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About Koenraad Elst
Born in Leuven, in the year 1959, Koenraad Elst grew up
in the Catholic Community in Belgium. He was active for some years in
what is known as the new Age movement, before studying at the famed Catholic
University of Leuven (KUL). He graduated in Chinese Studies, Indo-Iranian
Studies and Philosophy.
He took courses in Indian philosophy at the Benares Hindu
University (BHU), and interviewed many Indian leaders and thinkers during
his stay in India between 1988 and 1992. He has published in Dutch about
language policy issues, contemporary politics, history of science and
Oriental philosophies; in English about the Ayodhya issue and about the
general religio-political situation in India.
A few of his latest books are Negationism in India: Concealing
the Record of Islam, "Ram Janmabhoomi vs. Babri Masjid",
and "Ayodhya and After".
While doing research in Indian philosophy at Benares Hindu University,
he started taking an interest in the ongoing Rushdie and Ayodhya controversies
and the larger debate on secularism. He published several books on the
historical Ayodhya file. A married man and father of four, he is currently
working as a free-lance scholar and columnist.
Ayodhya and after - issues before Hindu society
- Introduction of the book by Koenraad Elst
Source: http://www.bharatvani.org
Delhi, 5th February 1991
I am not a Hindu. And I am certainly not a Muslim. So, when I started
writing my earlier book Ram Janmabhoomi v/s Babri Masjid, a Case Study
in Hindu-Muslim Conflict, in the spring of 1990, I was an outsider to
this conflict between Hindus and Muslims. But as I ventured deeper into
the unique configuration of forces now existing in India, I saw that this
was not a conflict between just any two communities. It is not just a
struggle between one self-interest and another self-interest. It is a
struggle between very unequal contenders, with unequal motives for waging
this struggle at all.
On the one hand, there is the society that has continued the age-old
civilization of this country. It has been badly bruised by centuries of
foreign rule and oppression, with the moral losses more serious than the
territorial and cultural ones: it suffers of self- forgetfulness and lack
of self-respect. But it is still far better off than most of the cultures
that have been overrun by the Muslim conquerors or the European colonizers.
It has a real chance of coming through.
On the other hand, there is a community, which is allowed to function
within this larger society, but which has the roots of its separate identity
outside this society's age-old civilization. These people's ancestors
were in many cases pulled out of Hindu society and made members of the
Muslim community under duress. Now, they would automatically evolve back
into Hindu society, were it not for some politicians and theologians who
instill a separate communal identity in them.
The Ayodhya movement, which wants to reintegrate the sacred place of
Ram Janmabhoomi into the living Hindu tradition by building a Mandir on
it, is at the same time an invitation to the Muslim Indians to reintegrate
themselves into the society and the culture from which their ancestors
were cut off by fanatical rulers and their thought police, the theologians.
It is thus an exercise in national integration.
The struggle of Hindu society is not primarily with the Muslim community.
The most important opponents of Hindu society today are not the Islamic
communal leaders, but the interiorized colonial rulers of India, the alternated
English-educated and mostly Left-leaning elite that noisily advertises
its secularism. It is these people who impose anti-Hindu policies on Hindu
society, and who keep Hinduism down and prevent it from proudly raising
its head after a thousand years of oppression.
The worst torment for Hindu society today is not the arrogant and often
violent agitation from certain minority groups, or the handful of privileges,
which the non-Hindu communities are getting. The worst problem is this
mental slavery, this sense of inferiority which Leftist intellectuals,
through their power positions in education and the media, and their direct
influence on the public and political arena, keep on inflicting on the
Hindu mind.
These Leftist intellectuals work in a strange collusion with the Islamic
fanatics. Normally, the atheist Left should be the sharpest opponent of
religious obscurantism and dogmatic adherence to anti-universalistic belief
systems like Islam. But in India, the two work happily together for the
destruction of their common enemy: Hindu Dharma. Of course, the Leftists
are mistaken if they think they can use the Muslims for their own ends.
It is a one-way collaboration, and increasingly so, as the Left is put
on the defensive while Islam is still on the offensive. So far, the Left
has rendered some fine intellectual services to the cause of Islam. It
has strongly supported the movement for the Partition of India on the
basis of the Islamic Two-Nation Theory. After Partition, it has used its
increasing hold on the entire intellectual and educational scene in India
to paralyze all criticism of the historical record and ideological character
of Islam.
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