NEW DELHI: An Indian minister has claimed that ancient Indians invented the internet hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Chief Minister of Tripura Biplab Deb made the comments at an event on Tuesday.
The CM said that Sanjaya, a character in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, was able to give a live and detailed account of a battle to his King Dhritarashtra despite the fact that the battlefield was situated miles away.
He said that the “The internet was invented by India hundreds of thousands of years ago, not by the western countries or the US.”
This account of the battle of Kurukshetra mentioned in the Mahabharata showed that ancient Indians were using both the internet and satellite technology, he said.
Tripura CM Biplab Deb claims Internet, Satellites were first in India since Mahabharata’s time. Dhritarastra, Sanjay used Internet in Mahabharata time. Not USA or Western Countries but Biplab Deb claims it’s India invented Internet. ? pic.twitter.com/pgv1xw5Nx3
— TK (@TayeebKashem) April 17, 2018
“If the internet was not there, how could Sanjaya see the war in Kurukshetra and describe it? It means internet was there, that satellites and technology were there at that time,” he added.
The comments by the chief minister were mocked and ridiculed across India where Biplab Deb is trending on Twitter.
Many Indian ministers have been critcised in the recent past over comments related to scientific discoveries in ancient India.
The Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani said last month that Lord Ram had the engineering skills required to build a bridge to Sri Lanka. He said so in reference to the Indian epic of Ramayana which describes Lord Ram building a bridge to the island country to rescue his wife Seeta.
Similarly, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in reference to Lord Ganesha, said in 2014 that “there must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant’s head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery.”
He was addressing medical experts at a hospital at the time.
In January last year, Rajasthan’s education minister said that the cow was the sole animal in the world who inhaled and exhaled oxygen. He was also widely mocked for his comments.
In early 2018, Union minister Satyapal Singh said that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution “is scientifically wrong” and suggested changes in school curriculum over the matter, reported the Hindu at the time.
“Darwin’s theory (of evolution of humans) is scientifically wrong. It needs to change in school and college curriculum. Since the man is seen on Earth he has always been a man,” he said.