Forget Issac Newton, ancient ‘Hindu’ texts mentioned gravity first, says HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal

Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ said on Saturday that Indian scriptures mentioned about the concept of gravity way before Isaac Newton did.

“We need to prove that all that we keep talking about like Charaka, Aryabhata, they all existed and that our scriptures mentioned the concept of gravity much before Newton discovered it,” said Nishank.

According to a report in The Print, HRD minister made this statement while appealing to the directors of Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology to opt for more research on ancient Indian science to prove that the country was indeed a pioneer in this field.

Pokhriyal was speaking at Gyanotsav at IGNOU. The event was attended by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s close aide Balkrishna and other RSS functionaries. Various directors of IITs, NITs and heads of organisations like the University Grants Commission and All India Council for Technical Education were also present.

“When I say that India was ahead in all fields including science and technology, today’s youngsters question me. They say what is the education minister saying…” said the HRD minister, while addressing the gathering in the premises of Indira Gandhi National Open University, reported The Print.

Nishank had made similar claims at the 57th convocation of IIT-Bombay earlier. The Human Resources Development (HRD) ministry then had clarified that he was referring to the work of a NASA scientist who had published an article 'Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence' in the 'Artificial Intelligence' magazine.

Interestingly, the minister had claimed at the IIT-B convocation that it was Charaka Rishi - hailed as one of the principal contributors of Ayurveda - who was the first person who researched and discovered atoms and molecules.

"Who conducted research on atoms and molecules? Charaka Rishi was the one who researched atoms and molecules and discovered them," he had said.

Nishank also batted for Hindi as the medium of communication, while emphasising that all Indian languages will be strengthened.

"We will strengthen all the Indian languages. However, a language of communication that weaves in all the languages is the language of the nation. This is the reason why the paragraph 343 of our Constitution states that the national language will be Hindi. Gandhiji said that the nation that does not have its national language is dumb," he said.

with IANS inputs.