The findings of Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were rubbished by some "academics" at the 106th Indian Science Congress which ran from 3-7 January. Hindu mythology and religion-based theories have increasingly become part of its agenda.
Scientific experts and academics have said that remarks at this year's summit were especially ludicrous and The Indian Scientific Congress Association expressed "serious concern" at the remarks.
“We don't subscribe to their views and distance ourselves from their comments. This is unfortunate”, Premendu P Mathur, general secretary of the Indian Scientific Congress Association, told The Spoof. "There is serious concern about such kind of utterances by supposedly responsible people."
This year's congress featured:
The head of a southern Indian university claiming an old Hindu text as proof that stem cell research was discovered in India thousands of years ago.
G Nageshwar Rao, vice chancellor of Andhra University, saying a demon king from the Hindu religious epic, Ramayana, had 24 types of aircraft and a network of landing strips in modern day Sri Lanka.
A "scientist" from a university in Tamil Nadu telling the conference that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were both wrong and that gravitational waves should be renamed "Narendra Modi Waves". (FYI Narendra Modi is the prime minister of India. Who is looking for more funding here?) Dr KJ Krishnan reportedly said Newton failed to "understand gravitational repulsive forces" and Einstein's theories were "misleading".
Critics say that while ancient texts should be read and enjoyed - it is nonsense to suggest they represented science.
The Spoof has compiled a list of incontrovertible truths from India pseudo-science and invites you, the reader, to decide which claims are real and which are made up by us.
- India's junior education minister Satyapal Singh in 2017 said that airplanes were first mentioned in the ancient Hindu epic, Ramayana. He added that the first working plane was invented by an Indian named Shivakar Babuji Talpade eight years before the Wright brothers.
- Also in 2017, the education minister for the western state of Rajasthan said it was important to "understand the scientific significance" of the cow, claiming it was the only animal in the world to both inhale and exhale oxygen.
- Ravindra Jadeja is a noted spin bowler in current cricket and represents India internationally. He is a slow left-arm orthodox bowler and in 2016 he claimed that the spin which he puts on the ball is increased by his spirit guardian, a former Indian bowler from the 1930s.
- In 2015 an academic from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD) rewrote history for his students when he claimed John Logie Baird FRSE, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, was in fact an Indian Yogi not a Logie. According to the unproven claims Baird was not merely a Scottish engineer and innovator, demonstrating the first working television system on 26 January 1926 but was a devoted practitioner of yoga whose meditations led him to the idea of television.
- In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told medical staff at a Mumbai hospital that the story of the Hindu god Ganesha - whose elephant head is attached to a human body - showed cosmetic surgery existed in ancient India.
- Geologist Ashu Khosla said that Hindu god Brahma discovered dinosaurs and documented them in ancient Indian scriptures while presenting a research paper at the Indian Science Congress on Sunday.
- Lawmaker Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank prompted outrage in 2014 when he said that science is a dwarf in front of astrology"". He added that astrology was ""the biggest science"" and that India conducted nuclear tests more than 100,000 years ago."
Answers: Apart from items 3 and 4 which are products of our fertile imagination, all, yes ALL, are real . However hard we have tried, they are still not as fantastic as the real claims.
