Guwahati (Assam) [India], May 2 (ANI): The 10th Professor Sarat Mahanta memorial lecture was held in Assam’s Guwahati.
Renowned author, poet, lyricist and motivational speaker, Akshat Gupta has said that Hindu scriptures and ancient texts tell a timeless truth, and that it is grossly wrong to brand them as ‘mythology’.
He was delivering the 10th Professor Sarat Mahanta Memorial Lecture at the Royal Global University, Gorchuk, on Thursday.
Gupta, who is the author of ‘The Hidden Hindu’ trilogy, said that the term ‘mythology’ originates from mithya, or untruth.
“The moment you term Hindu scriptures and texts as mythology, you are labelling them as lies. And then the entire Ramayana, Mahabharat, Gita, Upanishads and Puranas become fiction,” he said.
He further asked, “How shall we inculcate devotion amongst our children if we call out religious and ancient philosophical texts as fictitious and mythos?”
Gupta, who grew up in a small town of Ambikapur in present-day Chhattisgarh, pointed out that only Hindu texts are termed as mythology and not the texts of other faiths.
The reason, he contended, was that the Europeans who colonised Bharat knew that it would be easy to rule over the people of this land if they were alienated from the dharma and culture.
He underlined this through a vivid example, “The word ‘sir’ comes from Africa. The whites, when they initially went to Africa and tried to dominate the Africans, the latter fought back and defeated them because they were physically much stronger, Then the whites made them feel inferior and enslaved them psychologically by making them call the Europeans ‘sir’, which stands for ‘slave I remain’. Once the Africans started calling the whites ‘sir’, subjugating them was a cakewalk.”
Gupta cited many examples of how the teachings of ancient Indian sages and scholars are passed off as modern-day inventions.
“We are taught that Galileo found out that the world is round and revolves around the sun. When he and his followers propounded this theory, many of them were put to death or imprisoned because the theory was deemed to be anti-Christian, but our ancient scholars coined the terms ‘bhugol’ for the subject that we call geography. ‘Bhu’, as we all know, means the earth, and ‘gol’ is round,” he said.
Another very interesting example he cited was that of the chariot of Suryadev, the Sun God, being pulled by seven horses.
“In all paintings and accounts, we see and hear about chariots being pulled by two horses or multiples of two horses. But Suryadev’s chariot is pulled by seven horses. Why? This signifies the white light which, after passing through a prism, splits into seven colours,” he said.
“Astronomers found out in the last century that the solar system has nine planets. Since ancient times, we have known of ‘navagraha’, and there are temples dedicated to ‘navagraha’. Newton rediscovered the theory of gravity that was propounded centuries ago by our ancient scholars. Akashvani and Doordarshan are words that find mention in our ancient texts, so the concept of air waves carrying sounds and words and images was also known to us from ancient times,” Gupta said.
He also said, “Those who conquered and subjugated us spread the notion that we believe in myths and superstitions and are illogical. None of that is true. We were always rational and scientific, but it was only that we failed to propagate our ancient wisdom and knowledge properly to the outside world.”
Pointing to the architecture of ancient temples, Prof Gupta said that, even today, no one has been able to fathom how temples like the Kailasa were built.
Gupta then went on to question the rationale behind the mindless teaching of English. “There is no doubt that learning English is vital. But why should we teach our kids that ‘A’ is for apple and ‘B’ is for ball, and ‘C’ is for cat? Why not ‘A’ for Amba, ‘B’ for bhagwa or Bhagwan and ‘C’ for culture? Why not ‘D’ for dharma or ‘G’ for Gita?. We were cut off from our roots through Western education,” he said.
Assam Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya, who was the chief guest, said that the evening’s function to honour the memory of Professor Sarat Mahanta was the most beautiful tribute to a persona that he had ever witnessed and participated in.
“We know a lot from our ancient texts, but we cannot live by the values they impart,” he said.
“Centuries of subjugation made us lose our ‘atmagaurav’, our sense of pride in our heritage and culture. But today, our sense of ‘atmavishwas’ is returning,” the Assam Governor said.
The programme started with an invocation song by Zublee Baruah and the lighting of the traditional lamp by eminent guests.
Well-known entrepreneur Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, Assam Director General of Police Harmeet Singh, Assam Chief Minister’s principal secretary K.K. Dwivedi, former General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Indian Army’s Eastern Command, Lieutenant General (retired) Rana Pratap Kalita, APSC Chairman Debraj Upadhyay, Advocate General Debajit Lon Saikia, Madhabdev University Vice Chancellor Dr Arupjyoti Chowdhury, former presidents of Axom Sahitya Sabha Dr Dhrubajyoti Barua and Surya Hazarika, actors Pranjal Saikia, Mridula Barua, Moloya Goswami, Zerifa Wahid and Kapil Borah, senior police officers, bureaucrats, academics and eminent persons from different walks of life were present at the event. (ANI)
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