At the Indian Science Congress, to be held in Mumbai next month and expected to be attended by Nobel laureates, will be a speaker who claims the aeroplanes far more advanced than their modern counterparts were discovered during the Vedic age.
“In those days, aeroplanes were huge in size and could move left, right, as well as backwards, unlike modern planes which only fly forward,” Captain Anand J Bodas is quoted as telling a leading newspaper in Mumbai. Bodas also said that aeroplanes in the Vedic age could not just move from one country to another, but also from one planet to another.
Bodas cites ancient Indian treatise on aviation, the Vaimanika Prakaranam, as his source and claims that most of its principles have been forgotten because of the passage of time, foreign rulers and things being stolen from the country.
The five-day Indian Science Congress has kept a session on ‘Vedic Mythology About Aviation’ on January 4. Another session on ‘Ancient Sciences Through Sanskrit’ will also be held at the prestigious event.
Bodas’ claim is consistent with similar assertions made by scholars and organisations affiliated to right-wing groups since the BJP-led NDA government assumed power earlier this year. Y Sudershan Rao, who was recently appointed as head of the Indian Council of Historical Research, claims that since the art of fiction writing was invented in the last century and because the Mahabharata was written at least two millennia ago, the epic must be accurate and true.
Schools in BJP-ruled Gujarat have also been given textbooks authored by controversial historian Dinanath Batra who claimed that cars were invented in ancient India. Even PM Modi, while inaugurating a hospital in Mumbai last month, said that Hindu god Ganesha’s head was an evidence of plastic surgery in the ancient days and that the birth of Kauravas in the Mahabharata is a proof of test-tube babies.
