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Koenraad Elst

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Koenraad Elst is a Belgian orientalist and writer. He is the author of over fifteen books on topics related to Hinduism, Indian history, and Indian politics.

Biography

Template:Hindu politics 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.

During a stay in India and at the Benaras Hindu University between 1988 and 1992, he interviewed many Indian leaders and writers. 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.

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 secularists is not the product of an analysis of the data, but of their own political compulsions." According to him, the current tendency to accuse Hindu movements of “fascism” is nothing but a "replay of an old colonial tactic."

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." 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."

Controversies and Influences

Elst stated in 1999 to be a member of the Christian-Democratic trade-union. 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."

Elst has published in English and Dutch. He contributed for example to the conservative magazine Nucleus . 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, US government think tank convener 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 in the Times of India, and has contributed with other interventions described by Prof. R. Zydenbos on his Angelfire homepage as emanating from right-wing circles in Belgium. 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, which appeared in India in the late XIXth century and in the beginning of the XXth century.

Bibliography

Notes

  1. Elst, K. Negationism in India
  2. Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)
  3. Was Veer Savarkar a Nazi?
  4. Elst interview
  5. Voice of Dharma review
  6. Article from bharatvani.org
  7. bharatvani.org op. cit.
  8. bharatvani.org op.cit.
  9. Sanjay Subrahmanyam in the Times of India, August 22, 2006
  10. See "some more reading matter about Dr. K. Elst" by Prof. R. Zydenbos in .
  11. 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".
  12. Refer to the correspondance and works of Ananda Coomaraswamy, and also to Alexandre de Danaan "Bo Yin Ra, de la Taychou Marou au Grand Orient de Patmos" Arche Editions, Milano, 2004, pp 83-85

See also

External links

Controversies

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