Did You Know ?

Did You Know ?

*India gave to the world the days of the week and their names. The names prevalent in India like Ravivaar, Somvaar, Mangalvaar, etc. were adopted by the west in the same sequence and were directly translated to other languages like English where you have Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.

*Pandit Onkar Nath, the great musician, appealed to all Gujarati young men as far back as 1949 to join RSS. When RSS workers needed some money to liberate Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Lata Mangeshkar gladly gave a charity performance for them in Pune.

*Gandhi and Nehru objected to the decision of the cabinet and insisted that Somnath Temple should be reconstructed out of public funds, not government funds, while in January 1948 they pressurised Sardar Patel to carry on renovation of the mosques of Delhi at government expense.

*The United States adopted ancient Indian catamaran-making technology to construct fast ships which were used with dramatic effect in the Iraq war. Among the equipment the Americans used to win the Iraq war were 100-feet catamaran ships to ferry tanks and ammunition from Qatar to Kuwait. The ships, built with technology adapted from ancient Tamil methods to make catamarans, can travel over 2,500 kms in less than 48 hours, twice the speed of the regular cargo ships, and carry enough equipment to support about 5,000 soldiers. Having a shallow draft, the boats can unload in rudimentary ports, allowing troops to land closer to the fight.

*Researchers believe Sanskrit and computers are a perfect fit. In 1985, Rick Briggs, a researcher for NASA, published a paper on the potential uses of Sanskrit as a machine language. Natural languages are basically too imprecise for use as machine languages, thus programmers have been forced to create artificial languages. However, Briggs hailed Sanskrit as an exception. "Among the accomplishments of the [Sanskrit] grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence. A natural language can serve as an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a wheel millennia old."

*Christmas is not the celebration of the birth date of Christ. Different researchers place different dates for the birth of Christ but there is virtual agreement among scholars that December 25th is not the birth date of Jesus Christ, but an annual pagan festival celebrated in honor of the sun which was too deeply entrenched in popular custom to be set aside by Christian influence. The pagan festival with it's riot and merrymaking was so popular that Christians were glad of an excuse to continue its celebration with little change in spirit and in manner. During the first three centuries we find no trace of any feast for the birth of Christ.

*An intensive research conducted by Zenab Banu of Gujarat on the cause and effect of communal riots since 18th century (which was a topic of her Ph.D. thesis), wherein she had analyzed and documented major Hindu-Muslim riots spread over 250 years, shows that in over 95 % cases the riots were initiated by Muslims. Her thesis has been published in a book entitled 'Politics of Communalism' (1978).

*There are fifty-seven nations in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Not one is yet a democracy.

*Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, a so-called 'liberal' and 'secular' Muslim, led a campaign against 'Vande Maataram' on the grounds that it was 'anti-Islamic'. He had opposed the partition of India and Jawaharlal Nehru was quick to declare him 'a great nationalist leader', but the Maulana in his book "India Wins Freedom" has discussed the reason for his opposition. He was of the opinion that the creation of a separate Muslim state would divide the Muslim population and India would have fewer number of Muslims, thus dealing a blow to the process of Islamization of India, hence the opposition.

*The last rites of Mahatma Gandhi, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Smt. Indira Gandhi were accompanied by renderings from the Bhagwad Geeta, the Quran and religious books of other religions; but the final rites of Dr. Zakir Hussain, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad had renderings only from the Quran.

*In 1950, the then Maharaja of Indore, Yashwant Rao Holkar, wanted his son Richard, born of his American wife, to succeed him as the ruler of Indore. However, the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (along with Sardar Patel and Rajendra Prasad) objected, making it clear that the son of his foreign wife could not succeed him. Nehru couldn't allow foreign blood even as a powerless Maharaja to inherit a title, let alone power!

*St. Francis Xavier, after whom many educational institutions are named in India, feverishly declared, “When I have finished baptising the people, I order them to destory the huts in which they keep their idols; and I have them break the statues of their idols into tiny pieces, since they are now Christians. I could never come to an end describing to you the great consolation which fills my soul when I see idols being destroyed by the hands of those who had been idolaters,” (from The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier, 1993, pp 117-8).

*In 2002, Karnataka State received Rs.72 crores as revenue from temples, returned Rs.10 crores for temple maintenance, and granted Rs.50 crores for madrasas and Rs.10 crores for churches. (Daily Pioneer, October 7, 2003.)

*After partition, when the Maharaja of Kashmir was harbouring the idea of retaining Kashmir as an independent kingdom, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel had sent Guru Golwalkar of the RSS to convince the Maharaja to join India. After discussions with Guruji, the Maharaja was convinced and agreed to sign the Instrument of Accession to India.

*During the China war in 1962, the Swayamsevaks of the RSS swung into action mobilising support to the governmental measures in general and to the jawans in particular. Pandit Nehru was so impressed that he invited a Sangh contingent to take part in the Republic Day Parade of 26th January 1963. When, later on, some Congressmen raised their eyebrows over the invitation to Sangh, Pandit Nehru brushed aside the objections saying that all patriotic citizens had been invited to join the parade.

*When the Europeans newly arrived in America in 1492, they took the natives to be devils and for about forty years it was legal to hunt down the natives like animals. It was only in 1530 A.D. that the Pope relented and declared that American Indians were human!

*The concept of Reiki originated in India, but it was rediscovered by Dr. Mikao Usui in Japan in the late 19th century. Dr. Usui was a Shingon Buddhist priest and a physician. He read about an ancient healing art in an 1100 year old Buddhist Manuscript and made a brief synthesis of the essence of this seven level Tantric teaching as Reiki.

*In 1895, eight years before the Wright brothers flew their first plane, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade and his wife gave a thrilling demonstration flight on the Chowpatty beach in Mumbai. Mr. Talpade, an erudite Sanskrit scholar, constructed his aeroplane named 'Marutsakha' based on the description of Vimanas available in the Vedas.

*The theory of the Ion Engine has been credited to Robert Goddard, long recognized as the father of Liquid-fuel Rocketry. It is claimed that in 1906, long before Goddard launched his first modern rocket, his imagination had conceived the idea of an Ion rocket. However, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade used an Ion Engine to take his plane to a height of 1500 ft. in 1895, many years before Goddard.

A glass-like material which cannot be detected by radar has been developed by Prof *Dongre, a research scholar of Benaras Hindu University, based on technology found in an ancient Sanskrit text, Vaimanika Shastra. A plane coated with this unique material cannot be detected using radar.

*Only a few years ago, the Chinese discovered some Sanskrit documents in Lhasa, Tibet and sent them to the University of Chandigarh to be translated. Dr. Ruth Reyna of the university said that the documents contain directions for building interstellar spaceships! The Chinese announced that they were including certain parts of the documents for study in their space program.

*When the city of Mohenjodaro was excavated by archaeologists, they found skeletons just lying in the streets, some of them holding hands, as if some great doom had suddenly overtaken them. These skeletons are among the most radioactive ever found, on a par with those found at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ancient cities whose brick and stonewalls have literally been vitrified, that is-fused together, can be found in India, Ireland, Scotland, France, Turkey and other places. There is no logical explanation for the vitrification of stone forts and cities, except from an atomic blast.

*The shrouded Qaabaa at Mecca, the holiest shrine for all Muslims of the world, was once a temple containing 360 different deities which were the object of reverence and worship. Acting upon the orders of Allah, the almighty, Prophet Mohammed waged a jihad or holy war against the worshippers of these deities to gain control over Mecca, after which he destroyed the icons and slaughtered the idolaters.

*Neem, turmeric, jamun and cow's urine, traditionally used for medicinal purposes in India, have been patented in the United States.

*The Puranas speak of the creation and destruction of the universe in cycles of 8.64 billion years, that is quite close to currently accepted value regarding the time of the big bang.

*Indian astronomer, Brahmagupta, estimated in the 7th century that the circumference of the earth was 5000 yojanas. A yojana is around 7.2 kms. Calculating on this basis we see that the estimate of 36,000 kms as the earth's circumference comes quite close to the actual circumference known today.

*Indian astronomer, Aryabhatta was the first to have propounded the theory that the earth was a sphere in the 5th century.

*One of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, Erwin Schrodinger, was directly inspired by Vedanta in his creation of quantum mechanics, a theory at the basis of all our advances in chemistry, biochemistry, electronics, and computers.

*The Purusha Hymn of the Rigveda says that the mind is born of the moon. Recently, by research on volunteers, who stayed in underground caves for months without any watches or other cues about time, it was found that the natural cycle for the mind is 24 hours and 50 minutes. The period of the moon is also 24 hours and 50 minutes.

*The Nalanda University once housed 9 million books. It was the centre of education for scholars from all over Asia. Many Greek, Persian and Chinese students studied here. The university was burnt down by pillaging Muslim invaders who overran India in the 11th century.

*The Arabs borrowed so much from India in the field of mathematics that even the subject of mathematics in Arabic came to known as Hindsa which means 'from India' and a mathematician or engineer in Arabic is called Muhandis which means 'an expert in Mathematics'.

*The Gumbaz that we see on mosques all over the world originated as the interlocking dome in the Stupa of the Buddhist architectural tradition of India.

*Those communities among the Hindus who are called Bhangi, Mehtar, Chookad, Hela, Valmik or Halaal Khor, etc. are actually descendants of brave Kshatriyas, who, inspite of many atrocities by tyrannical Muslim rulers, had refused to accept conversion to Islam. The Muslim tyrants, with a view to humiliate them to such an extent that they would forsake their faith and accept Islam, forced them into the work of carrying the night soil of the begums, keeps, relations, courtiers, etc.

*The Gypsies migrated from India to the west many centuries ago. They speak a language called Romany which has many common words with Indian languages and their religion is a modified form of early Hinduism. They seem to have been the Banjara nomads who are still found in India.

*Christianity reached India sometime in the 5th century when a group of Nestorian Christians landed in Malabar for trading purposes and settled down in India. They are known as Syrian Christians and during 1500 years were never once persecuted by the Hindus. Oddly enough the first persecution these peace-loving Christians had to suffer was at the hands of Roman Catholic missionaries in India, who continuously coerced them to pass under the domination of the Pope.

*The oral tradition of Vedic chanting has been declared an intangible heritage of humanity by UNESCO. In a meeting of jury members on November 7, 2003, at Paris, Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, declared the chanting of Vedas in India an outstanding example of heritage and form of cultural expressions. The proclamation says that in the age of globalization and modernization when cultural diversity is under pressure, the preservation of oral tradition of Vedic chanting, a unique cultural heritage, has great significance.

*When the World Parliament of Religions passed a resolution a few years ago proclaiming that all religions were various pathways to One Ultimate Reality and called for unity and brotherhood of all religions, the Vatican came out with a prompt rejection of the view and emphatically proclaimed that Roman Catholicism was the only true religion and others could not be accepted to be true.

*Swatantryaveer Savarkar was the first Indian political leader to call for Swadeshi, and the first Indian leader who publicly performed a bonfire of foreign clothes (1906). (many years before Gandhiji)

*In a recent report, UNESCO pointed out that out of 128 countries where Jews lived before Israel was created in 1948, only one, India, did not persecute them and allowed them to prosper and practice Judaism in peace.

*In Goa neither the Shariat nor the Hindu Code applies. To this day the common Portuguese Civil Code applies.

*The Andaman and Nicobar islands were the first part of India to become free from the British rule. In 1943 the Indian National Army freed these islands and renamed them as Swaraj and Shaheed islands.

*Sardar Patel, Swantantryaveer Savarkar and Dr.B.R.Ambedkar had asked Nehru to protest against the Chinese invasion of Tibet. They had warned Nehru that China's take over of Tibet would destroy the only buffer state between China and India and would threaten the Indian borders. The 1962 Chinese attack proved their fears to be correct.

*'Hindu Kush' means Hindu slaughter. The Indian name for Hindu Kush mountain range was 'Paariyaatra Parvat'. Until 1000 A.D. the area of Hindu Kush was a full part of Hindu cradle. The name 'Hindu Kush' was given by the muslim conquerors indicating the Hindu genocide that took place in this region.

*Gandhiji's ashes were immersed in all the major rivers of the world like Nile, Volga, Thames, etc. except the Indus in Pakistan. The Pakistan government refused to immerse his ashes in the Indus, saying they didn't want to pollute it with the ashes of a kafir.

*Nathuram Godse's ashes are kept in an urn in his brother Gopal Godse's house. It was his dying wish that his ashes be immersed in the river Indus when India stands undivided again.

*The percentage of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh after partition in 1947 was 17 and 25 respectively. Today their percentage is almost nil in Pakistan and 10.5 in Bangladesh.

*The so called Akbar, The Great - whose rule is said to have been secular and tolerant of the Hindu faith - had a victory tower erected with the heads of the captured and surrendered army of Hemu after the second battle of Panipat. Later, Akbar again slaughtered more than 30,000 unarmed captive Hindu peasants after the fall of Chittod on February 24, 1568.

*Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world and also in North America.

*The original name for 'Lahore' is 'Lavapura' and for Kusoor is 'Kushpura'. These cities were originally founded by Lava and Kush, respectively.

*Chess originated in India. It was known to Indians as Chaturnaga. It was taken to Persia in the sixth century where it came to be known as Chatrang, which according to the Arabic phonetic system became Shatranj.

*The Sanskrit term 'Yogakshema' in the Rigveda meant some kind of insurance, which was practised by the Aryans in India nearly 5000 years ago. Manu, the ancient lawgiver, enjoined that a special charge be made on goods carried from one town to another, to ensure their safe carriage until handed over to the consignee at destination.

According to official figures, 28,825,000 Indians starved to death between 1854 and 1901. The authority's carelessness and lack of foresight accentuated the misery caused by famines.

*The World's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The campus accommodated 10,500 students who came from as far as Babylonia, Greece, Syria, Arabia, and China and offered over sixty different courses in various fields, such as science, mathematics, medicine, politics, warfare, astrology, astronomy, music, religion, and philosophy.

*The Grand Anicut, Kallanai, located on Cauvery River in Tamil Nadu, is the oldest dam in the world that is still in use today. This masonry dam was built in the 2nd century by Chola king Karikalan. It was remodeled and fitted with sluice gates in 1899-1902.

*Christianity always associated bathing with vulgarity, lascivious thoughts and bathing in public baths, rivers and lakes, even during summer months, as sinful. St. Agnes never took a bath. St. Marget never washed herself. Pope Clement III issued an edict forbidding bathing or even wetting once face on Sunday. Since 18th century nuns were asked to take bath with their robes on. In 1736, in Baden, Germany the authorities issued a warning to students against the vulgar, dangerous and shocking practice of bathing.

*Baudhayana gave the 'Pythagoras theorem' centuries before the Greeks in 800 BC.

*Pingala (400 BC) invented the binary number system which is the basic of computer operations.

*Pakistan proudly mentions the great Sanskrit grammarian Panini, who was born at Shalatula near Attock in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan some time between the 7th and the 4th centuries B.C., as its national hero. Many postal stamps sport Panini's pictures.

*The Caspian sea, which in Vedic times was called Kasyapa Mira, has got its name from Rishi Kashyap.

*The art of Navigation was born in the river Sindhu 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word 'Navgatih'. The word navy is also derived from Sanskrit 'Nou'.

*USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of wireless communication was Prof. Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.

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