Okay. I have come across news pieces denouncing Modi for vowing for his beliefs in the ancient texts. I agree that the way he is putting it across is too affront without too much of an explanation, that makes him sound superstitious. But NO. He is not.
For firsts, he is an astute statesman and is running the country despite ALL odds against him. Read “astute” carefully. if you don’t get the import of it correctly, go and read Chanakya, or for your ‘parochial’ mind limited to western thoughts Machiavelli, because that sounds more familiar to you. If that doesn’t work for you go and read Sun Tzu. Because politics is it’s own business, it has got it’s own agenda. And in a democracy it is run on votes. He is doing what he believes will serve his strategic interests best. Right or wrong can be debated. But don’t LAUGH at the man. Because I think he’s smarter than all of us ‘posting’ things, obviously for where he is today. Imagine US kicking you one day, and licking your boots the other – can you make it in your lifetime?
Seconds, what he has said that I read – the plastic surgery, television and an understanding of microwaves, Kunti and stem cell research, I as a science student and a strong believer of the ancient text do not find it bewilderingly ludicrous. Okay, he takes it to the extreme and says Ganesha was a real experiment – a case of organ transplantation of an animal head to a human body. Do you doubt the “possibility” in today’s world of biotechnology, and genetics and organ transplantation? If you do, then I am sorry for you, cause you never studied science beyond your class 12. Go and google a journal called Science and looked at the articles on organ transplantation. The world is getting there, will take maybe a century more, but scientists keep trying that – producing Dolly and mixing a dog/zebra with a lion/tiger. A pig’s intestine and a monkey’s liver are closest to human ones and are frequently used for transplantation and other experiments. So, what is wrong with the head? Is not a ‘possibility’? and if it is, why make such a huge hue and cry. Modi said that Ganesha thing to an audience of Doctors, who did not laugh at that. He was prodding them to think of the immense possibilities. With such a simple allegory and a tool of imagination that they are so familiar with from everyday life – Ganesha, what better could he have used to say. He is not a doctor to lecture them for 2 hours on the hard facts of organ transplantation, organ rejection, tissues and immunology! As a PM he barely has minutes of chance to speak. He makes the mind curious and the job is done – the message is further your science. But of course only for the one who care to look beyond what is said word by word – it’s called allegory if you don’t know it yet.
Yes, where he makes a mistake is that he says it ‘existed’. He does not leave a possibility of it just being a message passed down by our ancient researchers by means of stories and mythology.
But there exactly is your problem too. And my country’s.
We have closed the mind so much that we have stopped being curious and analytical. We don’t try to find out why something like that can be possible and start clamoring. Behind that Ganesha’s statute drinking milk incidence was the principle of capillary action. It worked at few places because of the nature of stone, and obviously not all across India. But you my friends from the best of engineering schools of India have the hardest onus of going beyond the hype and finding the reason. But no we won’t do that. Cause posting on FB and denouncing makes you cooler. Not when I want to debate it with you.
Behind the allegory/myth or whatever of the Ram setu bridge is the hard fact of certain stones found only in the region that can float on water because of low density, archimedes principle and yada-yada-yada. But why would you care.
You won’t care if we argue about Homeopathy being a real possibility, only yet unexplored, because your argument is that the higher potency does not have a single original molecule. But my explanation after years of research of the Quantum Mechanics, energy states, and the process of energy diffusion sounds ‘interesting story’ in the end. Atleast you leave with a possibility of interesting there, duh!
But don’t close your eyes and minds please. There’s a scientific explanation behind Kunti/ someone else bearing 100 children without sexual interaction. I don’t remember exactly, but it was some ‘matsaya’ story, and when I studied about stem cells in my course, such a process of -zygote-monogamic transfer etc. were pretty clear to me, and I was like WOW! Did they really try to pass this scientific knowledge via this story?
The reason for it being simplified is a secondary debate, that I explore somewhat in my blog below. But what I want to focus on is that, I have few pretty ‘scientific’ explanations based on modern science (which is strongly limited by only 400 years of research) for a dozen or so phenomenon after years of paying attention across disciplines. I can’t have explanations for all phenomenon. And Neither can Narendra Modi, or any other individual.
But together we can. and Yes we will. Just be ‘open’ to possibilities.
The musings of an Indian Faust 