A scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq called al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham has been recently "discovered" to have discovered and written many scientific discoveries on light refraction etc; whereas the west claims that modern scientific thought began with the Renaissance in Europe. The BBC TV has produced a series on these unknown geniuses. Likewise there are many unknown Indian scientists who will be forever buried unless we have some Sanskrit and Pali scholars capable of deciphering not only scripts but the thoughts expressed. Otherwise we will continue to think ourselves inferior to the west,imitate and copy their work and generally be slaves to our incompetence and laziness. So if at all the Educ. Min. wants to do something useful,it must encourage Indian language learning especially from school-age. The Mahabharat and Puranas are full of marvellous inventions and discoveries that have been described wrongly due to scientific ignorance of the religious scholars.It is time to put both subjects together to get the correct picture of the greatness of thought in ancient days and carry on from there,instead of wasting money on application of elementary scientific discoveries of India today.
