Indigenous Indians (Agastya to Ambedkar) by Koenrad Elst

ISBN NUMBER: 81 85990 04-2
NUMBER OF PAGES: 483
PRICE: $8.00
AUTHOR: 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.
PUBLISHER: A Voice of India publication, New Delhi, India
YEAR PUBLISHED: 1993
REVIEWER(S):Koenraad Elst


In independent India, a lot has already been written about national integration and the need to combat separatist tendencies. Unfortunately, much of it is superficial repetition of false slogans (from the secularist side) or sterile lamentations (from the Hindu side). With this book, I hope to add some depth and some frankness to our understanding of the problems of both social and territorial separatism in India.

Today, like in 1947, the single biggest separatist threat comes from Islam. After Pakistan and Kashmir, we are now confronted with preparations for the islmization of the areas surrounding Bangladesh. This book is not specifically concerned with the roots of Islamic separatism, a large subject on which essential information has already been provided in other Voice of India publications. But we have dealt with Islamic doctrine and history in the context of the equality debate; has Hindu society been more oppressive of its lower layers than other societies, and is Hinduism intrinsically more unjust than other cultures? Claims of social equality as a result of a religion's doctrine are now a days often made on behalf of Christianity and Islam, as of Buddhism and Virashaivism and even of Vedism. These claims are generally untrue, but nowhere as grossly as in the case of Islam.

This book deals with more specifically with forms of ethnic, or mostly pseudo-ethnic separatism. Indeed, important social categories like caste and speech community are currently being misconstrued as ethnic and even racial categories; the Dravidian race overpowered by the Aryan race, the aboriginal pre-Aryans reduced to low-castes by the Aryan invaders. In reality, from Agastya to Ambedkar, great Indians have been living refutations of this ethnic cleavage of India; Agastya was an ancient Vedic rishi living among the Dravidians (his name is also claimed to have a Dravidian etymology), while Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar was the modern leader of the lowest castes as well as an articulate opponent of the ethnic and racial explanation of caste. The false ethnic redefinition of the components of the Indian nation serves to make full use of the current vogue of aboriginal revival and ethnic pride in implementing strategies aimed at the fragmentation of Hindu society. Christian and secularist interests are concentrating their efforts on denying the historical, cultural unity of India and redefining it as a prison-house of nations.

This book contains some strong criticism of Church and missionary policies. For me personally, formulating this criticism has not been easy. I have missionaries in my family, and in a sociological sense, I am a member of the Catholic community in my country. Therefore, some of this will not go down well with people near and dear to me. Criticizing Islam is simple, criticizing Christianity is more complicated, because my own relation with it is more complex, and because Christianity itself is a more complex doctrine and movement than Islam. However, Christianity in India is not the toothless, softened Christianity which I am familiar with, but has retained the aggressiveness and self-righteousness of the colonial

http://www.hinduunity.org