'False facts, a negative image of India was presented to the world,' Parmar said at the event where Governor Mangubhai C Patel and Chief Minister Mohan Yadav were also present.
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Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar has claimed that an Indian sailor had discovered the US, those who wrote the Rigveda were the first ones to predict that the Earth revolves around the sun, and an Indian architect who used to make statues of Ram had designed Beijing.
Speaking at the convocation ceremony of Barkatullah University, the Higher Education Minister blamed historians of systematically undermining India's strength.
In his address, the minister said, "Columbus discovered America...Indian students had nothing to do with this. If they had to be taught, they should have also been taught how people in the post-Columbus period tortured the natives and destroyed the tribal society there, because the society was worshipper of nature, worshipper of the Sun."
"(It should have been taught) how they were killed, how they were converted. But unfortunately, the correct facts were not taught," he said.
On the contrary, Indian students are taught that Columbus discovered America, Parmar said.
"I want to say that if someone had to write, they should have written that India's great hero Vasuloon went there in the eighth century and built many temples in Santiago in America. These facts are still written in a museum there. These facts are still kept in a library there," he said.
Parmar said the students should have been taught correctly that it was "our ancestors in India" who discovered America and not Christopher Columbus.
“False facts, a negative image of India was presented to the world," Parmar said at the event where Governor Mangubhai C Patel and Chief Minister Mohan Yadav were also present, as per a report in The Indian Express.
A “falsehood that was unnecessarily taught in India was that Columbus discovered America”, he said adding that an Indian sailor went to the US in the 8th century and built many temples in San Diego, all of which is documented in a museum there.
“When we went there, we helped develop their culture, the Maya civilization, by integrating with it, which is India’s way of thinking and philosophy that should have been taught to students… If something needed to be taught, it should have been correctly taught – that our ancestors discovered America, not Columbus,” the publication quoted Parmar as saying.
He went on to say that Vasco da Gama expressed the wish to see Bharat to Chandan, a Gujarati trader, at the Zanzibar port of Africa through an interpreter, the minister said.
Chandan told Vasco da Gama to follow his ship and thus the Portuguese explorer reached India, he said.
Vasco da Gama himself wrote that Indian trader Chandan's ship was much bigger than his, but students were taught wrong history that the Portuguese explorer discovered India, Parmar said.
Claiming that the writers of Rigveda were the first ones to ascertain that the Sun was stationary, he said: “Thousands of years ago, those who wrote the Rigveda had already mentioned that the moon revolves around its parent planet, earth, and earth revolves around its parent, the sun. This means our ancestors had already considered the sun as fixed, with earth, the moon, and all other planets revolving around it."
Crediting the architecture of Beijing to one Bal Bahu, the minister said that his statue is erected in the foreign country till date as the government recognises his contributions.
Shedding light on the topic of Olympics, he elaborated on India's history with stadiums.
“While the Olympics have been around for 2,800 years, developing the concept of stadiums and collective games, our country has evidence of stadiums that are even older. In the excavations at the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, stadiums were found that date back… well before 2,800 or even 3,000 years ago. This shows that our ancestors were already familiar with sports and could build stadiums, proving that they were advanced in many areas," the IE report quoted him.
(With PTI inputs)