Occupation Writer Name Koenraad Elst | ||
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Books Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam Similar People Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup, Arun Shourie, Oliver Davies | ||
Dr koenraad elst at bharatiya vichar manch los angeles
Koenraad Elst (born 7 August 1959) is a Belgian writer on Hindu-Muslim relations, Indian politics and communalism. His views on these subjects have been supported by some neo-conservatives and sometimes criticized by academics. He participated actively in the controversed debate on Aryan Invasion Theory. His writings are frequently featured in right-wing publications and many of his books are published by Voice of India publishing house.
Contents
- Dr koenraad elst at bharatiya vichar manch los angeles
- Exclusive interview with dr subramanian swamy and dr koenraad elst
- Biography
- Indigenous Aryan theories and support for Hindu revivalism
- Reception
- Books
- In Dutch
- References
He was an editor of the New Right Flemish nationalist journal Teksten, Kommentaren en Studies from 1992 to 1995, focusing on criticism of Islam, various other conservative and Flemish separatist publications such as Nucleus, 't Pallieterke, Secessie, or the neoconservative The Brussels Journal and Middle East Forum.
Exclusive interview with dr subramanian swamy and dr koenraad elst
Biography
Elst was born to a Flemish Catholic family. Some of his family members were Christian missionaries. He graduated in Indology, Sinology and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven. Around that time, Elst became interested in Flemish nationalism. Between 1988 and 1992, Elst was at the Banaras Hindu University. In 1999, he received a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven. His doctoral dissertation on Hindu revivalism was published as Decolonizing the Hindu Mind.
Elst, known for his support for the Out of India theory related to Indo-Aryan migration, has also written about multiculturalism, language policy issues, ancient Chinese philosophy and history, and comparative religion. Elst became identified with Hindutva politics during the 1990s, following his support for the Bharatiya Janata Party's position on the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya and in parallel with the BJP's rise to prominence on the national stage.
Indigenous Aryan theories and support for Hindu revivalism
In two books, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate (1999) and Asterisk in Bhāropīyasthān (2007), Elst has written in support of Out of India, a fringe theory that argues against the academically accepted view that Indo-Aryan migrations into India in the second millennium BCE brought a proto-Indo-European language with them. Elst argues that the migration went the other way and that Aryans indigenous to India migrated out of India, taking Indo-European languages to the Middle East and Europe. Elst is one of the few supporters of that theory who uses paleolinguistics in support of the Out of India theory. The Out of India theory is considered to be an extreme view of the origin of the Indo-European family of languages and Elst is thought to be one of its leading proponents.
According to Elst, the linguistic data are a soft type of evidence and are compatible with a variety of scenarios, and the dominant linguistic theories turn out to be compatible with an out-of-India scenario for Indo-European expansion. He notes that the substratum data are not in conflict with an Indo-European homeland in India.
Elst is known to be sympathetic to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist movement. In Ram Janmabhoomi vs Babri Masjid, Elst makes the case for an enduring historical tradition associating the Ram Janmabhoomi site with the birthplace of Rama, the Hindu god/king. The book, which was published by Voice of India, a publication house devoted to furthering the Hindu cause, brought attention and praise for Elst from L. K. Advani, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Reception
Elst's work has drawn both praise and criticism. David Frawley called his work on Ayodhya "definitive", K. D. Sethna regarded it as "absolutely the last word". Paul Beliën described him as "one of Belgium's best orientalists", while the anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen described Elst as a "Belgian Catholic of a radical anti-Muslim persuasion who tries to make himself useful as a 'fellow traveller' of the Hindu nationalist movement", while the historian Sarvepalli Gopal called Elst "a Catholic practitioner of polemics" who "fights the Crusades all over again on Indian soil". The social theorist Ashis Nandy criticized the alleged dishonesty and moral vacuity of Elst.
Books
(Sorted chronologically)