Koenraad Elst Quotes

In Pakistan and Banglad­esh, the Mus­lim per­centage has con­tinually increased, partly by pester­ing the non-Muslims out, partly by conver­sions under pres­sure (pres­surizing people to marry their daugh­ters off to Muslims, allocating jobs on conditon of conver­sion, etc.), and partly by higher birth-rates. Bangladeshi Muslim expan­sion has al­ready destroyed the Chakmas and other non-Muslim popu­lat­ions in the Chitta­gong Hill Tracts, with the eth­nically cleansed minorities fleeing to India's North-East, there to create friction with the host popul­ation. But the most wor­rying from the Indian viewpoint is not the rise in percentage but the rise in absolute figures: in parts of Pakistan and in the whole of Ban­gla­desh, sheer living space is becoming extremely scarce, and these countries may pursue a policy of pushing their surplus population into India.

Since the 1950s the history market is being flooded with publications conveying the negationist version to a greater or lesser extent. The public is fed negationist TV serials like The Sword of Tipu Sultan, an exercise in whitewashing the arch-fanatic last Muslim ruler. Most general readers and many serious students only get to know about Indian history through negationist glasses.

India too had its share of human-engineered famines. Yet, while they killed many millions, with more than 3 million in the 1943 Bengal famine alone, they cannot be characterized as “genocide”. They were facilitated by the perpetrators’ active disdain for Hindus (Sultanate) or Indians (British), which was very explicitly stated by Winston Churchill even much before he deliberately refused to alleviate the Bengal famine. But an intention to eliminate them rather than just treat them harshly remains to be proven. Rather: these famines were collateral damage of punitive land tax policies (Sultanate) or of motherland-oriented economic reforms (British Empire).

By contrast, the VHP took a very lackadaisical attitude towards the excavations, arguably the moment of truth for the temple party....It seems they trusted in India’s national motto, “truth shall prevail”, even and especially against the decibels of those who rely on propaganda rather than on the quiet convincing power of the facts.

In India, by contrast, massive violence against Hindutva activists.. has gone unanswered. Hundreds of Hindutva activists have been murdered and no one has taken revenge... Indeed, for decades on end, lambasting Hinduism and Hindutva have been the cheapest and surest career moves for Indian intellectuals and international India-watchers.

It gets even more dramatic when you look at it this way: in 1984, a generat­ion of Muslims which was about 12% of the population had produ­ced a generation of children, certainly not more than 30 years younger on average, which constitu­ted more than 16%. This would mean an unpreceden­ted growth rate of more than 4% in less than 30 years, or rather, a growth with over a third of the original per­centage (4 to 12). For a little thought experiment: if this differential growth rate is kept con­stant, we get 16.81% of Muslims in ca. 2014, over 22% in 2044, near­ly 30% in 2074, 40% in 2104, crossing 50% in ca. 2125 etc., all with­out coun­ting the effect of Muslim immigration.

The Sikh Gurus Tegh Bahadur, beheaded by Aurangzeb in 1675 for refusing to convert, and his son Govind Singh, who founded the military Khalsa order and whose four sons were killed by the Moghul troops, are very popular in Hindutva glorifications of national heroes'. Their pictures are routinely displayed at functions of the RSS and its affiliates, and their holidays celebrated, e.g.: 'Over 650 branches of Bharat Vikas Parishad observe Guru Tegh Bahadur Martyrdom Day'. Ch. 8

There is in Sanskrit literature exactly "one 'goldhaired' person that is not a god".... Quite possibly [he] was not gold-haired at all: he may have had one of the epithets of the solar deity Vishnu as his given name, just as most people called Nilakantha, "blue-throated" (after Shiva when he had swallowed poison) are not blue-throated at all.

In the present case, Christians and secularists who try to make the (largely mythical) association of ancient IE Pagan culture with Nazism stick to the old enemy: Pagan religion, including the neo-Paganism now emerging in many European countries.

The Islamic claim to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is even more transparently fraudulent... Any secularist willing to uphold this claim as historical? Or otherwise ready to show the courage of his conviction and demand that the Muslims relinquish their claim to the Temple Mount so as to be morally in a poistion to demand a similar abandonment of "mythical" claims from the Hindus?... In the case of Christians and Muslims, no one demands that they prove the historicity of the stories underlying the sacred status of their places of pilgrimage. Demanding the same of Hindus is an insulting display of double standards.

In Gielen’s opinion, the main difference between the Abrahamic and the Dharmic religions is it “for every one of the Indic religions it is very difficult to arrive at a minimum definition because of the internal diversity”. (p.40) He doesn’t mention Christianity’s or Islam’s ambition of world conquest nor their history-centricity (followers have to believe in certain historic events around Jesus c.q. Mohammed in order to be real members), which Hindu scholars would consider far for fundamental differences.

The Guru Granth equally contains writings of some non-Sikh bhakti poets including Kabir, and thousands of references to such Hindu concepts and characters as Rama, Krishna, Veda, Omkara, Amrit. (An near-exact count is given in K.P. Agrawala: Adi Shrî Gurû Granth Sâhib kî Mahimâ (Hindi: “The greatness of the original sacred Guru scripture”), p.2, and in Ram Swarup: “Hindu roots of Sikhism”, Indian Express, 24-4-1991. Examples: ca. 8,300 times Hari (630 times by Nanak alone), 2,400 times Râma (the god-name whose constant remembrance leads to Liberation), 550 times Parabrahman (the Absolute), 400 times Omkâra (the primeval sound Om).) Sikh names are full of Hindu elements: Hari (= Vishnu), Rama, Krishna and his epithets (Har-kishan, Har-govina), Arjun, the Vedic god Indra (Yog-indr, Sur-indr). (About Sikh devotion to Ram, see Rajendra Singh: Sikkha Itihâsa mein Râma Janmabhûmi.) The Hari Mandir, dedicated to Hari/Vishnu, is as sacred to Vaishnavas as any of their non-Sikh temples; its tank was already an old Hindu place of pilgrimage, where Maharana Ikshvaku is said to have performed yajnas. (The 1875 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica says in its entry on Amritsar that it has sacred tank with a temple dedicated to Vishnu in the middle). Ch. 8

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

We will not change the subject and discuss the large though unknown number of Hindus killed by Christian separatists in Mizoram and Nagaland over the decades, nor the terror of Christian natives in Fiji against Hindus, the latter phenomenon... is not the target of any protest in the world media, and the first is never even mentioned, so I suppose we need not attach any undue importance to the death of Hindus at the hands of Christians.

The aim of the pro-Babri Masjid historians was never to settle any historical questions. If it had been, then they would not have opposed the VHP’s request to organize systematic excavations at the site; nor would they have concealed the pro-temple evidence in their publications. Their aim was merely to distract public attention from the obvious and extremely simple solution of this controversy. The fact that this solution would be in favour of the Hindu claims was apparently unbearable to them because of their seething hatred of their ancestral religion.