Dr. Satya Pal Singh, just a fortnight into his induction as junior HRD minister, had a taste of Left-Liberal Cabal’s viciousness when he was lampooned for remarking that it was an Indian, and not Wright Brothers, who invented plane in 1895, a good eight years before.
The usual suspects—NDTV, The Wire and Lutyens’ Media—laid into the upright and erudite minister through hacks breeding in their cesspool. Spiteful headlines and ornery punchlines were stuffed in cadaver of philosophy. Little thought was given to an officer and a gentleman—whose long-stint as a police officer is the stuff of a legend. Nor the Minister’s academic background—an M.Phil in Chemistry—deserved a second thought from these stone-pelters.
The Wire in particular, a prototype of Scroll, Huffington Post, Quint etc with anything but good of India in their mind—laid into Dr. Satya Pal Singh with a gusto. It’s a painfully long read, sermonizing, forensically examining the credentials of the Indian in question, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade. The writer finds it a near heresy that Wright Brothers are not seen as ones who invented aeroplane. He chillingly asks us to be ready for a “long spell of darkness” in today’s India.
So, let me break his heart. The claims of Wright Brothers are being written out of history now. There is now a clinching evidence that it was a German, Gustave Whitehead, who flew a “condor” plane in August 1901, a good two years before the Wright Brothers did it. Take the word of the “Bible” of aviation history, Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, for it.
Still unconvinced? Be forewarned that lawmakers of Connecticut–a US state with no connection to RSS, if you may-have moved a Bill to get Whitehead his rightful due.
Want more heat? Whitehead’s story has popped up every few decades in the last 100 years. No less that 17 eye-witnesses and newspaper reports backed Whitehead’s credentials. Fourteen of these accounts have been notarized. Aviation historians say there are compelling reasons to throw out Wright Brothers’ claims.
Jane’s Journal assiduously researched the claim of aviation expert John Brown and declared: “(Whitehead’s flight), it must be stressed, was more than two years before the Wright Brothers manhandled their flyer from its shed and flew a couple of hundred feet in a straight line…(thus) an injustice is rectified…”
Google would show you that some consider the stuff of Wright Brothers the biggest fraud in history. Reports abound that Wright Brothers didn’t as much do their flight as “catapulted” it –by going doing the hill off an inclining. Folks, there is a difference between a hop and a real flight.
Now steel up for this gut in the blow, you hacks. Wrights signed a contract to give the Smithsonian Museum the brothers’ plane with the clause that the museum would never declare another aircraft was the first to achieved powered flight! (check this link)
Aviation historian Tom Crouch says that the Wrights “stuck one clause into the contract that said if the Smithsonian ever says anybody flew before the Wright brothers, we have the right to take the airplane back”.
“That clause is in fact still in the contract.”
The claims of Wright Brothers’ being thus grounded, let’s turn our attention to Talpade, the poor chap, who has been dragged to cleaners by these unscrupulous jackals. The Wire goes to obscene lengths to deny Talpade the credit but still had to concede it was a “disputed—(and not false)—claim.” In their unscrupulous rush, they concealed facts such as:
(a) There is a Wikipedia page on Talpade and his achievement which precedes Dr. Satya Pal’s assertion by years;
(b) There are numerous newspaper reports, including Times of India, in the last two decades on Talpade’s feat;
(c) That just two years ago, a biopic Hawaizada, starring Ayushmann Khurrana, on Talpade’s aviation feat had an all-India release.
The Wire, quite stupidly, claims that Talpade’s was a primitive flight which didn’t go beyond 1500 metres in the air. Who are we to tell the online rag that Whitehead’s claim today is being acknowledged for only being 50 metres above the ground! And that Wrights’ first didn’t go beyond 115 metres and that too through an incline.
There is such a rush to “hunt down” any facts which supports India and its glorious past these days. It was the imperial policy of British Raj which was duly bequeathed to Indians educated in Western mores. Call them brainwashed or paid agents, whatever, but surely compromised nevertheless. In double quick time they jump to discredit our heritage, lest it becomes widespread and Indian masses wake up to their ancient glory. A Rahul Gandhi can make a stupid claim of “All-NRIs” on foreign soil but you won’t find presstitutes go for his throat.
This academic mafia intends to make Hindutava advocates duck for cover and retreat into their shells. The narrative, in their view, must not be allowed to gain a traction. Have you read any follow-up on India having discovered “zero” at least 500 years before the accepted date as was recently found by the world? Or that India “invented” the Decimal System? Or our atom theory which the modern world acknowledges as quantum physics? Or India’s spectacular science of astronomy, never mind its astonishing advancements in steel-manufacturing?
It was famous historian Will Durant who had said: “India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all”.
So, it’s time to stand up and applaud the Minister. Flush out all the facts on Talpade and give India’s forgotten hero his due. Present his credentials to Jane’s Journal or similar authorities. And a simple message to academic charlatans:
Shut Up.
