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An Indian education organization recently sparked controversy by
introducing an optional engineering course that teaches students that
modern inventions like aeronautics, batteries, as well as knowledge of
gravity existed in India during the Vedic Age, thousands of years ago.
Human Resource Development Ministry (HRD) decided to introduce into the
country’s engineering curriculum a controversial book that makes all
kinds of bombastic claims, from the fact that the Wright brothers didn’t
really invent the airplane, to assertions that ancient Indian
‘scientists’ in the Vedic Age (1500 – 500 BCE) knew about gravity long
before Isaac Newton. This book is seen as another attempt by Narendra
Modi’s government to promote pseudoscience pushed by Hindu groups.
Entitled Bharatiya Vidya Saar, the controversial book is set to be
introduced as part of an optional credit course in engineering colleges
and universities affiliated with the All India Council for Technical
Education (AICTE). For some reason, the optional course, called Indian
Knowledge Systems, will focus on Indian philosophical, linguistic and
artistic traditions, as well as yoga and Indian perspective of modern
scientific worldview. Those don’t sound like the kinds of things
engineering courses should focus on, but wait until you hear what
students will actually be taught.
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Indian news website The Print received a copy of the book and presented
some of the mind-blowing claims presented as facts. In a section of the
book called “Myths vs Reality”, the ‘Myths’ section reads “It is
believed that aeronautics was developed by Wright Brothers in 1903”, but
under ‘Reality’ it states that “In Vedic age, Maharshi Bhardwaj wrote an
epic called Yantra Sarvasva and aeronautics is a part of the epic. This
was 5,000 years before Wright brothers’ invention of the plane”.
“Yantra Sarvasva is not available now but out of whatever we know about
it, we can believe that planes were a reality in Vedic age. This should
be mentioned in the technical studies curriculum in India,” the authors
of the book wrote.
The invention of electricity and batteries is also attributed to ancient
Indian scientists: “Credit for the invention of batteries is given to
British scientist Frederik Daniel (sic) and that of electricity to
Benjamin Franklin, but Maharishi Agastya in Agastya Sanhita talks about
it much before these scientists.”
You may think that the theory of gravity was first formulated by Isaac
Newton, but according to Bharatiya Vidya Saar you are wrong:
“It’s a Myth that Theory of Gravity was discovered by Isaac Newton in
1666 AD; the truth is that thousands of years before Newton, a number of
epics were written on the gravitational force and we can find the
evidence in the Rig Veda.”
A teacher who worked on the newly adopted curriculum but did not want to
be named in the article published by The Print defended the course,
insisting that the notions presented in the book are facts.
“The idea is to make students aware of ancient scientific knowledge,
which is why this curriculum has been developed,” the anonymous
professor said. “For ages now, we have been learning how the British
invented things because they ruled us for hundreds of years and wanted
us to learn what they felt like. It is now high time to change those
things and we hope to do that with this course.”
Looking at some of the people involved in India’s education system, the
idea of how such a book could make it into the curriculum starts to make
sense. For example, Satyapal Singh, a junior Human Resource Development
minister, has long contested the notion that the Wright Brothers
invented the airplane, claiming instead that “the first flying machine
was invented by Indian scholar Shivkar Bapuji Talpade”.
Rajasthan education minister Vasudev Devnani is also known for
contesting generally accepted scientific facts. He claims that the laws
of gravitation were formulated by Indian astronomer Brahmagupta II at
least 1,000 years before Isaac Newton. Interestingly, this same official
once claimed that the cow was the only animal to both inhale and exhale
oxygen… |