Okay, okay, I know Al has been riddled with cheap shots over this and never claimed to be the inventor of the Internet. However, that apocryphal claim makes more sense than this one, recently made by Biplab Deb, the chief minister of the Indian state of Tripura. He insists that the Internet was invented thousands of years ago by ancient Indians.
And you thought President Trump saying that Andrew Jackson could have prevented the Civil War was bad!
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s
Biplab!
“Narrow minded people find it tough to believe this. They want to belittle their own nation and think highly of other countries. Believe the truth. Don’t get confused and confuse others . . India has been using internet since ages. In Mahabharata, Sanjay was blind but he narrated what was happening in the battlefield to Dhritarashtra anyway. This was due to internet and technology. Satellite also existed during that period . . . Some European countries and the US claim that the modern communication system were their invention, but we had all these technologies in ancient times.”
Just in case you think he was misunderstood. or mistranslated, Minister Deb doubled down, elaborating in a scholarly fashion, almost as if he weren’t certifiably off his rocker and so technologically ignorant that he makes Hillary Clinton look like Steve Jobs, in a more recent interview when asked about his earlier jaw-dropping comments:
Whether Mahabharat, Ramayana or Upanishad, these are the empirical texts of our culture. If a person sitting in a palace can narrate what is happening in a battlefield 50 km away, there must have been some technique. Ordinary eyes do not have the facility to see such things. This was a particular technology, in the name of Sanjaya, which is akin to the Internet of today. Now if some of my friends raise questions on proof, then I would say that the proof lies in the Internet technology of today. Those who cannot understand, and feel that to oppose they must run down Indian culture and civilisation and aggrandise Western culture, they are provoked by my statements.
For example, how did the Wright Brothers think up of aeroplanes? They watched birds fly and conceived of a technology that could make a plane that flew. Thus Sanjaya’s use of a technology that could see events far away proves the superiority of Indian civilisation. Those who do not believe in Rama will question his existence. In the time of Rama, there was the Sarayu river, now too it is there. I am born of my mother, why do I believe that, because my mother told me so.
Jonathan Turley, to whom I am eternally grateful for flagging this wonderful story, concludes that “it raises serious questions over the state of Indian education.” Indeed it does, but the bright side is that it could enhance American education. What a perfect critical thinking test this is! Every high school student in the U.S. should be able to identify at least some of the multiple examples of logical fallacies, circular reasoning, bad analogies, rationalizations and more.
Then there’s this disturbing question: based on the level of technological understanding displayed by the U.S. Senate in their recent grilling of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, how many of them are capable of making similar Techno-Assess of themselves?
By the way: did you know that Jesus invented the jet-ski?
Ethics Alarms 
Apu invented the internet.
Was it a pull-start or a push-start? 😀
You went there! You have no idea how close Apu was to getting into this post!
First thing that came to my mind. That and what a shithole country India truly is. I had Deli Belly so bad it hurt to open my eyes. What an incredibly medieval place it is.
Also smells like equal parts curry, carrion, and human you-know-what.
what a shithole country India truly is.
Kipling didn’t have only men of Hindustan in mind when he wrote the allegorical “The Blind Men and the Elephant.”
Meester Seempson! Kindly do not offer my god a PEANUT! (after Homer jokingly offers a peanut to a statue of the elephant-headed Ganesh)
If he’d been serious, Ganesh would have gladly accepted a peanut. It’s not uncommon for Indian gods to receive offerings of a family’s food (which is to say, they leave it in the temple and the rats come and eat it. Often as their children go hungry.)
Fake News! Jesus invented water skiing – jet skiing came later.
(Actually, I think jet skiing was an innovation introduced by Constantine in the third century)
No, he did the flaming cross long before the KKK thought of it.
Constantine was Scottish?
Indians are EXTREMELY proud (and defensive) of their country. My wife grew up with the slogan, “East or West, India is the best!” They disseminate a lot of tall tales like this.
Sadly, ancient Indians didn’t even invent yoga, let alone the internet.
The first warfare between extraterrestrials happened in India, too.
“Al” is just Arabic for “the”; so Al Gore is jus “the gore.”
-Jut
You are a sad and confused little man…
Welcome to the club!
Now you know how foreigners view the US.
Jack, not strictly-speaking ethics related, and gods know the man’s not perfect. Even so, George H Bush caught con-crud at Barbra’s funeral. He’s in intensive care. Maybe you’d consent to add a note to the warm-up in case people want to offer their prayers or send well-wishes via his official spokesperson’s twitter? https://twitter.com/jgm41
Thoughts and prayers are not enough, of course.
He already has doctors and IV fluids and antibiotics but hey, maybe by being shitty to me you’ll magically cause him to get better.
Please do not, as suggested, try to introduce this into schools. If you do, they will immediately begin teaching that the internet was invented by early Muslims (because everything that we did get from Indian culture is currently attributed to Islam). Our teachers hate the US so much that they want to dissociate the United States from everything we have done, so they will gladly play along.
So if they really WERE using the Internet, then I presume that you can tell us what Sanjay’s IP address was, right? No? Okay, then shut up.
As for Wilbur and Orville, pay attention, you morons:
The Wright brothers invented a means of artificial flight that is NOT AT ALL the same as the way birds do it. “Fixed-wings” versus “flapping wings” is the fundamental difference.
Ugh.
–Dwayne