Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank became the latest entrant into a league of saffron leaders to cite ithihasas and Puranas to claim India's technological supremacy in ancient times.
Pokhriyal raised many an eyebrow on Tuesday when he said Ram Sethu was built by Indian engineers and Sanskrit was the oldest language in the world.
Delivering his address at the 65th annual convocation of IIT Kharagpur, the minister wondered whether anybody would have two opinions on how advanced India was in the field of technology.
“What was the quality of engineers in the country? If we talk about Ram Sethu, was it built by engineers from America, Britain or Germany? Ram Sethu was built by our engineers, which has surprised the world,” Pokriyal said.
Later, asked about his remarks, Pokriyal sought to downplay it and said what he meant was that there was a call for new new research on Ram Sethu.
The prolonged debate over Ram Sethu got a new life after the Discovery Communications-owned Science Channel in 2017 aired a promo providing “scientific evidence” to a man-made bridge between India and Sri Lanka.
The Ram Sethu holds special importance to Hindus as there are mentions in the Ramayana that the bridge was constructed by the 'vanara sena' to help Sri Ram cross the sea and rescue his wife Sita who was being held captive by Lanka king Ravana.
BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, in his his PIL against the controversial Sethusamudram Ship Channel project initiated by the UPA-I government, had sought a direction from the Supreme Court to declare Ram Sethu as a national heritage monument.
