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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Fact Check | Naughty noughty history
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Fact Check | Naughty noughty history

Popular history is littered with superlative 'facts' about our greatness. It's about time someone investigated where these 'facts' come from, and why they are so popular?

Indians make the greatest mothers. See accompanying pictorial evidence. Photo: Imaging by Raajan/Mint Premium
Indians make the greatest mothers. See accompanying pictorial evidence. Photo: Imaging by Raajan/Mint

On 10 March 2008, two members of the Rajya Sabha exchanged a few cordial words in the course of a debate on education. Karan Singh is a veteran Congress politician and Daggubati Purandeswari was then the Union minister of state for human resource development. This is the record of their exchange according to the archives of the Rajya Sabha:

“Karan Singh: Sir, before I put my supplementary, I would just make a submission that this is such an important matter that, if possible, in the second half of this Session, you could give us one day when the House could really discuss education in its depth. I am sure the hon. Members from all over the House will be keen for it.

“My specific supplementary is this. Despite all weaknesses of our system, of our products, our IIMs, our IITs, and our medical colleges, have done very well around the world. Nonetheless, the Knowledge Commission has made certain important recommendations. Have those recommendations been brought before the House? Will they be discussed in the House? Or, will the Government come out with a policy statement as to what exactly they are going to do with those very significant recommendations made by the Knowledge Commission?

“Shrimati D. Purandeswari: Sir, as rightly pointed out by the hon. Member, our students have been placed very well globally. For example, 12% of the scientists in the United States are Indians. We have 38% of the doctors in the US who are again Indians. Thirty-six per cent of the Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) scientists are again Indians. So, the students are doing very well, and they are reaching places which again reflects on the quality of education that is being provided to our children in our country."

Within 48 hours, Purandeswari’s statements had come in for widespread ridicule in the media. The Times Of India said, in a story titled “India Rising In US: Govt Falls Victim To Net Hoax", “There is no survey that establishes these numbers, and absent (sic) a government clarification, it appears that the figures come from a shop-worn Internet chain mail that has been in circulation for many years. Spam has finally found its way into the Indian Parliament dressed up as fact."

Yet the shaky legitimacy of these “India is great" claims hasn’t prevented them from proliferating like an information pop-culture Ebola virus. References to this long, ever-growing, ever-changing canon of India’s greatness keep popping up everywhere, from Parliament to Bollywood. An Independence Day or Republic Day holiday isn’t complete unless someone—a friend, a colleague, a retired relative with too much free time—sends you an email, text message or a WhatsApp message titled “60 Reasons You Should Be Proud You Are an Indian".

What is even more impressive, and disturbing, is the very public life of many of these “facts". References to them abound not just on blogs and in bad newspaper stories but also in government reports and books written by entirely respectable people.

The Sceptical Patriot —Exploring the Truths Behind the Zero And Other Indian Glories: Rupa, 208 pages, Rs 250
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The Sceptical Patriot —Exploring the Truths Behind the Zero And Other Indian Glories: Rupa, 208 pages, Rs 250

In the course of this research I also began to ask, and seek answers to, a bunch of other questions: Who first came up with many of these dubious facts and statistics? How did these factoids become so popular? Why do so many people cling on to them and then propagate them so widely without bothering to pause and fact-check? Especially when many of these “facts" can be debunked with a single Google query?

The first of those questions is hard to pin down. There is a frustrating circular nature to the provenance of many of these facts. For instance, did the great scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, and not Guglielmo Marconi, invent the radio? There is an oft-reproduced letter from Bose to Rabindranath Tagore from May 1901 that is cited as evidence that a talented Indian was the real inventor. But as I mention in the book, I have been unable to find an original source for this letter or references to the events mentioned in this letter anywhere. Yet references to this letter abound not just in blogs or books but also in research papers published in scientific journals. All these papers always refer to each other, but never to an original document itself (the letter does not materially alter the story of Bose’s role in radio communication. But it is a bothersome distraction).

In other cases, “facts" are simply prefixed with clauses such as “it is well known" or “as has been widely quoted".

I can, however, postulate an answer for the second of those questions—how did these facts get so popular?

In the case of almost every “India fact" investigated in the book, the Internet has been the greatest catalyst for its propagation. When I trace back the origins of many of these facts, there is an explosion of references that usually coincides with the unrolling of widespread Internet access in India in the early 2000s.

For instance, take that exceedingly popular fact: that Sanskrit is the best language for programming computers (or something like that). In my experience, this “fact" exploded into prominence sometime in the mid-2000s and has continued to bounce around the Web.

Yet it has its basis in a research paper titled Knowledge Representation In Sanskrit And Artificial Intelligence, way back in 1985. It appears to have caused a brief flutter in computing and linguistics circles in India for a few years. There was even a “First National Conference on Knowledge Representation And Inference In Sanskrit" held in Bangalore in December 1986. But then the idea slowly dropped from public attention.

Until, in the late 1990s, it suddenly became sexy again. My theory is that professors or students of Indian origin in the US first wrote about the old artificial intelligence research paper in their blogs or faculty websites. Some may even have given it a little pro-Sanskrit spin.

By the mid-2000s, having flown to India, the “fact" not only became much more popular but had also been repackaged and reattributed. It now said that according to the “European Union" or a “Forbes article" or even “Nasa", Sanskrit was the “best language in the world".

This central role of the Internet as a broadcasting and modifying channel is a common thread that connects most of the facts featured in the book.

Then there is the third set of questions: Why are these facts so popular? Why do people propagate these so blithely and even with so much pride?

View Full Image

But having written this book, I have one fairly simplistic explanation. For many people, Indian history is not an agglomeration of conspiracy theories, but one big conspiracy theory in itself. Therefore, almost anything that bucks the conventional narrative of history—the narrative that is taught in flawed textbooks and often received from the “West"—is automatically held in high regard. Couple this with a certain dissatisfaction with India’s current status in the world and you have the perfect breeding ground for bad history.

A May 2013 article in The New York Times, titled “Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories", citing a study of the character traits of people who believe conspiracies, said: “Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness."

J.C. Bose invented radio before Marconi, you say? And the West has been trying to cover this up for decades? Seems legit. Let me forward this to everybody right away. Jai Hind.

But does the proliferation of such bad history really matter? You might say that a little fake self-esteem is a good thing at home and in Parliament. A little ignorance is admissible in even the highest circles of government. In fact, it is often advisable.

But this unquestioning trust in urban legend, as it were, becomes a problem when your minister of state for human resource development cites the most dubious statistics as justification for India’s educational system. This is when you begin to wonder: How far does this rabbit hole of instant jingoism go? How many policies are made, positions taken and decisions executed in complete ignorance of historical truth?

Also read | Excerpt | The Sceptical Patriot

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Published: 03 May 2014, 12:12 AM IST
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