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India has become a nation of clerks to the world, says Joshi

Staff Reporter

The former Union Minister laments country's loss of civilisational glory

OF TIMES PAST: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief K.S. Sudarshan, archaeologist S.R. Rao, Minister for Science and Technology Ramachandra Gowda and the former Union Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, MP, at the inauguration of a national seminar on `Bharat iya Heritage in Engineering and Technology,' in Bangalore on Thursday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: The former Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi has regretted that "India has become the account keeper, a nation of clerks to the world, while China is the workshop of the world, a tragic reversal for a country that boasts of the most ancient civilisation, where every aspect of modern, Western science can find its seed."

Inaugurating a national seminar on "Bharatiya Heritage in Engineering and Technology" at the Indian Institute of Science to mark Technology Day here on Thursday, Dr. Joshi said it should be recognised that before the advent of foreign rule, India had a very high share of the world market. At the beginning of the British Raj, India had a 20 per cent share, but today, after 60 years of Independence, it did not even account for one per cent.

To demonstrate the civilisational reversals that had reduced India to the status of a developing country, Dr. Joshi narrated an incident during his visit to Brazil from where India was considering importing a new variety of bull. On asking about its origins, he was told that "we have borrowed a strain from the Indian bull."

India's prowess

It was very easy to prove that ancient India had every kind of technology and science in those times. How could Sushrutha describe the existence of blood corpuscles or Charaka describe the "krimis" (microscopic organisms) in blood? Parasara, author of Vrukshayurveda in the pre-Buddhist era, had given an account of herbs and plants beneficial to mankind, which was now the basis of pre-medical botany studies.

In technology too, India's contribution was unparalleled: the spinning wheel, which cut the cost of textile production, is still hailed as the first examples of belt-transmission power; the stirrup was of second century BC origin; and the ancient blow-gun (nalika), which shot small arrows or pellets, could well be the forerunner to the air-gun invented by the Europeans in the 16th century, he said.

Dr. Joshi, a former professor of physics at Allahabad University, said India introduced the concept of perpetual motion to European thinking about mechanical power. The concept could be traced back to Bhaskara, and the Arabs took it to Europe, he said.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief K.S. Sudarshan, who released a souvenir on Technology Day, urged India's scientific community to explore the enormous possibilities of India's ancient technology, which was rooted in spirituality. He gave the example of the former NASA scientist H.S. Satish Chandra, who was working quietly in Bangalore trying to link the wonders of Vedic science with contemporary technology.

Well-known archaeologist S.R. Rao, who has researched on the remains of Dwaraka off the coast of Gujarat, said the ancient city's remains bore evidence of amazing engineering techniques and technology that Indians seemed to have mastered at the time, nearly three millennia ago.

Programmes

Science and Technology Minister Ramachandra Gowda said that in order to re-connect with India's hoary past in science, the State Government had taken up several programmes such as quizzes, exhibitions and science fairs for schoolchildren. A scholarship for meritorious science students had also been announced.

The seminar, which traced the Indic heritage from the Harappan period to Pokhran and beyond, was organised by Vijnana Bharati and sponsored by the Indian Institute of Science, the Technology Development Board, the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the National Institute of Technology, Calicut.

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