I'd also like to say that being #2 - #5 (and even #1 briefly) in the world for 20+ years is more impressive to me in a lot of ways than being #1 for 3 years or something. Not to mention lots of those years as #2 and #3 were spent under The Man, Kasparov (not much you can do about that one, that's just being born in the wrong time). I think Anand's portrait gets to be comfortably hung in the Museum of All-Time Greats when he declines and/or retires.

The people who are claiming Four aren't using the word "matches" at all. Wikipedia, for example, just said "world championships" (with no mention of format), and all the news stories I've seen have done it the same way. And four undisputed world championships it is (2007, 2008, 2010, 2012). As long as you don't use the word "matches", that's fine.

I have actually seen even established chess writers be slippery with the term. I have an audio tape where Ray Keene describes Korchnoi hanging his queen in the second Korchnoi-Spassky match as "one of the worst blunders in the history of the Candidates Tournament". (Maybe he was thinking that the entire series of matches constituted a tournament of sorts?).

And there's a Tim Krabbe interview with Korchnoi, in which he comments that after the Candidates Matches of 1962, Fischer accused him of throwing games (it was a tournament, but maybe he was thinking that the quadrangular format constituted "mini-matches"?). If even established chess writers are loose with the term, we can forgive the non-chess press.

Here is from Gelfand interview in chessvibes.
Shocking revelation! Topalov warned Anand last time after their match was concluded.

Just imagine for a moment Anand's seconds working in secret with Kasparov during his 95 match and a bit a later on?? That is why you don't judge a player's greatness simply by his victories obtained through pure opening advantage. Role of human seconds diminished and computers started to take up that role, Kasparov disappeared from the scene! Kasparov is no way equal to Anand!

I definitely agree that Kasparov is in no way equal to Anand...

Glad you agree! Anand > Kramnik Kramnik > Kasparov, so what we can deduce from match play is Anand > Kasparov!

I'm confused. I thought you agreed a page back that the world didn't see it that way. When I asked if you could provide a URL to a chess writer taking that position, and you not only said you couldn't, but that you had no idea what they were even saying, and this was your own personal view.

Maybe the world is unaware of certain facts. Maybe the world sees some benefit in seeing things like it is seeing now. Maybe the the world simply refuse to see the truth. Maybe the world is simply misled. We'll supply the facts and make the world to see it the way it should!

Okay, so in answer to the question of whether Anand was generally regarded as better than Kasparov, I think I've heard you say Yes at first, and then No. This one was the tiebreaker, and it sounds like another No to me.

If a) Anand is not generally regarded as better than Kasparov, and b) the reason why he's not is that the chess world is ignorant of certain facts, then the obvious question would be what are those facts? Purely factual disagreements (assuming this is one of those) are usually the easiest kinds to clear up.

I saw someone on an Anand forum on another board recently, trying to argue for Anand's behalf by saying that he now had more UNDISPUTED title defenses than Kasparov did. Which is true. It's also misleading, because inserting the word "undisputed" is a way of discounting two matches. In one of those matches (Kasparov-Short), Kasparov played the same person he would have played if the split hadn't happened (and it's hard to argue that he suffered chessically from not playing one of the two losers. In the other match, the opponent was Anand himself (and surely if we're trying to evaluate the respective abilities of Kasparov and Anand, then a match they played with each other would be the most relevant match of all.).

But as you see, there's no disagreement about the facts in this argument on either side. Both sides agree about the facts, the disagreement is about what they mean. When you say that people are unaware of facts about Anand, I find that hard to believe, when the facts are so recent and so well known. More likely you mean that they don't interpret them the same way. But it's hard to say since you haven't told us what the facts in question are.