"36% of the scientists working at NASA are Indian", these kind of comments we all must have heard some or other times in our life. I heard it even at some premium institute like Dr. MCR HRD Institute of Andhra Pradesh where my Foundation Course was held. Then I decided to go to the NASA website and found that only 6.7% of its employee are 'Asian'. Now considering the scientific achievements of China, Korea and Japan, share of Indians in this 'Asian' would hardly be 3-4% in NASA.
But why do people make such comments at all? Before going into that question, let me tell you two other incidents of my life. Once one of my friend's friend (a medical student) told him that all the knowledge was present in our vedas, but we have lost the original ones and these are now with NASA. Scientist at NASA read those books and then only invent a new thing. Another incident happened 2 years back when I was traveling in a train and met a muslim boy who was around 11 year old. That young and bright boy was studying in a good school and also used to go to a madarsa to study religious books, and he told me that quran contains all the knowledge of the world, but now people just read these books and do not try to find out the meaning of that, but scientist at NASA study quran and there only they find all the new inventions.
What is common in all of the above incidents. One is obviously NASA (why everyone loves NASA so much) and second is the idea that "NASA is being run by us". Here you just need to replace us with Indian, Hindus and Muslims respectively. But why so much buzz about NASA and what these people are trying to show.
One, NASA had done something which is a very big scientific achievement. It is the first organization in the human history which has send human to some other world. They had achieved something which religions and religious people has only dreamed of. And there is no doubt that you can not send a person to moon just by reading vedas or quran; so why don't steal some credit when it is not due!!
And more important most of these people are not aware where the research happens in this world, because they read religious books thinking that these contain all the knowledge, and these books does not have any mention of MIT, Stanford, Bell Lab or CERN (list is not exhaustive); or there are tens or hundreds of fields of science (like medical science, physics, material design, computer science, chemistry..........) in which research happens and NASA is pioneer in only some including space technology.
Second, the present status of scientific achievements of India(as a country) and Hindus and Muslims (as religious community) is very depressing. No doubt they have contributed to science heavily when Europe was in dark age, and no one in the old world was even aware about America, but their present contribution is not significant. As a society many of them are now affected by inferiority complex probably, and attack everything from valentine day to pizza, which may have their origin in west (but have no problem in taking coffee). But even for these people denying the scientific achievements of west is not possible, so how can then they claim about superiority of them? There is only one way which is left, accept what people in western world are doing in the field of science, but rather than giving credit to them for their hard work in labs, simply say all has been possible because of us only, this may also give an excuse to us for not going for research and wasting time in reading books written by tribals of millenius ago.
As it is said "If you can't make it, then fake it".
But why do people make such comments at all? Before going into that question, let me tell you two other incidents of my life. Once one of my friend's friend (a medical student) told him that all the knowledge was present in our vedas, but we have lost the original ones and these are now with NASA. Scientist at NASA read those books and then only invent a new thing. Another incident happened 2 years back when I was traveling in a train and met a muslim boy who was around 11 year old. That young and bright boy was studying in a good school and also used to go to a madarsa to study religious books, and he told me that quran contains all the knowledge of the world, but now people just read these books and do not try to find out the meaning of that, but scientist at NASA study quran and there only they find all the new inventions.
What is common in all of the above incidents. One is obviously NASA (why everyone loves NASA so much) and second is the idea that "NASA is being run by us". Here you just need to replace us with Indian, Hindus and Muslims respectively. But why so much buzz about NASA and what these people are trying to show.
One, NASA had done something which is a very big scientific achievement. It is the first organization in the human history which has send human to some other world. They had achieved something which religions and religious people has only dreamed of. And there is no doubt that you can not send a person to moon just by reading vedas or quran; so why don't steal some credit when it is not due!!
And more important most of these people are not aware where the research happens in this world, because they read religious books thinking that these contain all the knowledge, and these books does not have any mention of MIT, Stanford, Bell Lab or CERN (list is not exhaustive); or there are tens or hundreds of fields of science (like medical science, physics, material design, computer science, chemistry..........) in which research happens and NASA is pioneer in only some including space technology.
Second, the present status of scientific achievements of India(as a country) and Hindus and Muslims (as religious community) is very depressing. No doubt they have contributed to science heavily when Europe was in dark age, and no one in the old world was even aware about America, but their present contribution is not significant. As a society many of them are now affected by inferiority complex probably, and attack everything from valentine day to pizza, which may have their origin in west (but have no problem in taking coffee). But even for these people denying the scientific achievements of west is not possible, so how can then they claim about superiority of them? There is only one way which is left, accept what people in western world are doing in the field of science, but rather than giving credit to them for their hard work in labs, simply say all has been possible because of us only, this may also give an excuse to us for not going for research and wasting time in reading books written by tribals of millenius ago.
As it is said "If you can't make it, then fake it".
