Koenraad Elst

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Koenraad Elst is a Belgian orientalist, writer and researcher<ref>Elst</ref>. He has authored fifteen books on topics related to Hinduism, Indian history, and Indian politics.

1 Biography
2 Opinions
3 Controversies and Influences
4 Bibliography
5 Notes
6 Related Authors
7 External links

[edit] Biography

Major parties
Part of a series on Hindu politics
Bharatiya Janata Party Shiv Sena
Defunct parties
Hindu Mahasabha Bharatiya Jana Sangh Ram Rajya Parishad
Ideas
Integral humanism Hindu nationalism Hindutva Uniform civil code
Major figures
Bal Gangadhar Tilak Vinayak Damodar Savarkar Syama Prasad Mookerjee Atal Bihari Vajpayee Lal Krishna Advani Bal Thackeray Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya
Independent authors
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay Koenraad Elst Francois Gautier Sita Ram Goel K.S. Lal Arun Shourie Ram Swarup
Politics · Govt of India · v • d • e</span>

He was born in Leuven, Belgium, on 7 August 1959, into a Flemish Catholic family. He graduated in Indology, Sinology and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven. He obtained a Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Leuven. The main part of his Ph.D. dissertation on Hindu revivalism and Hindu reform movements eventually became his book Decolonizing the Hindu Mind, other parts of his Ph.D. thesis were published in Who is a Hindu and in The Saffron Swastika. He also studied abroad at the Banaras Hindu University in India.

During a stay in India and at the Banaras Hindu University between 1988 and 1992, he interviewed many Indian leaders and writers.<ref>Elst, K. Negationism in India</ref> He wrote his first book about the Ayodhya conflict. While establishing himself as a columnist for a number of Belgian and Indian papers, he frequently returned to India to study various aspects of its ethno-religio-political configuration and interview Hindu and other leaders and thinkers. He also met the Hindu writer Sita Ram Goel in India, and was influenced by his writings. His research on the ideological development of Hindu revivalism earned him his Ph.D. in Leuven in 1998. He has also written about multiculturalism, language policy issues, ancient Chinese history and philosophy, comparative religion, and the Aryan invasion debate. Dr. Elst became a well-known author on Indian politics in the 1990s.

[edit] Opinions

Elst has written at length about fascism and totalitarianism in India and the West. His book The Saffron Swastika analyses the rhetoric of "Hindu fascism". He argues that "while one should always be vigilant for traces of totalitarianism in any ideology or movement, the obsession with fascism in the anti-Hindu rhetoric of the [pseudo-]secularists is not the product of an analysis of the data, but of their own political compulsions."<ref>Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)</ref> In an article, he argued that the current tendency to accuse Hindu movements of “fascism” is nothing but a "replay of an old colonial tactic."<ref>Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi? [1]</ref>

[edit] Controversies and Influences

Elst stated in 1999 to be a member of the Christian-Democratic trade-union<ref>Article from bharatvani.org</ref>. He described himself as "a secular humanist with an active interest in religions, particularly Taoism and Hinduism, and keeping a close watch on the variegated Pagan revival in Europe."<ref>bharatvani.org op. cit.</ref>

He seems not to have changed his religion, for he said: "I am neither a Hindu nor a nationalist. And I don’t need to belong to those or to any specific ideological categories in order to use my eyes and ears." <ref>Elst interview</ref> And he wrote: "However, I do readily admit to being a “fellow-traveller” of Dharmic civilization in its struggle for survival against the ongoing aggression and subversion by well-organized hostile ideologies." <ref>Voice of Dharma review</ref>

Elst had for some years a leftist phase, and had also some interest in the New Age movement, though he writes that by 1985 he had had enough of the "superficiality and flakiness" of the New Age scene.<ref>Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey</ref> In the 1990s he became interested in the European Neopagan movement, and wrote for some Neopagan publications until 1998.<ref>Hinduism, Environmentalism and the Nazi Bogey</ref>

Elst has published in English and Dutch. He contributed for example to the conservative magazine Nucleus <ref>bharatvani.org op.cit.</ref>. He is also a contributor to the "conservative-libertarian" internet magazine The Brussels Journal, the Flemish satirical weekly 't Pallieterke and other Belgian & Dutch publications. He has also written for mainstream Indian magazines like Outlook India. He wrote a postcript to a book written by American neoconservative and middle-east scholar Daniel Pipes ("The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West"). He has also been accused of connections to the Vlaams Blok by Sanjay Subrahmanyam (a professor at University of California, Los Angeles) in the Times of India. <ref>Sanjay Subrahmanyam in the Times of India, August 22, 2006</ref>On the ideological side, K. Elst's interest into modern Indian nationalism make his works, referred authors and developments take place in the general framework of nationalist and reformist ideologies that appeared in India in the late 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century.<ref>For a description of the rising of reformist ideologies in India see René Guénon "Introduction To The Study Of The Hindu Doctrines", chapter "Vedanta Westernized".</ref><ref>See, among other references, Alexandre de Danaan "Bo Yin Ra, de la Taychou Marou au Grand Orient de Patmos" Arche Editions, Milano, 2004, pp 83-85.</ref>

[edit] Bibliography

Dr. Ambedkar - A True Aryan (1993)
Ayodhya, The Finale - Science versus Secularism the Excavations Debate (2003) ISBN 81-85990-77-8
Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002) ISBN 81-85990-75-1
Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991) [2]
BJP vis-à-vis Hindu Resurgence (1997) ISBN 81-85990-47-6
Decolonizing the Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism, Rupa, Delhi (2001) ISBN 81-7167-519-0
The Demographic Siege (1997) ISBN 81-85990-50-6
Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar, Voice of India (1993)
Gandhi and Godse - A review and a critique ISBN 81-85990-71-9
Negationism in India - Concealing the Record of Islam (1992) ISBN 81-85990-01-8
Psychology of Prophetism - A Secular Look at the Bible (1993) ISBN 81-85990-00-X
Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid. A Case Study in Hindu-Muslim Conflict. Voice of India, Delhi 1990.
The Saffron Swastika - The Notion of Hindu Fascism. (2001) ISBN 81-85990-69-7
Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate Aditya Prakashan (1999) ISBN 81-86471-77-4
Who is a Hindu? (2001) [3] ISBN 81-85990-74-4
Linguistic Aspects of the Aryan Non-Invasion Theory, In Edwin Bryant and Laurie L. Patton (editors) (2005). Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History. Routledge/Curzon. ISBN 0-7007-1463-4.
The Rushdie affair's legacy. Postcript to Daniel Pipes: The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West (1990), Transaction Publishers, paperback (2003) ISBN 0-7658-0996-6
Gujarat After Godhra : Real Violence, Selective Outrage/edited by Ramesh N. Rao and Koenraad Elst. New Delhi, Har-Anand Pub., 2003, 248 p., ISBN 81-241-0917-6.
“The Ayodhya demolition: an evaluation”, in Dasgupta, S., et al.: The Ayodhya Reference, q.v., p. 123-154.
“The Ayodhya debate”, in Pollet, G., ed.: Indian Epic Values. Râmâyana and Its Impact, Peeters, Leuven 1995, q.v., p. 21-42. BJP Hindu Resurgence. Voice of India, Delhi 1997.
The Ayodhya debate: focus on the "no temple" evidence, World Archaeological Congress, 1998
India's Only Communalist: In Commemoration of Sita Ram Goel (edited by Koenraad Elst, 2005) ISBN 81-85990-78-6
The Rushdie Rules Middle East Quarterly, June 1998

[edit] Notes

[edit] Related Authors

Important figures and authors
Hindu reform movements v • d • e</div>
Brahmo Samaj · Arya Samaj · Ramakrishna Mission · Gandhism · Hindutva
Sri Aurobindo ·Ananda Coomaraswamy · Alain Daniélou ·Koenraad Elst ·David Frawley ·Sita Ram Goel ·M. S. Golwalkar · Mahatma Gandhi · The Mother ·Harsh Narain ·Swami Prabhupada · V. D. Savarkar · Swami Sivananda · Arun Shourie · Ram Swarup · Rabindranath Tagore · B. G. Tilak ·Yogananda · Raja Ram Mohun Roy · Debendranath Tagore ·Keshub Chandra Sen ·Dayananda Saraswati · Ramakrishna · Vivekananda ·