Koenraad Elst Quotes

This type of gossip is very popular among illiterates who lack the habit of serious debate on issues, and of seasoned debaters who realize that in a given case, no argument ad rem will succeed, and who therefore resort to an argument ad hominem. A quotation that deserves repetition in almost every debate on the Aryan question, and many other debates besides, is: “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”

When the freedom movement started thinking in terms of a future independent state, then conceived according to the prevailing model of the nation-state, it became aware of the need for national symbols. For the flag, quite sensibly, it toyed with the idea of reusing Shivaji’s saffron flag, as uniformly orange as Moammar al-Qadhafi’s Libyan flag was uniformly green. But a movement courting Muslims for support preferred to keep this crystal-clear symbol at a distance. But the Congress chose the tricolour, a communal flag of a composite culture with orange on top standing for Hinduism and green at the bottom for Islam, an embodiment of Swami Vivekananda’s success formula: ‘Vedantic brain and Islamic body.’ Like with the green colour in more recent political flags, Hindus need not stick to the communal interpretation of the Muslims and Nehruvians: Long before Islam existed, green was already around and had a natural meaning: opulence, prosperity, as well as nature. Likewise, orange forever remains the colour of fire, of tapas (‘heat’, asceticism), of spirituality.

In the Indian subcontinent, Muslims numbered less than 20% in the census of 1881, and more than 24% in the last all-subconti- nental census in 1941. After that, the difference in growth rate between Muslims and non-Muslims has even increased, as birth control became common among the latter, much less among the former. Now, every decade the Muslim percentage in the Subcon- tinent increases by about 1.5%, with the rate of increase itself in- creasing. In 1800, Muslims were 1 in 7, in 1850 they were 1 in 6, in the 1880s they became 1 in 5, around 1950 they were 1 in 4, and shortly after the year 2010 they will be 1 in 3. Already, militant Muslims are talking of Akhand Bharat, a kind of re-unification, and especially Bangladesh suggests that there should be an open bor- der: the perspective of numerically overtaking the Hindus at least in parts of India is beckoning. In truncated India, Muslim population has officially grown 3% in forty years (from less than 10% to nearly 13% in 1951-91), and Muslim leaders claim that the true figure of Muslim population is about 3% higher. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal too, the Muslim percentage has continually increased (a small de- crease in Pakistan between 1971 and 1981 is explained by the fact that Ahmadiyyas were officially stamped non-Muslims in 1974). 225

I am not saying that they just should forget about these thousands of temples razed and replaced with mosques (and sometimes churches). Those thousands should not be ignored, to the extent that they can be useful in consciousness-raising. One level at which some evil- intentioned people try to rob Hindus of their consciousness, is history. History as an illustration of the intrinsic character of certain ideologies deserves to be highlighted. The time will come when closed theologies will bother humanity no longer, but for now, it is better to be aware of what they can do. In Europe, Nazi concentration camps are kept in their historical state, in order to teach future generations about what to avoid. In India too, monuments of intolerance should be preserved. School books, local guide books, even a signboard with an explanatory text in front of the building, should tell the history of every place of worship, truthfully.

This raises the issue of a possible settlement with the Muslims, and the terms in which such a settlement should be formulated. But note that no secularist opinion leader in India nor any Western observer has highlighted these offers, let alone given them his explicit support. Their preference is with the most obscurantist and militant tendency in the Muslim community.

Why, in fact, has Romila Thapar been interviewed? Though she was already well-known, her hour of glory came with the unnecessary and artificial Ayodhya controversy. But in that controversy, she was on the wrong side. It doesn’t always come about, but in this case it did happen: justice. The wrong side, though absolutely dominant for more than a decade, was proven wrong. Her major claim to fame is now as the historian who was proven wrong, and this in a self-created controversy. I feel for her, she threw away her good reputation at the end of her career. Then again, she can still win it back by crossing the floor in time. She is in an excellent position, for instance, to create the much-needed dialogue between the different schools and disciplines in East and West; to stop the stonewalling, the guilt-by-association and the ridiculing that obstruct or poison the debate.

I would prefer to debate this with the ones whose framework you (and perhaps your Indian Shaiva informers) have naively borrowed and interiorized, and for whom you are only a useful idiot.

While there is solid evidence that the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple, rubble of which was used in the Masjid’s construction, this fact has been denounced as “Hindu chauvinist propaganda”, and an entirely fictional claim was upheld that the Masjid had been built on an uncontroversial site, so that there was of course no trace of evidence for a preceding temple demolition. Indian Marxists could reasonably have taken the position that while the temple demolition was a historical fact, this was no reason for a counter-demolition today. However, inebriated by their power position, they went farther and denied the temple destruction altogether, against the evidence, thinking they could get away with it. As usual, they could count on their Western contacts to cover them: to my knowledge, not a single Western academic has critically examined the Indian Marxist claim that the historical temple demolition at the Babri Masjid site was Hindu chauvinist fiction. All of those who have actually written about the Ayodhya affair, have acted as amplifiers to the Indian Marxist propaganda, explicitly or implicitly defaming those Indian colleagues who stuck to the evidence that a Hindu temple at the controversial site had indeed been destroyed.

The findings have uncovered the material remains of historical facts, and these facts were public knowledge for centuries, viz. that a Hindu temple had been forcibly replaced by a mosque. Before and after 1989, the Hindu nationalists have simply stood by this public knowledge, while the secularist lobby led the Muslims into disbelieving their own chronicles (which amply attested their pride in having performed the Islamic duty of iconoclasm at Ayodhya) and denying the facts.

If ever the need arises, I will not have much difficulty in proving that 'Indian Marxists captured the institutes of learning' , that they 'enjoy the support of academics in the West', and that a great many among the latter are 'fed with falsehoods' (and liking them). It is also a matter of common knowledge as well as personal experience that both groups are trying to shut off any voices deemed pro-Hindu... from many public forums.

https://twitter.com/Koenraad_Elst/status/1224184598805938181 The scholarly truth (now vindicated) on Ayodhya was always decried as merely a "Hindutva claim". With permission: here you have similarly interiorized the description of the upholders of objectivity & encyclopedia standards as a mere party to a quarrel, viz. "Elst's supporters".

It is an old dictators' trick to associate criticism with crime and disorder, and too often we have seen secularists reduced to this sleight-of-hand of identifying rational criticism of Christianity and Islam with communal riots.

Among the media lackeys of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, the adepts at bringing up "fascism" references when discussing the BJP never showed any interest in Sonia's well-established Fascist connection. Indeed, her case illustrates how one person's real fascist link can weigh like a feather while another (say, Hindu nationalist) person's imaginary fascist link weighs like a mountain.

Schopenhauer fully acknowledged his Asian sources and never tried to hide these or to claim their ideas as his own. In that respect, he doesn’t seem to fit Rajiv Malhotra’s scheme of the “U-turn”.

The notion that the Aryans had come from outside was unknown to the indigenous oral and scriptural traditions, and no traces of any foreign memories have been found in spite of a determined search. At the textual level too, the much-sought-for evidence of any Aryan invasion (or “infiltration”, or “immigration”) remains unfindable.