Indian prime minister: Genetic science existed in ancient times

Hindu nationalists have long propagated their belief that many discoveries of modern science and technology were known to the people of ancient India. But now for the first time an Indian prime minister has endorsed these claims, maintaining that cosmetic surgery and reproductive genetics were practiced thousands of years ago.

As proof, Narendra Modi gave the examples of the warrior Karna from the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata and of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesha.

“We can feel proud of what our country achieved in medical science at one point of time,” the prime minister told a gathering of doctors and other professionals at a hospital in Mumbai on Saturday. “We all read about Karna in the Mahabharata. If we think a little more, we realise that the Mahabharata says Karna was not born from his mother’s womb. This means that genetic science was present at that time. That is why Karna could be born outside his mother’s womb.”

Modi went on: “We worship Lord Ganesha. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.”

While much of Modi’s speech was devoted to how to improve healthcare facilities in modern India, he also dwelt on ancient India’s “capabilities” in several fields.

“There must be many areas in which our ancestors made big contributions,” he said. “Some of these are well recognised. If we talk about space science, our ancestors had, at some point, displayed great strengths in space science. What people like Aryabhata had said centuries ago is being recognised by science today. What I mean to say is that we are a country which had these capabilities. We need to regain these.”

This is not the first time that Modi has publicly articulated such ideas. But he did so earlier as chief minister of Gujarat state, and not as prime minister. He also wrote the foreword to a book for school students in Gujarat which maintains, among other things, that the Hindu God Rama flew the first aeroplane and that stem cell technology was known in ancient India.

Modi’s claims at the Mumbai hospital initially went unreported in the Indian media, except on the website rediff.com.

But on Monday night Headlines Today TV talk show host Karan Thapar focused on it in his primetime programme, with opposition politicians criticising Modi. The speech has also been posted on the prime minister’s official website. No Indian scientist has come forward as yet to challenge him.

either

smart man using nationalism to consolidate his power

or

an idiot who knows nothing of science

either

smart man using nationalism to consolidate his power

or

an idiot who knows nothing of science

either

smart man using nationalism to consolidate his power

or

an idiot who knows nothing of science

First one

Clear to see he's trying to build a nation, not sure if that's the best way.

However he's correct about surgery, surgical methods have been around for a long time in India.

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Well of course how can we forget it is indian, after all:



Meena losa the indian

They're Indian...they seem to think they were the first to do everything fifty bazillion years ago.
All you have to do is look at half the threads on here about how evil the British Empire was, almost all of them are basically "yeah, India is the greatest thing in the history of the universe and did everything and then you came along..."

I see this with people from most colonised countries... such revisionism it would be amusing if it weren't so damn serious

besides wasn't the Famine caused by the Japanese?

What particular famine are you talking about

The thing is though, everything, or almost everything, the Indians claimed to be first to do had already been done, or was being independently developed in other places. The main one people like to throw at us is numbers because of a few things that Einstein is alleged to have said. None of the claims are strictly true, the closest you get is that our numerals are based off theirs, but they were a very long way from being the first to have numbers, or zero.

The Bengal Famine of 1943 we get blamed for all the time.

They're Indian...they seem to think they were the first to do everything fifty bazillion years ago.
All you have to do is look at half the threads on here about how evil the British Empire was, almost all of them are basically "yeah, India is the greatest thing in the history of the universe and did everything and then you came along..."

The British empire was ****ing evil, only idiotic white Brits love to act as though you guys did the world a favor. Ancient India was as great as Ancient Greece. British might have reduced certain immoral practices like Sati but it's not like Brits were the first to fight against it, Mughals tried and I'm sure there were plenty of Hindus who were against it.

Some Indians might exaggerate the accomplishments/reality of India but they're a **** ton better than dickhead Brits who try to downplay the evilness of British empire.

I absolutely loved this sketch! Did you watch the special bbc2 episode a few months back? They even featured UKIP and the Daily Mail

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The British empire was ****ing evil, only idiotic white Brits love to act as though you guys did the world a favor. Ancient India was as great as Ancient Greece. British might have reduced certain immoral practices like Sati but it's not like Brits were the first to fight against it, Mughals tried and I'm sure there were plenty of Hindus who were against it.

Some Indians might exaggerate the accomplishments/reality of India but they're a **** ton better than dickhead Brits who try to downplay the evilness of British empire.

Good to see you are objective about this. Comparatively the British were fairly civilized and were responsible for the abolition of all sorts of practices, the foundations of a democratic system, common law and capitalism, a scientific community, most of the things that allowed you to buy a computer to write your bile nonsense on.

Additional to what DErasmus had to say to this, at the time of conquest, what exactly did India have to contribute to the world in the sciences and what did it gain from that conquest? Not to say that they wouldn't have made it there eventually (then again, Indians often seem to act as if they were the only people in the world who could possibly do half of what they claim to have done first and the rest of the world would never possibly hqve done it without them).

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I agree with you that India wasn't at its peak when the British invaded but do you have any idea how much wealth the British stole from India? And how much that wealth could've transformed modern India.

That's the way the world works, clearly it wasn't enough wealth (or more likely wasn't used well enough) to hold of the Royal Navy. Anyway, it's not India's turn (along with China and the likes) to take the wealth from the Europe.