MODI NEEDS TO DISCIPLINE THEM URGENTLY
By Amulya Ganguli
Till last year, Narendra Modi’s disadvantage was his anti-minority reputation. That he has been largely able to refurbish his image in this respect is evident from Congress M.P. Shashi Tharoor’s commendation for the prime minister’s metamorphosis from being a “hate figure to an avatar of modernity and progress”.
It is this favourable view of him at home and abroad which was responsible for the receptions fit for a rock star, as had been stated, during his foreign trips. But, now, there is a distinct possibility that the perception of a different kind of shortcoming will cast a shadow over his persona.
Curiously, the perceived failing doesn’t have anything to do with Modi himself but with the company he keeps, viz. the primitive-minded saffron brotherhood. It is the alacrity with which its members have crawled out of the woodwork after decades of silence when the political scene was not propitious for them which can tar Modi’s standing, especially with the international audience along with the liberals in India.
It isn’t so much the row over conversions which can harm his standing as the curious claims that are being made in the field of science. While Modi has evidently been able to control the Hindutva proselytizers, who had been engaged in reconverting small groups of Muslims and Christians into Hinduism, it is the outrageous views of those who can only be called pseudo-scientists which cannot but damage Modi’s reputation.
However, the purpose of the fake men of science is clear enough. They want to brush aside 5,000 years or more of human history to return to the purported golden age of Hindu India to claim that virtually all the discoveries of the recent centuries had already been made in ancient India.
Among these achievements was one in the realm of aeronautics which led to planes flying “from one city to another, from one country to another and from one planet to another”, as has been asserted with a straight face. This claim is perhaps the weirdest of them all although the assertion that the holy cow can turn the food they eat into gold is a close second.
As if these two contentions were not bizarre enough, a saffronite claimed that during the Mahabharata war, one of the Vedic-age planes flew to Mars, via the moon, where the helmet of one of the warriors was broken by his rival. Apparently, the NASA has evidence of this kit.
While it is likely that these ridiculous statements – made at the Indian Science Congress, of all places – will be largely ignored in India, they will be regarded with hillarity in the rest of the world, tinged with bewilderment about the kind of people who have come to the forefront of the public life in India with Modi’s ascent. As a result, the image of India as the land of rope tricks and snake charmers may be reinforced.
It goes without saying that the puzzlement about the bona fides of the prime minister’s followers will detract from his efforts to assert India’s modernity with his emphasis on e-governance, smart cities and bullet trains.
The perplexity may be all the greater since Modi himself had said that plastic surgery and genetics were known on ancient India, adding that “whatever we learn in science and whatever new discoveries are being made related to planetary orbits, the activity of the earth and the sun, distance between two planets – all this has already been carried out by our ancestors long time back in the past”.
It is unlikely that Indian journalists will quiz the prime minister any time soon on the veracity of these claims – at least not until there are signs of the waning of his political influence – but he will have to be wary of foreign scribes if only because he may not be able to quote chapter and verse to substantiate his assertions.
It cannot be gainsaid that declarations of this nature have to be made by reputed academics before they can be taken seriously. Otherwise, they will be treated on a par with speculative books like Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science – from the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi, or Chariots of the Gods: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past by Erich von Daniken, which claimed that the ancient technologies and religions were the gifts of aliens from outer space who were regarded as gods by the primitive people on earth.
Indians have much to be proud of about their achievements in ancient times to be in need of the kind of wacky claims that the Hindutva lobby is making. In both the fields of philosophy and science, Indians scaled heights which were yet to be reached by other nations.
As B.B. Dutta writes in The Monumental Achievements of Pre-Modern Indian Mathematicians: “the most marvellous accomplishment for which the entire world is beholden to ancient India is the invention of the decimal numerals with place values, zero and infinity”.
And, A.L. Basham says in The Wonder That Was India that “the mathematical implications of zero and infinity, never more than vaguely realized by classical authorities (in Europe), were fully understood in medieval India”.
Today’s India must build on this heritage and not make a laughing stock of itself via the antics of the oddballs pretending to be scientists. (IPA Service)