Speakers at a major science conference in India courted controversy when they not just dismissed the works of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton, but also claimed that stem cell research happened in India thousands of years ago.
Professor G Nageshwara Rao, the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University addressed the 106th Indian Science Congress in Jalandhar, referring to the ancient Hindu text of Mahabharata saying the 100 Kauravas were test tube babies.
“How come Gandhari gave birth to 100 children? Is it humanly possible.. can any woman give birth to 100 children in one lifetime? People didn’t believe it. They said Kauravas are fictitious,” Mr Rao said.
“But now we believe when we have test tube babies. The Mahabharata says the same thing – 100 fertilised eggs were put into hundred earthen pots… is it not test tube baby,” he said. “Stem cell research was done in this country thousands of years ago.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Minister of Science and Technology Harsh Wardhan at the inauguration of 106th Indian Science Congress near Jalandhar, India. Source: AAP
He went on to say that Dashavatara – a mythological reference to ten avatars of Hindu god Vishnu who is believed to restore the cosmic order – was better than Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution.
Another speaker at the event, K Jagathala Krishnan said the theories of Einstein, Newton and Hawking were all wrong.
“The whole physics theory is wrong but the experiments are correct. And, my theory explains everything,” Mr Krishnan said, adding that if his theory was accepted, the gravitational waves will be called “Narendra Modi waves”, named after the Indian prime minister.
Mr Rao also said that the demon king Ravana in the Ramayana had 24 different types of aircraft which were operated from several airstrips in his kingdom.
Source: Twitter
The organisers of the science congress, however, distanced themselves from these comments.
"We don't subscribe to their views and distance ourselves from their comments. This is unfortunate," Premendu P Mathur, general secretary of Indian Scientific Congress Association, told the AFP news agency.
"There is a serious concern about such kind of utterances by responsible people."
Reacting to the comments by these academics at the Science Congress, Nobel Laureate Dr Amartya Sen said science should be renamed.
"I am in favour of giving it a word of its own rather than science -- that Kauravas were test tube babies. In the name of science, they are doing something else," Dr Sen told NDTV.
It also prompted protests by a non-government organisation that advocates for scientific literacy.
The Breakthrough Science Society held protest demonstrations in Bangalore outside the Indian Institute of Science in the south Indian state of Karnataka.
The science conference was also attended by international scientists and was inaugurated by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi who, in 2014, said Lord Ganesha – the Hindu god with an elephant head and human body - was evidence that cosmetic surgery existed in ancient India.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Indian Science Congress in Jalandhar, India Source: Twitter/ PIB
Mr Modi told a gathering of medical professions in Mumbai: "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."
