Harsh Vardhan, the Union minister of science and technology, has a bee in his bonnet about the Vedas being the fount of all knowledge, including esoteric scientific theories. We have the utmost respect for the Vedas, particularly the Upanishads, as a compendium of philosophical treatises that have so much wisdom and knowledge to offer mankind. But the fact that this minister believes the Vedas postulated a theory superior to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and that the recently deceased cosmologist Stephen Hawking acknowledged it makes him unfit to be the Union minister of science and technology. Since the science minister is said to have drawn from Hawking’s wisdom from a fake website, we wonder what his agenda is.
These utterances at a science congress become even more curious considering that to quote Hawking is like asking the devil to quote scripture. Now Hawking did not believe in God, saying there was no need for a creator to have been around to make the Big Bang happen and the inflation of the universe to take place. The Big Bang theory represents the very opposite of what the texts of all religions would have us believe. While it is to be appreciated the Indian government would indeed like to further the spirit of scientific inquiry and harness it for progress, its science minister clouds the scenario somewhat by trying to meld science and faith. We have reason to believe that in matters of pure science men of great intellect like Einstein and Hawking have excelled. Don’t drag their science to promote Hindutva.
