17 Facts About Koenraad Elst

Koenraad Elst graduated in Indology, Sinology and philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven.

Between 1988 and 1992, Elst was at the Banaras Hindu University.

Prema Kurien notes Koenraad Elst to be unique among Hindutva-leaning scholars in that he had a relevant academic degree.

In two books, Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate and Asterisk in Bharopiyasthan, Koenraad Elst argues against the academically accepted view that the Indo-European languages originated in the Kurgan culture of the Central Asian steppes and that the migrations to Indian subcontinent in the second millennium BCE brought a proto-Indo-European language with them.

Koenraad Elst instead proposes that the language originated in India and it spread to Middle East and Europe when the Aryans, migrated out.

Koenraad Elst has written against the Aryan Invasion Theory defending the Out of India fringe theory in a blog piece for Indian diaspora think tank, Bridge India.

Koenraad Elst was an editor of the New Right Flemish nationalist journal Teksten, Kommentaren en Studies from 1992 to 1995, focusing on criticism of Islam and had associations with Vlaams Blok, a Flemish nationalist far-right political party.

Koenraad Elst has been a regular contributor to The Brussels Journal, a controversial conservative blog.

Koenraad Elst though has retrospectively rejected the use of violent force in the demolition of the temple and has urged the Muslims to contend with the construction of a peace monument.

Koenraad Elst argues that there existed an universal spirituality among all the races and faiths, prior to the introduction of "Semitic" faiths which corrupted it.

Koenraad Elst is a vocal proponent of Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist movement which is typically associated with the Indian far-right and supports the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Koenraad Elst perceives Hindutva as a tool to decolonize the mental and cultural state of Indians and return to the past days of Hindu glory.

In other essays and conferences, Koenraad Elst has supported for outright attacks on the enemy ideology of Islam which, in his opinion, is supposedly inseparable with terrorism and hence, must be destructed.

Koenraad Elst calls for an Indian-ization of Muslims and Christians by forcing them to accept the supremacy of Hindu culture and terms it as the Final Solution for the Muslim Problem.

Historian Sarvepalli Gopal deemed Koenraad Elst to be "a Catholic practitioner of polemics" who was fairly oblivious of modern historiography methods.

Koenraad Elst has engaged in historical revisionism and has been described variedly as a Hindu fundamentalist, pro-Hindutva right-wing ideologue, Hindutva apologist and Hindutva propagandist.

Meera Nanda has accused Koenraad Elst of exploiting the writings of his intellectual forefathers over Voice of India, to "peddle the worst kind of Islamophobia imaginable".