The project to rediscover scientific gems that lay hidden in ancient Indian texts got a major boost in the last decade when the saffron alliance came to power at the Centre; and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in fact championing it. He would uncover the truth behind the birth of Karna: the warrior hero of Mahabharata was a product of genetic science; it helped him to take birth outside his mother’s womb. Mr Modi would also attribute the elephant head of Lord Ganesha to plastic surgery.
There was no stopping of the proponents of the ancient Indian wisdom and knowledge system once they got the imprimatur from the Prime Minister. People started discovering, err, inventing new discoveries from the puranas, which included a fleet of aircraft, guided missiles, and even atom bomb. The 100-strong Kauravas owed their birth to stem cell and test tube technology, exclaimed a scientist at the Indian Science Congress, once a congregation of scientists from India and abroad.
Pseudo scientists then rushed on to platforms vacated by scientists. People who have not passed their matriculation would lecture in science conferences; those with a criminal past would pontificate on elements in the hallowed precincts of scientific institutions. Universities would launch studies into discovering the benefits of cow dung and urine. Medical experts in fact feared for the worst when local scientists expounded the ability of cow dung to eliminate the corona virus at a time the pandemic was killing thousands.
Oh yes, we have a Constitution that calls for promoting scientific temper, and had a prime minister who called engineering marvels the temples of New India. But that was another generation and another nation. Hence there is no wonder the director of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, which trains some of the best brains in science and technology, would publicly endorse the medicinal value of cow urine, with no data to support it. Bharat that is India is in the making.
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