Koenraad Elst - Biography

Biography

Elst was born in Leuven, Belgium into a Flemish Catholic family. Some of his family members were Christian missionaries or priests. He graduated in Indology, Sinology and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven. He then obtained a Ph.D. from the same university. The main portion of his Ph.D. dissertation on Hindu revivalism and Hindu reform movements eventually became his book Decolonizing the Hindu Mind. Other parts of his Ph.D. thesis were published in Who is a Hindu and The Saffron Swastika. He also studied at the Banaras Hindu University in India. Several of his books on communalism and Indian politics are published by the Voice of India publishing house.

In his twenties, he participated in the New Age movement, worked in a New Age bookstore and organized New Age events, although he later seemed to depart from New Age groups. In the 1990s he became interested in the European Neopagan movement: he co-edited the extreme New Right from 1992, together with "pagan high priest" Koenraad Logghe, whom he joined at the "World Congress of Ethnic Religions".

During a stay at the Banaras Hindu University between 1988 and 1992, he interviewed many Indian leaders and writers. He wrote his first book about the Ayodhya conflict. While establishing himself as a columnist for a number of Belgian and Indian papers, he frequently returned to India to study various aspects of its ethno-religio-political configuration and interview Hindu and other leaders and thinkers.

In 1989, Elst met Sita Ram Goel after reading Goel's book History of Hindu Christian Encounters. Elst later sent Goel a manuscript of his first book Ram Janmabhoomi Vs. Babri Masjid: A Case Study in Hindu Muslim Conflict. Goel was impressed with Elst's script: "I could not stop after I started reading it. I took it to Ram Swarup the same evening. He read it during the night and rang me up next morning. Koenraad Elst's book, he said, should be published immediately." In August 1990, L. K. Advani released Koenraad Elst's book about the Ayodhya conflict at a public function presided over by Girilal Jain.

His research on the ideological development of Hindu revivalism earned him his Ph.D. at Leuven in 1998. He has also written about multiculturalism, language policy issues, ancient Chinese history and philosophy, comparative religion, and the Aryan invasion debate. Elst became a well-known author on Indian politics during the 1990s in parallel with the BJP's rise to prominence on the national stage. He describes himself as an independent scholar.

Elst says that his language has "softened and become more focused on viewpoints rather than groups of people such as, "the" Muslims or the Marxist historians." He writes that he has reoriented his scholarly interests towards more fundamental philosophical studies and questions of ancient history, rather than questions in the centre of contemporary political struggles.