Tavleen Singh, a leading Columnist associated with The Indian Express. Find all Columns from Tavleen Singh here.
Fifth column: Myths and science
The Prime Minister himself said, at the opening of a medical facility, that plastic surgery must have been known in ancient India for Shiva to have given his son Ganesha the head of an elephant.
It did not help that China landed a spacecraft on the dark side of the moon while the Indian Science Congress was being held. But, even without this happening, this assembly of the best and brightest of Indian scientists would have sounded like a bad joke. Credit for this goes to the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University who read a paper at this conclave that claimed that stem cell and test tube technologies were so evolved at the time of the Mahabharata that it was possible for one woman, Gandhari, to produce a hundred Kaurav sons without this extraordinary birthing feat killing her off. This was not the only startling ‘scientific’ information presented by G Nageshwar Rao. He also claimed for India the theory of evolution on the grounds that the 10 avatars of Vishnu came before Charles Darwin.
Tempting though it is to mock Mr G Nageshwar Rao, it needs to be said that his claims were of a piece with other ‘scientific’ claims made in recent times. The Prime Minister himself said, at the opening of a medical facility, that plastic surgery must have been known in ancient India for Shiva to have given his son Ganesha the head of an elephant. Other senior ministers have claimed that the Internet existed in ancient India. As did airlines. Ravana apparently had a fleet. These ‘scientific’ discoveries from ancient India inspired a judge to claim that peacocks were immaculately conceived by a peahen drinking the tears of her ‘husband’.
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