In a famous 1966 talk, theoretical physicist Richard Feynman observed, “Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation.”
Hundreds of scientists -- many of them based at American universities, many others attracted to science by reading Feynman in their teens -- might have suddenly recalled this line at the Indian Science Congress earlier this month. At this grand event, now in its 102nd year, they found themselves suddenly treated, amid sessions on quantum physics, space science, climate change and genetic engineering, to a lecture on “ancient Indian aviation technology” that insisted that airplanes existed in India 7,000 years ago. Feynman’s dictum embodies the spirit of scientific inquiry. Here, however, within the very citadel of Indian science, was a brazen attempt to assert that all scientific truths of the present day had been fully worked out long ago by the ancient sages of India.
Captain Anand Bodas, a retired pilot invited to speak at the event as part of a panel on “Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit,” was certain that jumbo airplanes much larger than those of the present day had once trawled the skies. But not only was the obscure and cryptic Sanskrit text, “The Science of Aeronautics,” he cited shown in a 1974 research paper to likely be of fairly recent origin, but also its technological prescriptions are themselves preposterous -- as any student today could tell you well before you get to the bit requiring “16 measures of asses’ urine” and 22 of hare-dung.
After the history wars of recent times, here, it seemed, was the beginning of the science wars: yet another instance of the dispiriting tendency in modern India to see human history as a competition to be claimed by the motherland, thereby returning a society destabilized by colonialism and foreign invasions to “proud Indians” who sing the glories of the real engine of Indian history, Hinduism, and the major language of Indian antiquity, Sanskrit.
And yet Bodas’s presentation managed to get the thumbs-up from the screening committee and get onto an itinerary showcasing the best of Indian science and featuring speakers such as Manjul Bhargava, winner of the 2014 Fields Medal for mathematics, and Randy Schekman, the 2013 Nobel laureate for medicine. Perhaps the more relevant detail was that this year's event was opened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who created a stir -- even among his supporters -- last October when he declared that the elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesha was a sign that plastic surgery originated in ancient India.
19/01/15 Chandrahas Choudhury/Bloomberg
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Hundreds of scientists -- many of them based at American universities, many others attracted to science by reading Feynman in their teens -- might have suddenly recalled this line at the Indian Science Congress earlier this month. At this grand event, now in its 102nd year, they found themselves suddenly treated, amid sessions on quantum physics, space science, climate change and genetic engineering, to a lecture on “ancient Indian aviation technology” that insisted that airplanes existed in India 7,000 years ago. Feynman’s dictum embodies the spirit of scientific inquiry. Here, however, within the very citadel of Indian science, was a brazen attempt to assert that all scientific truths of the present day had been fully worked out long ago by the ancient sages of India.
Captain Anand Bodas, a retired pilot invited to speak at the event as part of a panel on “Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit,” was certain that jumbo airplanes much larger than those of the present day had once trawled the skies. But not only was the obscure and cryptic Sanskrit text, “The Science of Aeronautics,” he cited shown in a 1974 research paper to likely be of fairly recent origin, but also its technological prescriptions are themselves preposterous -- as any student today could tell you well before you get to the bit requiring “16 measures of asses’ urine” and 22 of hare-dung.
After the history wars of recent times, here, it seemed, was the beginning of the science wars: yet another instance of the dispiriting tendency in modern India to see human history as a competition to be claimed by the motherland, thereby returning a society destabilized by colonialism and foreign invasions to “proud Indians” who sing the glories of the real engine of Indian history, Hinduism, and the major language of Indian antiquity, Sanskrit.
And yet Bodas’s presentation managed to get the thumbs-up from the screening committee and get onto an itinerary showcasing the best of Indian science and featuring speakers such as Manjul Bhargava, winner of the 2014 Fields Medal for mathematics, and Randy Schekman, the 2013 Nobel laureate for medicine. Perhaps the more relevant detail was that this year's event was opened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who created a stir -- even among his supporters -- last October when he declared that the elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesha was a sign that plastic surgery originated in ancient India.
19/01/15 Chandrahas Choudhury/Bloomberg
