|
Dr. Koenraad Elst was born in
Leuven, Belgium, on 7 August 1959, into a Flemish (i.e. Dutch-speaking
Belgian) Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and
Indo-Iranian Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. During a stay at
the Benares Hindu University, he discovered India's communal problem and
wrote his first book about the budding 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. His
research on the ideological development of Hindu revivalism earned him his
Ph.D. in Leuven in 1998. He has also published about multiculturalism,
language policy issues, ancient Chinese history and philosophy, comparative
religion, and the Aryan invasion debate. |
