Koenraad Elst quotes - page 4

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)
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. View quote
Koenraad Elst
Both genetic and archaeological proofs of intrusions into Europe from Russia are plentiful, but in India these are significantly missing. View quote
Koenraad Elst
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. View quote
Koenraad Elst
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. View quote
Koenraad Elst
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. View quote
Koenraad Elst
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. View quote
Koenraad Elst
The behaviour and character of academic mullahs is once again consistent with their sorry record of misdeeds. View quote
Koenraad Elst
But I'll admit that temperamentally, I do take a certain "delight” in exploring theories that go against the established consensus. View quote
Koenraad Elst
By relating an ancient instance of white colonization in a dark subcontinent, it confirmed the colonial worldview. View quote
Koenraad Elst
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)
To whom it may concern: the present writer, at any rate, is neither a Hindu nor a nationalist. View quote
Koenraad Elst
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. View quote
Koenraad Elst
All it demonstrates is the bullying rhetoric so common in the debate between the scientific and the secularist schools of Indian history. View quote
Koenraad Elst
It is quite bizarre that scholars trying to prove a point discredit their own case by using a proven forgery without any comment. View quote
Koenraad Elst
In the longer run, some education in comparative religion is the solution, or at least a central part of the solution. View quote
Koenraad Elst
While the minority separatists have the guns, the enraged Hindus will have the numbers. View quote
Koenraad Elst
The Muslim percentage has not only incre­ased, but the rate of increase itself has increased. View quote
Koenraad Elst
And that from historians who themselves have distorted evidence in order to satisfy certain political compulsions : apparently a case of what psychologists call projection. View quote
Koenraad Elst
Not that an isolated occasion of saying the truth automatically leads to the disappearance of falsehood. Dharampal's famous book The Beautiful Tree completely demolished the myth that the Brahmins kept all the education for their own caste, and that Shudras were kept in darkness and illiteracy. Yet, the myth is still repeated... It is not enough to unearth the truth, it also has to be broadcast, and nobody should get away with pretending it isn't there. View quote
Koenraad Elst
This is not an idealization but a firm reality : no matter what the "evils of Hindu society" may have been, subjecting the individual's freedom of religion to any public authority is not one of them. No wonder that Voltaire, who strongly opposed the Church's totalitarian grip over men's lives, and may count as one of the ideologues of secularism, mentioned the religions of India and China as a model of how religion could be a free exploration by the individual. (Koenraad Elst)
In Europe, with its centuries of struggle against Christian hegemony, nobody minds that the ruling party in Germany is called Christlich-Demokratische Union.... But in India, any hint of a "Hindu" party upholding "Hindu values" (even if explained as a "common Indian heritage shared by the minorities as well") is declared intolerable by judges and journalists,-- and by the leaders of the very party concerned. View quote
Koenraad Elst
One thing which keeps on astonishing me in the present debate is the complete lack of doubt in both camps. Personally, I don't think that either theory, of Aryan invasion and of Aryan indigenousness, can claim to have been "proven" by prevalent standards of proof; even though one of the contenders is getting closer. Indeed, while I have enjoyed pointing out the flaws in the AIT statements of the politicized Indian academic establishment and its American amplifiers, I cannot rule out the possibility that the theory which they are defending may still have its merits." View quote
Koenraad Elst
Former Times of India editor Girilal Jain chaired the press meeting presenting my book. It was on this occasion that BJP leader L.K. Advani gave a speech on his Ayodhya policy, waving my book in his hand, and that he made his offer to persuade the VHP to confine their campaign for the liberation of Hindu temple sites to the Ayodhya site, i.e. to drop their claim on the mosque-occupied Krishna Janmabhoomi site in Mathura and Kashi Vishvanath site in Varanasi. That way, my ... first book made the front page of most Indian newspapers. View quote
Koenraad Elst
Thus, to depict Rama as a virile warrior was a sin against Hinduism, an imitation of colonialist virility myths, a betrayal of the feminine passivity of genuine Hinduism. Or, to organize the Hindu religious personnel on a common platform (the Dharma Sansad, more or less 'religious parliament') is an un-Hindu imitation of the Bishops' Synod in the Catholic Church. Or, to alert the Hindus against Muslim or Christian conversion campaigns is an abandonment of the cheerful Hindu indifference to sectarian name-tags, the only thing which really changes upon conversion. Indeed, anything that could play a role in upholding and preserving Hinduism was found to be un-Hindu, while anything that could make or keep Hinduism defenceless and moribund, was glorified as true Hinduism. Anything that smacked of vitality and the will to survive was dubbed 'Semitic'. View quote
Koenraad Elst