'gali leo was the first to tell the world that it is round in shape and it revolves round the sun', thus read
my brother's son from his 6th standard text book. how foolish, as if nobody knew it before galileo.
this is what our children learn in their schools. we can not change the syllabus or influence ncert to publish
some relevant truth about our culture and our heritage. because they are 'intellectuals' who accept
only what 'foreign' authors say about our culture and accept only 'scientific' facts and not anything
else. even if they say something great our intellectuals will not accept it.
at least we can teach our children what our rich heritage and culture is, only if we know something about
the same. i see so many people talk about kamal hasan's dasavatharam and referring to the dalit character
as 'poovaragavan'. it is actually 'bhoo varagan' referring the avatar of vishnu as a wild boar to save the
earth. bhoo = earth. varagam = boar. and this dasavatharam stories, we know from time immemorial and
a 'dasavatharam set' is an integral part of every home's navarathri kolu. in that, varaga avataram carries the
globe in between his tusks. and there are references about these in all the puranas.
and our children's school books say that galileo found out this great truth, only some 400 years back.
and we also make them mug up without knowing what they are reading or understanding.
maybe the westerners knew only after galileo told them. then also they were not ready to agree and
put him to death. but not us, indians.
we have a word 'andam' meaning
the universe. the same word is used to refer egg also. this word is found in all the thamizh
literary works. actually it is a sanskrit word. in fact we derived the universe andam only from the egg andam, meaning the
universe is elliptical. for those who knew that the universe was elliptical, would the truth
that earth is a globe have not occured?
learn our culture, learn our heritage, be proud of it and take it to the next generation.
if you dont know where to start, start with 'deivathin kural' by ra.ganapathy. it is a compilation
of kanchi mahaswami's speeches.
