As a school boy, I was always fascinated by scientific discoveries and inventions. Newton, Faraday, Edison and even Graham Bell and Alexander Flemming fascinated me. Today, we teach electro magnetism, microbial asepsis and relevance of the various antibiotics to help tame hundreds of virulent microbes which were not only the cause of morbidity in the human race but also pestilence and cause of grave concern due to infant mortality and disabilities.
In the past there have been differences between religion and sciences, but since technology was yet nascent, theoretical sciences were unable to firmly counter religious beliefs as even as of today, religious beliefs often super impose their hold on the human race and societies in general.
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Look at our politicians too, Pandit Nehru, Bhimrao Ambedkar amongst scores of others were acknowledged as educated administrators being products of English education. Whether one self financed or received scholarship it did not matter, our society has afforded Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of Our Nation although our vast country produced numerous freedom fighters and patriots before him like Bal Gangadar Tilak, Lajpat Rai and scores of men who fought against the colonialisation by foreigners on our homeland and place of birth. Whilst being proud of our heritage, we must not denigrate other cultures. Even as late as last year, our Indian vaccine against Covid-19 produced at Pune was looked down upon the consumers in comparison to the fanciful vaccine produced by Pfizer’s Astra-Zeneca with support from the USA and Oxford in the UK. Hence while appreciating and commending the Western World for popularising sciences in the world over, it is solely left to us to take pride and recognise the immense contribution our sages, wise men and traditional knowledge, which we have failed to appreciate.
To kick start the topic of traditional knowledge sharing of our ancestors, let me randomly spell out some of the great Indian discoveries which I as a student never ever got to learn in school. After over 60 years of learning school and entering a prestigious Jesuit College at Mumbai, I was never exposed to the history of the ‘Glorious Indian Science’. It is sad that it was the Internet and self study that I undertook that allowed me to be a student again well past my fifty years of birth.
Sadly I am not familiar with the great men of Science, Medicine and Sociology from Goa. Do our students ever get a full exposure of Abbe Faria’s contribution to medical hypnosis and mesmerisation? How many of us know of even the few decades old contributions of Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, Meghnad Saha, Dr Bose in the fields of applied nuclear Physics, Astronomy, Computer Science, Botany and Bio Physics?
Do we know and teach our future generations that Pi (TT) which is 22/7 was deduced by Indian sage, but we all use TT in all civil engineering designs and geometrical calculations. We all know and admire Albert Einstein, many more also know too the famous equation of his which is E=mc2. The Scientist spent his life, scribbling thousands of pages of complex equations before deriving the concept that energy and mass are inter-related. Our sun is in simple terms just a big ball of hydrogen and helium gases. Interestingly, light from the sun which is over 3 million miles away from us takes just around 8 seconds and a bit more to reach us, but the light produced in the core of the sun takes over thousand years to reach the sun surface and reach us. We now know sun is a star which is 5.4 billion years old and it would die in another 5.5 billion years transforming itself from being bright yellow into a red dwarf. Whether this spectacular transformation would result into ‘small black hole’ is also under question.
Even a common man must be aware that in the black hole, the density of matter does not even light to escape the ‘event-horizon’. It is not a mere tale or a fictional story if I assert that we must extract all the wealth or information available in the libraries of our ancient institutions in a series of thoroughly researched painstaking work to bring forth to the world the work in Sanskrit and other Dravidian languages too about the organ transplants, amputations, cataract operations, skin grafts, correcting hormonal imbalances as in thyroid, pancreas and other glands in our body.
We are obsessed with our Hindu-Muslim-Christian or Sikh identity. We often crib about caste reservations and take pride in discrimination based on faith and food habits too. Do we realise that we are gloating over the fact India is one country, one nation? India’s greatness is that we see ‘Unity in Diversity’ which makes India great and we must continue to respect and participate in our united joys, happiness and sorrows too. We have been moving slowly in the right direction as we are focusing on Women empowerment and gender equality, whilst promoting the welfare of the ‘girl child’ and stunting down male supremacy. Yes, sadly, we do not have many women leaders in our past.
Rani Laxmi Bhai we remember centuries ago and Mrs Indira Gandhi we commend for her moulding of Mother India. Sonia Gandhi blessings to Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh to usher in Liberalisation of Indian economy also needs to be acknowledged as today, she is more Indian than many of us although she was born in Italy, but like Mother Theresa, she made India as a home for life unto death. We must not forget JRD Tata, Dadabhai Naoroji, Homi Bhabha and others who made India a great industrialised nation. Azim Premji, Dr Hamid are others who are proud Indians. Let us all live peacefully together to take India to greater international heights.
(The writer is a retired University Professor and an Environmental Activist.)
