अनुभूति: From Vaimanik Shashtra to Ramzaada to Hawaizaada, We as a Nation Don't Fly up but Fall Down!

Exactly forty years ago, scholars from Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering Department of Indian Institute of Science (I.I.Sc), critically studied the texts "rediscovered" by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry called "Vaimanik Shashtra" and refuted its claims. It is claimed that the text has Vedic origin, dating as far as mythical sage Bharadwaj. Even after refutation of these ideas by credible Indian scholars, today we are still discussing merit of this nonsense.

The way medieval Hindutva jingoists are gaining more and more space in public, academic and institutional discourse, I fear that the future is not far, as envisioned in the movie Interstellar... no no... Not that wormhole and travel to blackhole mumbo jumbo but the scene where the future American educational curriculum teaches that the Apollo missions were faked in order to bankrupt the Soviet Union and this information is being taught as "truth." Should we teach children to grow up with superstitions even when strong contrary evidence exist? Isn't there an objective limit to common arguments like, "everything is relative" & "everything is possible"?

I will point at three significant events which has brought back the unnecessary debate to public life and now even in institutions.

1. The Usual Jokers - Ramdev Baba & Co.

In India, there is a group of people who would believe and defend anything that comes from a Baba who claim monopoly over Hinduism. They don't need scientific evidence but they intentionally and regularly try and enforce the idea that ancient Vedic Indians had better knowledge of nature and universe than science of today. They also intend to systematically convert people into apes by giving up scientific temper and zeal to honestly and sincerely investigate the universe.

Outspoken Ramdev Baba is glowing example to the case in point. I first came across his claim when a friend of mine, who also happens to be an engineer, retweeted the following tweet

The tweet claims that airplane was first invented by an Indian named "Shivkar Bapuji Talpade" and not Wright Brothers. It also claims that the schools have been teaching wrong information to the kids. The validation of the claim is based on the statement that this invention is based on a Vedic treatise written by the mythical sage Bharadwaja. A mature 32 year old male re-tweeted this claim, another person that I know and many more like him, liked it on Facebook. Such tweets were also tweeted & re-tweeted by many other Virat Hindutva organizations and their followers. But why should I be bothered as long as it is on social network? After all who takes social network seriously?

2. Ill-informed Bollywood

Recently, an upcoming Bollywood movie called "Hawaizaada" has been making waves on social network sites. It might not be ethical for me to review a movie just based on trailer but who better than Bollywood can appreciate futility of ethics? Here is the promo of the movie:

The movie is inspired by true events and claims that eight years before Wright Brothers flew their aircraft over the beach in Kitty Hawk, an [with HUGE emphasis] INDIAN man named "Shivkar Bapuji Talpade" had already achieved this feat. In the start of the promo, the protagonist in the movie is assisted by an older looking fellow played by Mithun Chakrabarthy, who I presume is playing the role of Pandit Subbaraya Shastry. Also, you can see the protagonist scrolling through a booklet which has designs very similar the one presented in the paper above. But in the very next scene you see a biplane which does not look anything like designs in the booklet or Wright Flyer but seems to be based on the advanced designs of biplanes used in World War I.

Close scrutiny of Vaimanik Shashtra will not provide you with a design which resembles anything like modern aircraft let alone Wright Flyer. Though some of these designs seems to be poor copy of Zeppelin which existed before 1895, whose working principle has little similarity with aircraft. There are certain scenes where the protagonist flies with wings attached to his body but I am not criticizing it yet, because it could be a dream sequence and no matter how insane Bollywood can get, it cannot assume its audience to be this foolish!

Finally, the movie which is scheduled to be released on republic day, seems to indicate that the reason why Indians are unaware of the this historic achievement is because the British were jealous and out of their jealousy suppressed the news where an Indian flew a machine before anyone else. These days you can link any imagination with cries of Vandemataram and prove its authenticity and the movie doesn't hesitate to use the same formula.

Bollywood apologists will laugh at this diatribe and mock me for taking a Bollywood movie, which claims to be inspired from actual events, seriously. But I wish to raise few ethical issues! As Indians of enlightened world, is it alright for us to falsely take away credit from people who had achieved one of the greatest and grandest milestones of our modern civilization and give it to someone just because they happen to be Indian? Is Indian heritage so fragile that we have to prove myths as reality to save it? Is it ethical for a movie to attribute its inspiration to true event when every evidence says, "Dr. Talpade (of Bombay) tried to make models under the guidance of Shastriji, but he was not successful in making any of them fly." [Ref the IISc paper above]

Well, if you don't see the point of ethics in a Bollywood movie then enjoy the video where Wright Brothers fly!

3. Unusual Suspect - Indian Science Congress

Recently, I heard about a scientific paper presented in Indian Science Congress which showed that India was a pioneer in aviation and used the Vaimanik Shashtra as its reference.

I do not understand how this paper got space in Indian Science Congress but I wonder if this is the beginning where urban myths are going to find space in scientific conferences just because it nourishes the widespread prejudice that Vedic Indians had already discovered and invented everything that could ever be known. If you know something that no one knows, then instead or making claims why don't you take up the designs presented in Vaimanik Shashtra and build similar aircraft and make it fly using the same principles presented?

Talking about making the Vedic aircraft fly, do have a look at the pictorial representation of these Vimanas.

The scientific opinion by the I.I.Sc scholars, which considers the basic laws of motion and aerodynamics to evaluate these designs makes following comments in their document.

It must be pointed out here that the essential idea of flying like a bird has been tried by many people (abroad) over several centuries right from the time of Leonardo da Vinci, but without any success whatever. Hence the feasibility of a craft of the above type is a near impossibility. Furthermore, the author - whoever he be – shows a complete lack of understanding of the dynamics of the flight of heavier ‐ than ‐ air craft.

Any reader by now would have concluded the obvious – that the planes described above are the best poor concoctions, rather than expressions of something real.

None of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown; the geometries are unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying; and the principles of propulsion make them resist rather than assist flying.

...the text retains a structure in language and content from which its 'recent nature' cannot be asserted. We must hasten to point out that this does not imply an oriental nature of the text at all.

All that may be said is that thematically the drawings ought to be ruled out of discussion. And the text, as it stands, is incomplete and ambiguous by itself and incorrect at many places.

Looking into drawings and the text leads one to conclude that air is sucked from the bottom, and hot gases are allowed to exhaust through pipes toward the top. And this is expected to produce force to life the plane up a statement which is a gross violation of Newton’s laws. It may be mentioned that there are verses which imply such violations clearly: [Translation] “..........The fast movement of the plane takes place in the same direction in which the jet gets out of shundala..”

I hope it is evident from the comments that there is a limit to which you can justify everything as possible. You can believe whatever you want as you have this right to it, but just because you believe in something it does not necessarily become truth! Citing Bertrand Russell, if I claim that a teapot revolves around the sun in a fixed orbit just like Earth, then the burden of proof lies on me to prove my claim and unless I prove this claim there is nothing "TRUE" about my utterances.

As Indians, it is one of our fundamental duties to develop scientific temper. And the way we develop scientific temper in our society is by not giving credence to myths which has no reproducible and logical basis!

By making claims like these and letting it stay in public and academic discourse, we are doing great disservice to the idea of this country and not otherwise. Finally, for the supporters of these regressive ideas, I would like to quote Samuel Rowbotham who 200 years after Galileo believed that Earth is flat.