Skip to main content

Are we going crazy?


Was Hanuman the first space traveller?  Did Ravana’s ten heads give him the intelligence and skills required to make an aeroplane?  Did Lord Ganesh receive his elephantine tusk through plastic surgery in an ancient All India Institute of Medical Science?

If you answer ‘yes’ to all such questions you are eligible to present a science paper in the 102nd Indian Science Congress being conducted by Mumbai University.  “One paper, co-authored by Captain Anand Bodas, retired head of a pilot training centre, and Ameya Jadhav, a teacher, claimed there was evidence of ancient aviation in the Rigveda,” says a Hindu report.  There were 200-foot planes that could fly forwards, backwards and sideways and even hover in mid-air during the Vedic age.  The Captain claimed that the planes, invented by a sage called Maharishi Bharadwaj over 7000 years ago, had up to 30 engines and were equipped for warfare.

The Head of the Sanskrit department of the University claimed that Pythagoras Theorem was actually discovered by Baudhayan in 800 BCE.  One wonders in the first place what a Sanskrit professor was doing in a science congress.  Another such ‘scientist’ claimed that cows could turn food into 24-carat gold using some bacteria in their bodies.  Well, the cow is getting holier!

One exhibitor, Kiran Naik, said that during the Mahabharata war, there was a chase in one of those Vedic planes from the earth to the moon and then to Mars, where a king attacked his rival, breaking his helmet.  More, he asserted that NASA found the helmet on Mars.


What is happening to India?  Are we becoming a nation of loonies burying our sanity under the ossified leaves of the past?
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2015 at 11:31 AM

    There is no place for people who do not understand the ABC of scientific enquiry in a science conference. This has done the most severe harm to our reputation in global science community.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 6, 2015 at 4:02 PM

      We are making asses of ourselves. Pseudo-science is masquerading as science and perverting the minds of the citizens.

      Delete
  2. UnknownJanuary 6, 2015 at 11:37 AM

    You raised a valid question ...Mathical !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 6, 2015 at 4:03 PM

      I'm scientific in my outlook, Alka, and hence am concerned about the latest antics of the Sangh people.

      Delete
  3. AnonymousJanuary 6, 2015 at 1:26 PM

    Next we know is nobody is going to this Indian Science congress as its rubbish.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 6, 2015 at 4:03 PM

      Sanskrit scholars and pandits will be presenting science papers :)

      Delete
  4. DMR SekharJanuary 6, 2015 at 1:26 PM

    Unfortunate.

    DMR Sekhar

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 6, 2015 at 4:04 PM

      Indeed, DMR. When myths displace science in the rightful place of the latter, it is indeed unfortunate.

      Delete
  5. UnknownJanuary 6, 2015 at 6:50 PM

    Its other form of slow move towards religious conspiracy of saying being sanskritisation..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 7, 2015 at 4:39 PM

      And for what? What is anyone going to benefit through all this?

      Delete
  6. Saru SinghalJanuary 7, 2015 at 12:05 AM

    They are writing a fantasy of their own. Earlier it was religion and politics and now it's religion-science-maths-chemistry. Please bring some sanity in this country.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Online JournalistJanuary 7, 2015 at 10:56 AM

    shame ... shame .... puppy shame...!
    Theee may be the signs Kalikaalam...!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 7, 2015 at 4:43 PM

      Want to see more signs of kalikalam? See what one website has posted:

      Predictions 1. Politicus Bharatus Janatus Indicus tri pillarus est, Vajpayum, Advanum persistum est et Narendrum Modum. Vajpayum emergum est..." The BJP will have three pillars: AB Vajpayee, LK Advani and Narendra Modi. Eventually, Vajpayee will no longer have an active life, Advani will persist and Narendra Modi will be emerging. 2. Narendrum Modum supremus chefum, ironus manus est et economicum grandum est Narendra Modi will raise himself as a national figure, not only because he is an iron man, but also because he has made of his state a model of economic efficiency.

      Read more at: http://www.oneindia.com/feature/narendra-modi-india-super-power-2014-prophecy-french-seer-1451535.html

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
10 comments
Read more