Koenraad Elst

Last updated

Koenraad Elst
Koenraad Elst at Varanasi.jpg
Elst in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh in 2018.
Born (1959-08-07) 7 August 1959 (age 64)
NationalityBelgian
Education Benaras Hindu University Katholieke Universitiet Leuven
OccupationAuthor

Koenraad Elst (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈku:nra:t'ɛlst] ; born 7 August 1959) is a Flemish author, known primarily for his adherence to the Hindutva ideology and support of the Out of India theory, which is universally regarded as pseudo-historical by mainstream scholarship. Scholars accuse him of harboring Islamophobia.

Contents

Early life and education

Elst was born into a Flemish Catholic family.

He graduated in Indology, Sinology and philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven. During his student days, he was involved with Flemish nationalism. [1] Between 1988 and 1992, Elst was at the Banaras Hindu University. In 1999, he received a PhD in Asian Studies from Leuven on Hindu revivalism; [2] his doctoral dissertation was published as Decolonizing the Hindu Mind. [1] Prema Kurien notes Elst to be unique among Hindutva-leaning scholars in that he had a relevant academic degree. [3]

Works

Indigenous Aryan theories

Map based on The Aryan Non-Invasionist Model by Koenraad Elst OIT map.jpg
Map based on The Aryan Non-Invasionist Model by Koenraad Elst

In two books, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate (1999) and Asterisk in Bhāropīyasthān (2007), Elst argues against the academically accepted view that the Indo-European languages originated in the Kurgan culture of the Central Asian steppes and that the migrations to Indian subcontinent in the second millennium BCE brought a proto-Indo-European language with them. [4] [5] He instead proposes that the language originated in India and it spread to Middle East and Europe when the Aryans, (who were indigenous) migrated out. [6] [7] According to Elst, the linguistic data are a soft type of evidence and are compatible with a variety of scenarios. The dominant linguistic theories may be compatible with an out-of-India scenario for Indo-European expansion. [8]

One of the few authors to use paleolinguistics, [9] he is deemed as one of the leading proponents of the Indigenous Aryans (Out of India fringe theory). The theory has been rejected by the scholarly community and is not deemed as a serious competitor to the Kurgan hypothesis, [5] except by some authors in India. [10] He has also written against the Aryan Invasion Theory defending the Out of India fringe theory in a blog piece for Indian diaspora think tank, Bridge India. [11]

Hindutva and Islamophobia

Elst was an editor of the New Right Flemish nationalist journal Teksten, Kommentaren en Studies from 1992 to 1995, focusing on criticism of Islam and had associations with Vlaams Blok, a Flemish nationalist far-right political party. [12] [13] [14] He has also been a regular contributor to The Brussels Journal , a controversial conservative blog.

Every Muslim is a Sita who must be released from Ravana's prison. We should help Muslims in freeing themselves from Islam …

Koenraad Elst [15]

In Ram Janmabhoomi vs Babri Masjid, Elst makes the case for the birthplace of Rama, the Hindu god/king to correspond with the site of Babri Masjid and concurrently portrays Islam as a fanatic bigoted faith. [16] The book was published by Voice of India, a publication house that is self-describedly devoted to furthering the Hindu nationalist cause and had attracted immense criticism for publishing anti-Muslim literature in abundance. [12] [17] It was though praised by L. K. Advani, former deputy Prime Minister of India, who commanded an important role in the demolition of the said masjid. [18] In Ayodhya and After (1991), Elst was even more explicit in the support of the demolition and termed it an exercise in national integration which provided "an invitation to the Muslim Indians to reintegrate themselves into the society and culture from which their ancestors were cut off by fanatical rulers and their thought police, the theologians". [19] In another interview, Elst went on to claim that it was a justified act of revenge which enforced fears of Hindu repercussion, thus curtailing Muslim violence. [20] He though has retrospectively rejected the use of violent force in the demolition of the temple and has urged the Muslims to contend with the construction of a peace monument. [20] [21] [22]

An intellectual heir of the school of thought championed by Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel [23] — the founders of the Voice of India, who were themselves highly critical of both Christianity and Islam—Elst is a prominent author of the house [17] and adopts their hard-line stance against the two religions in his book. [12] Elst argues that there existed an universal spirituality among all the races and faiths, prior to the introduction of "Semitic" faiths which corrupted it. [17] In Decolonizing the Hindu Mind, he contends that the "need for 'reviving' Hinduism spring from the fact that the said hostile ideologies (mostly Islam) have managed to eliminate Hinduism physically in certain geographical parts and social segments of India, and also (mostly the Western ideologies) to neutralize the Hindu spirit among many nominal Hindus." [24]

He is a vocal proponent of Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist movement which is typically associated with the Indian far-right and supports the Bharatiya Janata Party. [25] [26] [27] Elst perceives Hindutva as a tool to decolonize the mental and cultural state of Indians and return to the past days of (supposed) Hindu glory. [28] He has written in support of the view that the Vedic science was highly advanced and may be only understood by a Hindu mystic. [29] The Saffron Swastika is widely regarded to be his magnum opus [30] , which argues against the idea that the brand of Hindutva practiced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) / Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are fascist in ideology. [31] Advani had high regards for the work, [32] terming Elst as a 'great historian' and even carried a "heavily marked" copy of the book from which he freely quoted the passages that discussed him. [33]

In other essays and conferences, Elst has supported for outright attacks on the enemy ideology of Islam which, in his opinion, is supposedly inseparable with terrorism and hence, must be destructed. [26] [34] [35] He calls for an Indian-ization of Muslims and Christians by forcing them to accept the supremacy of Hindu culture and terms it as the Final Solution for the Muslim Problem. [36] In his 1992 book, Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam, Elst attempts to demonstrate that there exists a prohibition of criticism of Islam in India and accuses secular historians (including the likes of Romila Thapar, Bipan Chandra, Ram Sharan Sharma et al.) of suffering from Hindu Cowardice wherein they ignore Muslim crimes against Hindu communities, in order to fulfill their Marxist agenda. [37] [38] [39] [40]

Reception

Anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen describes 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". [41] Historian Sarvepalli Gopal deemed Elst to be "a Catholic practitioner of polemics" who was fairly oblivious of modern historiography methods. [42] Meera Nanda deems him to be a far-right Hindu cum Flemish nationalist. [12] Elst has engaged in historical revisionism [43] and has been described variedly as a Hindu fundamentalist, pro-Hindutva right-wing ideologue, Hindutva apologist and Hindutva propagandist. [26] [44] [45] [30]

Meera Nanda has accused Elst of exploiting the writings of his intellectual forefathers over Voice of India, to "peddle the worst kind of Islamophobia imaginable". [12] [46] Sanjay Subrahmanyam similarly deems Islamophobia as the common ground between Elst and the traditional Indian far right. [47]

Influences

Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian far-right terrorist, responsible for the 2011 Norway attacks extensively borrowed from his works, in writing his manifesto. [48] The manifesto, among other things sought to deport all Muslims from Europe and quoted Elst in asserting the existence of a massive movement that was aimed to ''deny the large-scale and long-term crimes against humanity committed by Islam''. [48] [49]

Notes

  1. 1 2 Nanda 2009, p. 112.
  2. Geybels, Hans; Herck, Walter Van (2011). Humour and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. IX. ISBN   9781441194831.
  3. Kurien, Prema A. (2007). A Place at the Multicultural Table : the Development of an American Hinduism. Rutgers University Press. p. 166. ISBN   9780813541617. OCLC   476118265. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  4. Bär, Walter; Fiori, Angelo; Rossi, Umberto (6 December 2012). Advances in Forensic Haemogenetics. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN   9783642787829 . Retrieved 31 March 2019. The Gimbautas hypothesis of an origin in the kurgan region and spread during the Bronze Age (between 4,000 and 2,500 BC) [...] seems to have the greatest support from archaeological and other considerations [...].
  5. 1 2 Pereltsvaig, Asya (9 February 2012). Languages of the World: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9781107002784.
  6. Humes, Cynthia Ann (2012). "Hindutva, Mythistory, and Pseudoarchaeology". Numen: International Review for the History of Religions. 59 (2–3): 178–201. doi:10.1163/156852712x630770. JSTOR   23244958.
  7. Avari, Burjor (2016). India: The Ancient Past: A History of the Indian Subcontinent from c. 7000 BCE to CE 1200. Routledge. p. 79. ISBN   9781317236726. A Belgian revisionist, Koenraad Elst, has nevertheless claimed that the Aryan migration was not towards India but out of India. Their ancestral homeland, their Urheimat, was the land of Sapta-Sindhava (the Punjab), and from there they expanded outwards towards Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia and, ultimately, towards Europe.
  8. Patton, Laurie L. (2005). "Introduction". In Bryant, Edwin; Patton, Laurie L. (eds.). The Indo-Aryan Controversy. Psychology Press. pp. 1–19. ISBN   9780700714636. It is possible that the absorption of foreign words could have taken place after the emigration of other branches of Indo-Europeans from India (p. 8).
  9. Bryant, Edwin (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 146. In any event, Elst's proposal that earlier tribes could have emigrated from India bearing the centum characteristics and, after the velars had evolved into palatals in the Indian Urheimat, later tribes could have followed them bearing the new satem forms (while the Indo-Aryans remained in the homeland), cannot actually be discounted as a possibility on these particular grounds.
  10. Bryant, Edwin (March 2004). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. Oxford University Press. p. 147. ISBN   9780195169478. OCLC   697790495.
  11. Elst, Koenraad. "Let the "Aryan" debate become a debate again". bridgeindia.org.uk. Bridge India. Retrieved 23 August 2023.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Nanda 2009, pp. 112–113.
  13. Vierling, Alfred (1 July 2013). "NIEUW RECHTS TEN ONDER, beschreven door Dr Koenraad Elst" . Retrieved 19 April 2019.
  14. De Zutter, Jan (2000). Heidenen voor het blok : radicaal-rechts en het nieuwe heidendom. Antwerpen: Houtekiet. p. 17. ISBN   9052405824. OCLC   50809193.
  15. Nanda 2009, p. 106.
  16. Sethi, Harish (26 January 1991). "Justifying Hindu Hurt.Ram Janmabhoomi vs Babri Masjid by Koenraad Elst. Review". Economic and Political Weekly. 26 (4): 167–168. JSTOR   4397247.
  17. 1 2 3 Pirbhai, M. Reza (April 2008). "Demons in Hindutva: Writing a Theology for Hindu Nationalism". Modern Intellectual History. 5 (1): 27–53. doi:10.1017/S1479244307001527. ISSN   1479-2451. S2CID   145620682.
  18. Sita Ram Goel, How I became a Hindu. ch.9
  19. Anand 2011, p. 138.
  20. 1 2 Nanda, Meera (2011). The god market : how globalization is making India more Hindu. Monthly Review Press. p. 227. ISBN   9781583672501. OCLC   897104896. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  21. "Ayodhya: 'Congress-BJP talks are important'". New Indian Express (Chennai, India). 21 December 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  22. "Indologist moots 'peace monument' by Muslims". New Indian Express (Chennai, India). 20 December 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  23. Nanda, Meera (2011). The god market : how globalization is making India more Hindu. Monthly Review Press. p. 163. ISBN   9781583672501. OCLC   897104896. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  24. Guichard 2010, p. 94.
  25. Guha, Sudeshna (May 2005). "Negotiating Evidence: History, Archaeology and the Indus Civilisation". Modern Asian Studies. Cambridge University Press. 39 (2): 399–426. doi:10.1017/s0026749x04001611. JSTOR   3876625. S2CID   145463239.
  26. 1 2 3 Sikand, Yogesh (Spring 2002). "Hinduism and Secularism After Ayodhya by Arvind Sharma: A Review". Islamic Studies. 41 (1): 166–169. JSTOR   20837185.
  27. Guichard 2010, p. 145.
  28. Nanda, Meera (2004). Prophets Facing Backward : Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India. Rutgers University Press. p. 10. ISBN   9780813536347. OCLC   1059017715. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  29. Nanda, Meera (2004). Prophets Facing Backward : Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India. Rutgers University Press. ISBN   9780813536347. OCLC   1059017715. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  30. 1 2 "Camus, J.Y.(2007), The European extreme right and religious extremism. Středoevropské politické studie (CEPSR), (4), 263–279" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 October 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  31. "Asianetglobal.com News - 'The Saffron Swastika – The Notion of Hindu Fascism':Konraad Elst". 20 May 2006. Archived from the original on 20 May 2006.
  32. Advani, L.K. My Country, My Life. Rupa.
  33. "Outlook". Outlook Publishing. 8 April 2008 via Google Books.
  34. "A Hindutva Ploy". Indian Currents. 5 January 2015. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  35. "Indologist triggers row". Mail Today (New Delhi, India). 21 December 2014. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  36. Nanda, Meera (2004). Prophets Facing Backward : Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India. Rutgers University Press. p. 14. ISBN   9780813536347. OCLC   1059017715. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  37. "Taj Mahal or Tejo-Mahalaya?". The Express Tribune. 21 July 2016. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
  38. Guichard 2010, p. 89.
  39. Kurien, Prema A (2007). A Place at the Multicultural Table : the Development of an American Hinduism. Rutgers University Press. p. 171. ISBN   9780813541617. OCLC   476118265. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  40. "Of historical lies and countering negationism". The Pioneer (New Delhi, India). 14 March 2018. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  41. Hansen, Thomas Blom (23 March 1999). The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton University Press. p. 262. ISBN   9781400823055.
  42. Gopal, Sarvepalli (15 October 1993). Anatomy of a Confrontation: Ayodhya and the Rise of Communal Politics in India. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 21. ISBN   9781856490504.
  43. Longkumer, Arkotong (2010). "Notes". Reform, Identity and Narratives of Belonging : The Heraka Movement of Northeast India. Continuum, Bloomsbury. p. 210. doi:10.5040/9781472549211. ISBN   978-0-8264-3970-3.
  44. DeVotta, Neil (2002). "Demography and Communalism in India". Journal of International Affairs. 56 (1): 53–70. ISSN   0022-197X. JSTOR   24357883.
  45. Anand, D. (30 April 2016). Hindu Nationalism in India and the Politics of Fear. Springer. ISBN   9780230339545.
  46. Nanda 2011, pp. 161–163.
  47. "Bad time to be Muslim". The Times of India. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  48. 1 2 NANDA, MEERA (2011). "Ideological Convergences: Hindutva and the Norway Massacre". Economic and Political Weekly. 46 (53): 61–68. ISSN   0012-9976. JSTOR   23065638.
  49. Gardell, Mattias (1 January 2014). "Crusader Dreams: Oslo 22/7, Islamophobia, and the Quest for a Monocultural Europe". Terrorism and Political Violence. 26 (1): 129–155. doi:10.1080/09546553.2014.849930. ISSN   0954-6553. S2CID   144489939.

Related Research Articles

Hindutva is a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India. The political ideology was formulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922. It is used by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other organisations, collectively called the Sangh Parivar.

Religious nationalism can be understood in a number of ways, such as nationalism as a religion itself, a position articulated by Carlton Hayes in his text Nationalism: A Religion, or as the relationship of nationalism to a particular religious belief, dogma, ideology, or affiliation. This relationship can be broken down into two aspects: the politicisation of religion and the influence of religion on politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Frawley</span> American Hindu teacher

David Frawley, also known as Vamadeva Shastri is an American writer, astrologer, teacher (acharya) and a proponent of Hindutva.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Subhash Kak</span> Indian American computer scientist

Subhash Kak is an Indian-American computer scientist and historical revisionist. He is the Regents Professor of Computer Science Department at Oklahoma State University–Stillwater, an honorary visiting professor of engineering at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a member of the Indian Prime Minister's Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sita Ram Goel</span> Indian activist, writer and publisher (1921–2003)

Sita Ram Goel was an Indian historian, religious and political activist, writer, and publisher known for his influential contributions to literature pertaining to Hinduism and Hindu nationalism in the late twentieth century. His work has been both celebrated and criticised for its bias towards Hindu nationalism and its controversial portrayal of other religions, particularly Islam and Christianity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François Gautier</span> French journalist and advocate for an Indigenous Aryan narrative

François Gautier is a journalist based in India who served as the South Asian correspondent for multiple reputed French-language dailies. He advocates for an Indigenous Aryan narrative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">N. S. Rajaram</span> Indian academic and Hindutva Ideologue (1943–2019)

Navaratna Srinivasa Rajaram was an Indian academic.He is notable for propounding the "Indigenous Aryans" hypothesis, asserting that the Vedic period was extremely advanced from a scientific view-point, and claiming of having deciphered the Indus script. Academics find his scholarship to be composed of dishonest polemics in service of a communal agenda.

A Warning to the Hindus is a 1939 booklet by Savitri Devi. It was written to further Indian nationalism by way of Nazi ethics and spirituality. Savitri believed the Indian people to be of Aryan descent, and thus sought to promote explicitly Nazi ideals, such as ethnic purity and xenophobia, within India. Within the text, emphasis is focused on many supposed horrors the future could hold should India choose to accept diversity and reject Nazi Aryanism. The author projected Hindu India as the last surviving remnant of ancient Aryan spirituality, and issued this work as a warning to what she perceived as the threat of submergence through ‘alien,’ meaning non-Aryan, influences, such as Islam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">B. B. Lal (archaeologist)</span> Indian writer and archaeologist (1921–2022)

Braj Basi Lal was an Indian writer and archaeologist. He was the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1968 to 1972 and has served as Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. Lal also served on various UNESCO committees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Swapan Dasgupta</span> Indian scholar, journalist and politician

Swapan Dasgupta is an Indian journalist and politician. He is influential within the Indian right wing, writing columns for leading English dailies espousing Indian nationalism. He was a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha. In 2015, Dasgupta was conferred with the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to literature and education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the horse in the Indian subcontinent</span>

The horse has been present in the Indian subcontinent from at least the middle of the second millennium BC, more than two millennia after its domestication in Central Asia. The earliest uncontroversial evidence of horse remains on the Indian Subcontinent date to the early Swat culture .While horse remains and related artifacts have been found in Late Harappan sites, indicating that horses may have been present at Late Harappan times, horses did not play an essential role in the Harappan civilisation, in contrast to the Vedic period. The importance of the horse for the Indo-Aryans is indicated by the Sanskrit word Ashva, "horse," which is often mentioned in the Vedas and Hindu scriptures.

Girilal Jain was an Indian journalist. He served as the editor of The Times of India from 1978 until 1988. He advocated establishing old glory and re establishing the great tenets of Hinduism aligned with nationalism and authored books on the subject, the best known of which, The Hindu Phenomenon, was published posthumously. The government of India awarded him the civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan in 1989. He is accused by Congressional records of being vituperative towards Sikhs in editorial named "De-Turbaning of Sikhs".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indigenous Aryanism</span> View that the Indo-Aryans are indigenous to India

Indigenous Aryanism, also known as the Indigenous Aryans theory (IAT) and the Out of India theory (OIT), is the conviction that the Aryans are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, and that the Indo-European languages radiated out from a homeland in India into their present locations. It is a "religio-nationalistic" view on Indian history, and propagated as an alternative to the established migration model, which considers the Pontic–Caspian steppe to be the area of origin of the Indo-European languages.

<i>Essentials of Hindutva</i> 1923 ideological pamphlet by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

Essentials of Hindutva is an ideological epigraph written by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1922. The book was published in 1923 while Savarkar was still in jail. It was retitled Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? when reprinted in 1928. Savarkar's epigraph forms part of the canon of works published during British rule that later influenced post-independence contemporary Hindu nationalism.

Voice of India (VOI) is a publishing house based in New Delhi, India, that specialises in Hindu nationalist books and serves as one of the most important tools in the development of Hindutva ideologies.

Meera Nanda is an Indian writer and historian of science, who has authored several works critiquing the influence of Hindutva, postcolonialism and postmodernism on science, and the flourishing of pseudoscience and vedic science. In 2019–2020, she was a Guest Faculty in Humanities and Social Sciences at IISER Pune. In 2023 she became a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. "Hindu nationalism" is a simplistic translation of हिन्दू राष्ट्रवाद. It is better described as "Hindu polity".

These are the references for further information regarding the Sangh Parivar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historiography of India</span>

Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Historiography is defined as "the study of the way history has been and is written – the history of historical writing", which means that, "When you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hinduism in South Asia</span> Overview of Hinduism in South Asia

Hinduism is the largest religion in South Asia with about 1.2 billion Hindus, forming just under two-thirds of South Asia's population. South Asia has the largest population of Hindus in the world, with about 99% of all global Hindus being from South Asia. Hinduism is the dominant religion in India and Nepal and is the second-largest religion in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan.

References