Koenraad Elst on History

"By relating an ancient instance of white colonization in a dark subcontinent, it confirmed the colonial worldview."

"Until the mid-19th century, no Indian had ever heard of the notion that his ancestors could be Aryan invaders from Central Asia who had destroyed the native civilization and enslaved the native population."

"The official guru of the RSS is the Saffron flag "it represents the tradition and history of the Hindus" The flag's saffron colour evokes fire, the medium of sacrifice, and thereby encapsulates the whole Vedic religion."

"So, the missionaries' rendering of the alleged RSS view of history is hardly incriminating, except that their own whitewash of these violent invasions incriminates them as moral accomplices to aggression and war crimes... the whole "glaring parallel" exists onnly in the eye of the missionary beholder."

"In the present case, Christians and secularists who try to make the 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."

"Colonial scholars in the heyday of racial theory understood this as 'skin colour', and the caste system as a kind of Apartheid... However the projection of the colonial situation onto the ancient past has by now been thoroughly refuted..."

"For me, the point of this example, or of some names in Mallory’s historical survey, is that this academic discipline has thrown up quite a few people in positions of authority who in seriousness held theories that could not stand the test of common sense."

"For those who still have a sense of proportion, it will be clear that Hindu acceptance of or complicity with or overreaction against Islamic aggression is but a secondary phenomenon, which on a scale of moral guilt comes nowhere near the primary phenomenon of Islamic self-righteousness and intolerance. The Muslim death toll in 20th century South Asian interreligious violence is much smaller than the Hindu death toll... at least one and possibly several million of Hindus killed in East Bengal... In fomenting so much hatred against the unbelievers as has been witnessed in action in the Subcontinent in the past decades and centuries, Islam has given a testimony of itself."

"When it comes to dealing with the history of persecution and temple destruction by the Muslims, secularist historians throw all regard for hard evidence to the wind and replace it with a purely deductive approach : Islam is tolerant, therefore the destruction and persecution cannot have taken place."

"The balance-sheet is that some branches of the IE family have no memory of any migration, some have vague memories of their own immigration into their historical habitat, the Iranian branch has a distinct memory of migration from India to Iran, and only the Indian branch has a record of emigration of others from its own habitat."

"The only initiative it took was the history textbook reform but, necessary as this attempt at glasnost after decades of Marxist mind control was, it turned out to be a glaring failure. You cannot neglect scholarship for decades on end and then expect to improve on the slanted but nonetheless professional scholarship your enemies have produced."

"Also, the steppe does not support large populations, whereas India was a demographic heavyweight, then already. It is not impossible for bands of steppe warriors to conquer centres of civilization, but leaving a lasting imprint is rarer. .... And such invaders should have completely changed the linguistic and cultural landscape of mighty India?"

"A wholly different political element in Prof. Hock's contributions concerns his characterization of the non-invasionist school. He repeatedly identifies it as the “Hindu nationalist” school. But this mistakenly attributes a political identity and motive to a scholarly hypothesis about ancient Indian history. I don't call the AIT party “the European racist school” or the “Dravidian chauvinist school” eventhough those terms do explain the motives behind at least a part of the pro-AIT polemic, past or present."

"I strongly deny having ever been "anti-Muslim", for I make it a point to frequently insist that "not Muslims but Islam is the problem". However, I do readily admit to being a "fellow-traveller" of Dharmic civilization in its struggle for survival against the ongoing aggression and subversion by well-organized hostile ideologies. Only, I must add that in Hindutva-watching publications of the past decade, I have never encountered any journalistic or academic "expert" who was not a fellow-traveller of one of the warring parties."

"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."

"At this stage in my life, a polemic on the Ayodhya affair is essentially a blast from the past. In recent years, I have reoriented my scholarly interests towards more fundamental philosophical studies and questions of ancient history, rather than questions in the centre of contemporary political struggles. The nastiness, the personal smears, the sheer heat of this kind of debate now seems most unpleasant to me, though once I enjoyed rushing headlong into it. But the whole polemic is also a blast from the past in a less personal sense. In terms of the development of civilization, it is an anachronism... Given the importance of the Ayodhya dispute and my old familiarity with it, I felt I had to come down from my ivory tower and engage in this polemic once more. When dogmatic ideologues are giving scientists the kind of treatment which the experts of the Archaeological Survey of Indian have been receiving from the “eminent historians”, and assorted Babri Masjid lobbyists, it is time to stand up and be counted. I for one want to be counted among those who defend the freedom of research and the scientific method, rather than among those who shriek and howl about some evil spirit in whose name every lie becomes justified, and whom they call “secularism”."

"Most importantly, for the ancient period, Indian Marxist and other anti-Hindu historians posit a massive conflict in spite of the total absence of either textual or archaeological evidence for such conflict; while for the medieval period, they wax eloquent about an idyllic “composite culture” and deny a massive conflict spanning centuries , against the copiously available evidence for this conflict, both textual and archaeological. This observation is entirely correct: both ancient and medieval history have been rewritten in the sense of belittling and blackening Hindu civilization and extolling its enemies."

"The idea of a continuous and glorious civilization in North India dating back more than 5,000 years does not fit in well with this vision. That of the barbaric Aryans imposing foreign rule on the hapless natives is much more useful, esp. for characterizing Indian society as “oppressive”. This way, lingering colonial prejudices of Western scholars and the class interests of India’s anglicized elite and anti-Hindu intelligentsia reinforce each other to create the strange spectacle of Indians and indologists virulently opposing any rethinking of India’s past which might increase the weight of India’s own contribution to her own history."

"By contrast, I do not know of any question of ancient history which is as loaded with actual political significance as is the AIT in India. The AIT was turned into a political tool in order to question the Indian identity of the Indians, and thereby weaken the claims of Indians to their own country. This political use of the AIT continues till today, especially at the hands of what Hindu nationalists call “the anti-national forces”. Christian “liberation theologians”, Islamic missionaries, assorted separatists and like-minded anti-Hindu or anti-India activists are still highlighting the AIT..."

"This is a phrase absolutely no one will disagree with; though it conceals the more pressing question how weighty the different contributions are, and the false implication that these are all equal. Yet, it is here for a reason, part of The Hindu’s editorial line: it is meant as a punch in the face of the Hindu Nationalists, who stress unity. Not racial unity, as is here falsely intimated, but still some kind of pan-Indian sense of national unity, translating today in e.g. the conviction that Kashmir belongs with India. Therefore, among secularists, it is always welcomed if an anti-unity statement of any kind is smuggled in. .... Here we get the bulwark part of the secularist view of ancient India: the Harappan population spoke a different language than the Northwest-Indian population today, mostly taken to be Dravidian; and their civilizational innovations starting with agriculture had been borrowed from abroad, viz. from West Asia. This latter point is important to stress, as Hindu Nationalists might get the pretentious idea that some inventions had been done in India and even by Indians; Allah forbid!"

"Here again there is a parallel: informed Hindus are pained by the denial of their centuries of suffering at the hands of Islam, and are likewise pained by the denial of their millennia of civilization-building, a denial which goes by the name of Aryan Invasion Theory... for Indians, the AIT likewise implies the denial of a long stretch of Indian history. The AIT denies principally the history of the Solar and Lunar dynasties and other tribes living in Aryavarta , as covered in the Flu for a period from the dawn of proto-history to the 1st millennium BC. The major motifs of Indian civilization are embedded in that history, which is simply denied in its long pre-1500 BC phase, and vilified as merely the cultural superstructure of an ethnic subjugation of pre-Aryans by Aryans in its post-1500 BC phase."