Columnists
Fount of All Knowledge
T. SHER SINGH
DAILY FIX
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
E-Mails bouncing back and forth between desis around the world are abuzz with the latest revelation from Mother India: that the science of DNA was invented during the Vedic times and, like all knowledge in the grasp of modern Man, should be credited to the wise men of Hindoostan.
If you haven’t read any of my earlier columns and are curious as to who I mean by ’desis’, just read on … it’ll become abundantly clear.
So, what’s with this DNA thing?
Nothing new.
If there’s one thing that unites the lemmings in India, it is their dearly- and deeply-held belief that all modern technology originated from the land. Everything that you and I use today may be made in China but it was invented in maha bharat thousands of years ago.
I know, I know - to ordinary people like you and me it sounds like a scene from “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.“ Not a wild thought, considering that, to some degree or the other, all of them believe in this brilliant idea.
Just like all Chinese believe that the rest of the world is gweilo - the ghost people. Worse, when they are being totally frank, they say we are jyutping - that is, dead or damned. All of us.
Not unlike the belief held by the pigmentally challenged people of the world - the “pink” people, if you will. They were born, they claim, for one purpose only: to carry the “white man’s burden.” Which, they’ll tell you in confidence, is to rule over all the others, the inferior races.
So on and so forth … but back to inja.
Here’s a commonly held thesis in Mother India:
The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Americans were developed from German technology.
Guess where the Germans got the know-how.
Well, you see, the Vedic manuscripts containing all the technological formulae fell into the Ganges River “many, many thousands of years ago.” Carried away by the waters, from river to ocean, and by the high seas to … you guessed it, Germany.
The Germans somehow retrieved the pages and translated them. “You see” - continues the thesis - “since Sanskrit and German are virtually the same; they could read everything without difficulty.”
The Germans realized very quickly, of course, that they had found a treasure trove of knowledge. They proceeded to utilize the “stolen” technology, hence the advanced state of Germany today.
That no credit was given to India is a common lament. “The bomb, rockets, Mercedes-Benz, Braun gadgets, everything came from these long lost books of Hindoostan.”
There are, of course, a number of versions to this basic story, with a few interesting twists: of how the books fell into the river, of the attempts made to recover them, of the numerous applications of the secret formulae -- yes, the word “formula” appears in these claims at regular intervals.
There is evidence offered too -- oodles of it.
The urran-khatola (literally, the flying machine) and the sudarshana chakra (the quoit of fire), both fantastic gadgets used by India’s own Incredibles in the interplanetary wars between the Kauravas and the Pandavas …
It’s all described in the Mahabharata, the great myth-epic.
It is cited with gay abandon: all of it incontrovertible proof, of course, that airplanes, flying saucers, space-craft and the like were commonplace in vedic India while the rest of the world was still groping in the Dark Ages.
If you yourself haven't heard these stories first-hand - in one form or the other - or gone through life without this knowledge, it merely means one of two things: either you've never met a home-grown desi, or you were brought up in a monastery deep in the Alps, carefully sheltered from all evil.
I recall a Hindu fundamentalist I once found myself standing next to at a party. To be fair to him, he'd had a few drinks. He leaned over and said: “The laser. You know, don’t you, it was first used by Krishna. In the Mahabharata. Check it out. It’s right in there. In black and white.” This was during the course of a free-for-all discussion over a nuclear crisis being bandied about in that morning‘s newspapers.
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard something of this nature.
I recall, when growing up in India, the attitude and behaviour of members of political groups such as the Jan Sangh, the Shiv Sena, the Janata part and the RSS - all antecedents of the national party that plagues India today - BJP.
Who hasn’t heard some khaki-knicker-clad shakha member - aping the Nazi salute in an equally goofy variation, and boasting the swastika, the age-old symbol of Aryan silliness given new energy by Hitler adapting it as his own - spouting the warped interpretation of the fairy tales of the subcontinent?
It’s like the Republicans closely studying Sponge Bob Square Pants or Chewbacca and coming to the learned conclusion that both are gay!
This pure gibberish subscribed to by desis and their wacky political parties actually forms part of the shared ideology which claims as a fact that all modern technology originates in vedic times.
What more can I say?
This morning’s blogs, right on cue! - I noticed as I gave them my usual 10-second daily glance - are carrying a slew of deeply thought-out calculations to prove that the otherwise inane “god particle” too was first discovered in Hindoostan several millennia ago.
Many of the authors of all of these claims, I hasten to add, seem to hold multiple advanced degrees, many of them PhD’s. Truly.
Go ahead, draw your own conclusions.
Conversation about this article
1: Otto Wickeridge (London, United Kingdom), July 10, 2012, 9:24 AM.
Oh, there's ample proof that Hindoostan had nuclear power at the dawn of history. Just look at Durga and Ganesh and Kali ... all mutants, aren't they? Something must have gone terribly wrong at some point quite early!
2: Sangat Singh (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), July 10, 2012, 11:56 AM.
Here is something archived on parchment since vedic times. We had cinemas then and Bollywood has since continued to flourish. Here is a script for children, stories narrated as 'Bal Bodh' - Wisdom for Children - in an easy style. Birth control was never in fashion and Deviki was ready to deliver her eighth child but he was destined to be killed at birth by his wicked uncle (mama), Kansa. Vishnu was the good man with a soft heart and transferred the unborn sweet little godlet to another womb in a quieter neighbourhood. Once born, he grew up and started to chase girls in the countryside and, given his good looks, charm and enticing manners, was able to assemble some 16,000 girlfriends. Since this was bound to create problems, he was forced to marry a lovely coy maiden to prevent any complications. Sorry, I can't find the next parchment ... probably filed somewhere else by a careless secretary. But I do recall he produced a juggernaut that was renamed due to lack of patent rights into Bharti Tanks ... which serve India's army to this day. The child? Young Gopal grew up to be called Krishna.