François Gautier

• Name — François Gautier • Born — 1950 • Birthplace — Paris, France • Occupation — Journalist, historian and columnist • Spouse — Namritā Bindrā Kāūr • Website — http: www.francoisgautier.me FACT Museum of Indian history

Francois Gautier was born in 1950 in Paris and received an upper-class Catholic education. He was subsequently sent to reputed boarding schools across Europe, from where he was expelled several times. Gautier said that he "never really fitted in the system". He attended the IDRAC business school in Paris before dropping out to work in a small newspaper. Gautier came to India at the age of 19 in 1969, as part of a trans-world journey, along with the first wave of Auroville-migrants. He was accompanied by the son of Charles François Marie Baron, Pondicherry's last French governor. Deeply impressed with Sri Aurobindo's writings, he chose to reside over Sri Aurobindo Ashram where his encounters with Mirra Alfassa influenced him to further prolong his stay. Gautier went on to stay over there for about seven years.

François Gautier is married to Namrita Bindra Gautier, whose mother was a Hindu and father a Sikh. Gautier primarily resides in Auroville in India, and visits his family in France annually.

After arriving in India, Gautier stopped writing for many years and focused on other activities. In 1982, he found an article in a French newspaper, that he considered to contain clichés about the Indian society and politics. He wrote a letter to the editor suggesting corrections, wherein he was offered to write an article. He wrote several more articles for the newspaper and went on to work as a writer and photographer for other publications. He served as the South-Asia correspondent of Journal de Genève, a Geneva-based newspaper before switching to the same post at Le Figaro in 1993. He stayed over there for about 8 years before shifting to Ouest-France and then, La Chaîne Info. Gautier used to write a regular column for Rediff.com. Gautier has also written columns for The New Indian Express, DNA India, Outlook India, and others. He is also the editor of La Revue de l'Inde.

Gautier became interested in Indology when he began to travel outside Auroville. Sita Ram Goel contacted Gautier after reading some of his articles in a magazine called Blitz and asked for permission to reprint the articles in his book. Gautier instead wrote the book The Wonder That Is India. Later, the website Hinduism Today republished it online. Following this, Gautier wrote several other books. Gautier is also working on two books, one about Kalaripayattu, an Indian martial art from Kerala, and another on French influence in India, with the help of photographer Raghu Rai. In 2010, an anonymously authored novel titled Hindutva, Sex and Adventure was published that featured a foreign radio journalist who came to India and became a Hindutva supporter—it was considered to be a satire of BBC reporter Mark Tully. It was speculated that Gautier may have been the author, but he denied the allegation.

Gautier, who is critical of the partition of India, has advocated for Indian reunification, stating "as long as Pakistan and India are divided there will be other Kashmirs, other Ayodhyas, other wars with Pakistan—nuclear maybe—and India will never be at peace with its own Muslim community, which is a permanent danger to herself." Gautier contends that India, through the exercise and spread of Sanatan dharma shall strive to be a global superpower but prior to that shall decentralize the economy and Indianize its social, political and educational systems, even at the cost of democratic principles and the constitution. In abidance with a Hinducentric scholarship, he has criticized the narrative of Indian historiography to be leftist, which have apparently glorified foreign invaders at the cost of the Hindu empires, and thus urges for a complete revisionism. A front-line Hindutva activist, Gautier also deems Hinduism to be under threat from Islam, Christian missionaries, Marxism and westernisation. He calls for use-of-force by the oppressed Hindus and opines of the Buddhist-Jain philosophies of Ahimsa to have actually enabled exploitation of India by foreign invaders. One of his most prominent views is about the Hindu Holocaust perpetrated by Islamic invaders which exceeded the extents of the Jew Holocaust and all other genocides. Gautier has also rejected the western-oriental scholarship of Max Müller, Arthur Llewellyn Basham as ill-portrayals of the history of the nation which birthed the theory of Hindu imperialism. Gautier accepts the Indigenous Aryan hypothesis in favor of the Indo-Aryan migration theory and supports the idea of Jesus Christ having come to India, to be inspired by Hindu and Buddhist esoterism. He also considers Koenraad Elst as one of the most knowledgeable scholars on India and regretted of his' being unable to publish except from Hindu-oriented publishing houses. A staunch opponent of Nehruvian ideologies, he has critiqued Gandhi's policy towards Muslim separatists during the partition of India as Muslim-appeasement. Gautier have also attacked the existence and manifestation of caste privilege in the Indian society and derivatives thereof, instead arguing for a hypothesis wherein the socially and economically privileged and dis-privileged populaces are in a constant flux and which primarily manifests in reverse discrimination in the long run. He has criticized the United Progressive Alliance government (2009-2014) and claimed that terrorism continued unabated whilst Muslim mullahs were allowed to preach freely and Hindu gurus were being targeted by the media and police. He has earlier criticized the usage of the term "Godman" by Indian media to describe self-proclaimed Hindu gurus proposing that Indian journalists often were not proud of their culture and had called for imparting a more fairer treatment.

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