Dr. Koenraad Elst is someone whose scholarship and writings on the subject have had a great impact on the debate over the Ram Temple at Ayodhya, right from the late eighties. His meticulous research and nonpartisan view of the affair provides the much-needed factual perspective that is sorely lacking in the politically charged discourse on the issue. In his characteristically lucid presentation, Dr. Elst demonstrates that the debate has already been settled in favour of the temple and that the wholly avoidable controversy is being needlessly extended.

About Speaker: –

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 Benaras 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.