Koenraad Elst on Religion

"Shiva is by no means a non-Vedic god, and Indra never really disappeared from popular Hinduism but lives on under another name."

"Until 1989, there was a complete consensus in all sources which spoke out on the matter, viz. that the Babri Masjid had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple."

"Politicized Indian invasionists usually claim goddess worship as a redeeming native, non-Aryan, “matriarchal” and “humanist” contribution to the “patriarchal” and “oppressive” Hindu religion, but now it turns out to have been brought along by the Bactrian invaders: how one invasionist can upset another invasionist’s applecart."

"In India, by contrast, the Church is still its old aggressive self. Rather than questioning its own record, it tries to project its own crimes onto its heathen enemies. The Catholic Bishop's Conference of India is in no position to pontificate about anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-democratic or anti-secular sins imputed to the Hindus."

"We are foregoing consideration of the more fundamental question as to which is more fanatical: to demand back the sacred places which are those of your own religion, dedicated to your own gods..., or to wilfully remain sitting on someone else's sacred sites, and knowing fully well that you yourself would not allow anyone to touch your own sacred sites."

"Perhaps he doesn’t realize the implication of his own position, viz. that by these standards, proselytising religions like Christianity and Islam, even without counting crusades and jihad, are ipso facto intrinsically “intolerant”. That point has indeed been made often enough by apostate Christians and Muslims, but in India it is usually vetoed as “Hindu communalist propaganda”."

"Whether the temple was destroyed by Mohammed Ghori in 1194, or by Babar, or by a ruler in between these two, or even by more than one of them , this all makes no difference to the facts pertinent for the Hindu case: one, there was a temple there since at least the eleventh century, attested by archaeology : two, the use of temple materials in the Babri Masjid entirely fulfills a set pattern of temple destruction followed by replacement with a mosque; three, Hindus continued to worship on the spot to the extent possible, as witnessed by travelers and locals, something they would never have done except on a specially sacred spot and in continuation of a pre-Masjid tradition."