Disclaimer 1 -: Any part of this article, if in any way hurts anyone’s religious sentiments or any other sentiments whatsoever, is not at all coincidental.
Disclaimer 2-: After reading the first disclaimer, Leftists please don’t get over excited as I am not one of you.
“Nobody, including our ancestors, in written or oral, have said they saw an ape turning into a man. Darwin’s theory (of evolution of humans) is scientifically wrong.” Sounds familiar? These were the words of Mr Satyapal Singh, Minister of State for Human Resources Development, responsible for higher education. Well, no one has seen apes turning into humans, but we can surely see humans turning into apes, at least metaphorically.
When faced with criticism, ex-Mumbai Police Commissioner and former IPS Officer Mr Singh replied that he has been a science student and knows quite well about the topic. That’s true, he has a Masters degree in Chemistry from Delhi University, an MBA from an Australian University and also holds a Doctorate from Nagpur University. But the fact remains that even after having such high educational qualifications and having been one of the most celebrated IPS officers in the country, he is near no evolution of himself. Maybe that’s why he could not relate to Darwin’s theory.
I’d like to extrapolate Mr Singh’s statement and connect it with what his colleague Mr Mahesh Sharma (a physician by education and training), who is also a Union Minister of Culture, said: “Night out for girls not part of Indian Culture.” I guess Mr Singh, Mr Sharma or maybe both have used a time machine to go to the past to investigate Indian culture which did not allow girls for nights out. Going by this trend I can say that the day is not far when our ministers will say that ‘Kamasutra’ is not an Indian treatise, it was written by some westerner Rishi Vatsyayana. I am not sure if Charles Darwin gave a theory of ‘Devolution’ but had done so, we could have attributed our ministers’ behaviour to that phenomenon.
Darwin is ‘stupid’ not only in the eyes of Mr Singh but also in the eyes of some Catholic churches and evangelical societies. The same is the case with Islamic scholars. This primarily comes from the fact that if Darwin’s theory is correct, it is directly contradicting the Theory of Creationism which is one of the foundations of these faiths. Just back in 2008, the Church of England even offered an apology to Charles Darwin for rejecting his theory. So, some evolution has taken place, unfortunately, not with our politicians.
By the way, this has not just been happening in the last four years as some of us would like to believe. In 2009, then Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad said that “Providing electricity to Indian villages so that couples could watch television was the best form of contraception.” Going further he explained, “In olden days people had no other entertainment but sex, which is why they produced so many children. Today, TV is the biggest source of entertainment. Hence, it is important that there is electricity in every village so that people watch TV till late in the night. By the time the serials are over, they will be too tired to have sex and will fall asleep. Then they won’t get a chance to reproduce. When there is no electricity, there is nothing else to do but produce babies.”
Genius, no? Who else on earth would have thought of TV as a form of contraception? Such a level of ingenuity in predicting the problems and giving solutions can’t be of our scientists, thinkers or ground level innovators. This policy marvel can be given out only by our great politicians who by use of TV can make the evolution of awareness among the masses but chose not to.
Coming back to Darwin and science. Indian civilization, over the last thousands of years, has produced a lot of philosophical and scientific works. Many of which are contradictory to Vedas even. For instance, Charvaka or Lokayata – ancient schools of Indian Materialism – completely reject Vedas, Vedic Ritualism, and Supernaturalism. But even these were not rejected by people following Vedic rituals. Instead, they made the forerunners of Charvaka School as their Rishis.
Similarly, Sushruta was an ancient Indian expert on medicine and surgery who wrote Susruta – Samhita. This Susruta- Samhita laid the foundation of Ayurveda. In its available form, it contains 184 chapters with more than 1100 descriptions of illness. Later on, another sage namely Charaka wrote a treatise Charaka Samhita which is another primary foundational text on Ayurveda.
We have enough to advance and promote science and technology in India, but it needs policy intervention as well as handling the outrage of our self-styled liberal class for whom introducing anything related to ancient India is ‘saffronization’. So, in short, it requires hard work and obviously being Indians, that expectation is too ambitious for us to have from our politicians. That’s why our ministers choose the easy way out by rejecting theories of scientists.
Over the last 70 years, we have been celebrating mediocrity and dynasty in almost all walks of social life and now we have started celebrating stupidity in the past four years. Congratulations to us!