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Koenraad Elst Quotes
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Koenraad Elst is a Belgian orientalist and Indologist known for his writings on comparative religion, Hindu-Muslim relations and Indian history. He has contributed columns of numerous Indian and Flemish newspapers, and published in Dutch about philosophy, politics and religion. He is known for his support of the Out of India theory which argues against the mainstream academic view that the Indo-Aryan languages originated outside India. Elst is also known to be sympathetic to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist movement.

✵ 7. August 1959
Koenraad Elst photo
Koenraad Elst: 144 quotes3 likes

Koenraad Elst Quotes

“When it comes to dealing with the history of persecution and temple destruction by the Muslims, secularist historians throw all regard for hard evidence to the wind and replace it with a purely deductive (which is typically medieval) approach : Islam is tolerant, therefore the destruction and persecution cannot have taken place.”

Koenraad Elst

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“Islam has till today retained a lot of its medieval self- righteousness. While native Americans who claim back ancestral sacred places may have to confront economical interests, juridical technicalities or other small-human opposition against their demands, there is now hardly any ideologically motivated resistance against respecting their culture and their historical sensitivities. But in India, and in the countries which Islam has carved out of if, there is still a strong presence of an ideological drive to islamize India, and to make this clear by wresting all kinds of real and symbolical concessions from the Hindus, and by refusing them any concession whatsoever in return. The symbols of humiliation that have been inflicted on the Hindus, are being defended.”

Koenraad Elst

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“In fact, this conclusion is merely a restatement of what was a matter of consensus until a few years ago. This time it is supported by a bundle of evidence, but it had been known all along. It is only recently that politically motivated academics have manufactured doubts concerning this coherent and well-attested tradition. And it is not on the strength of arguments, but exclusively through their grip on the media, that they temporarily managed to create the impression that the Hindu case was built on myth and concoction.”

Koenraad Elst

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“Since quoting the Quran may get this book banned, I will merely give the verse numbers…”

Koenraad Elst

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“Normally, the atheist Left should be the sharpest opponent of religious obscurantism and dogmatic adherence to anti-universalist belief systems like Islam. But in India, the two work happily together for the destruction of their common enemy: Hindu Dharma.”

Koenraad Elst

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“In a sociological sense, I am still part of the Catholic community,… Nevertheless, I am no longer a Roman Catholic. I am 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.”

Koenraad Elst

The Problem of Christian Missionaries , 7 June 1999. https://web.archive.org/web/20190311003524/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/chr/missionaries.html <br class="br">1990s

“I never use the word nationalism, certainly not as a model for Hindus to adopt. Nationalism is a misstatement of Hindu concerns. It leads to misconceptions.”

Koenraad Elst

Koenraad Elst on Twitter https://twitter.com/Koenraad_Elst/status/1213206747021578240 <br class="br">2020s

“Both genetic and archaeological proofs of intrusions into Europe from Russia are plentiful, but in India these are significantly missing.”

Koenraad Elst

2010s, Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins (2019)

“The final paragraph is merely an exercise in slamming open doors. Or so it seems, for several in-your-face assertions are built into this innocuous piece of journalistic emptiness.”

Koenraad Elst

2010s, Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins (2019)

“There, in Europe, we really have an invasion of Aryans moving in from the east. And now that we know what a real Aryan invasion looks like, we note that it is completely missing in India.”

Koenraad Elst

2010s, Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins (2019)

“I have been disinvited at several conferences (and no doubt silently excluded from speaking there at many more) because, though my abstract was judged interesting enough, someone up there was briefed about my views and associations, and intervened to my detriment.”

Koenraad Elst

2010s, Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins (2019)

“So: as of 2011, after many decades of being the official and much-funded hypothesis, the Aryan Invasion Theory has still not been confirmed by even a single piece of archaeological evidence.”

Koenraad Elst

2010s, Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins (2019)

“The behaviour and character of academic mullahs is once again consistent with their sorry record of misdeeds.”

Koenraad Elst

363
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

“It seems that white people on average are quite silly, for most of us have lapped up the version of Indian history propagated by India's "eminent historians" whose eminence results from their toeing the hegemonic party-line rather than from a respect for the data in the primary sources.”

Koenraad Elst

305
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

“Perhaps he doesn’t realize the implication of his own position, viz. that by these standards, proselytising religions like Christianity and Islam, even without counting crusades and jihad, are ipso facto intrinsically “intolerant.””

Koenraad Elst

That point has indeed been made often enough by apostate Christians and Muslims, but in India it is usually vetoed as “Hindu communalist propaganda”.
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

“But the solution is not to “get around these stubborn, disturbing facts” of astronomy by smugly dismissing them as testimonia non grata. Nor to declare dogmatically that “we know that it can't be correct.””

Koenraad Elst

2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

“But I’ll admit that temperamentally, I do take a certain “delight” in exploring theories that go against the established consensus.”

Koenraad Elst

Source: 2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

“Unfortunately, scholars tend to cite a colleague's mere hypothesis as an argument of authority. So many certainties in this field are merely someone’s casual opinion quoted over and over again.”

Koenraad Elst

2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

“By relating an ancient instance of white colonization in a dark subcontinent, it confirmed the colonial worldview.”

Koenraad Elst

2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

“Let me put on record here that in my 9 years of close involvement in this debate, I have seen time and again that it is the invasionist school which, when it did not refuse the debate, has spoiled the debate by replacing argument with mud-slinging.”

Koenraad Elst

2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

“To whom it may concern: the present writer, at any rate, is neither a Hindu nor a nationalist.”

Koenraad Elst

Source: 2000s, Asterisk in bharopiyasthan: Minor writings on the Aryan invasion debate (2007)

“In the Hindu sphere of influence, by contrast, this kind of sobriety and intellectual discipline is the exception rather than the rule. Serious integrated teaching of Vedic tradition is as yet available only on the margin, as in the Arsha Vidya Gurukulam.”

Koenraad Elst

115
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

“All it demonstrates is the bullying rhetoric so common in the debate between the scientific and the secularist schools of Indian history.”

Koenraad Elst

2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

“In the Islamic world many places of worship belonging to the earlier religion have been converted to mosques.”

Koenraad Elst

M. Shokoohy: “Two fire temples converted to mosques in central Iran”, Papers in Honour of Professor Mary Boyce, EJ. Brill, Leiden 1985, p.546.
Source: 2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

“It is quite bizarre that scholars trying to prove a point discredit their own case by using a proven forgery without any comment.”

Koenraad Elst

Source: 2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

“In the longer run, some education in comparative religion is the solution, or at least a central part of the solution.”

Koenraad Elst book Ayodhya and After

Source: 1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“While the minority separatists have the guns, the enraged Hindus will have the numbers.”

Koenraad Elst book Ayodhya and After

Source: 1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“The Muslim percentage has not only incre­ased, but the rate of increase itself has increased.”

Koenraad Elst

Source: 1990s, The Demographic Siege (1997)

“And that from historians who themselves have distorted evidence in order to satisfy certain political compulsions : apparently a case of what psychologists call projection.”

Koenraad Elst book Ayodhya and After

Source: 1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)