Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar Tuesday said that Columbus discovered America is a falsehood being taught in India.
Parmar claimed that an Indian sailor had gone to America in the 8 th century and built several temples in San Diego, adding that all these are documented and preserved in libraries.
The minister made the statement while attending a convocation ceremony of Barkatullah University, alongside Governor Mangubhai C Patel and Chief Minister Mohan Yadav.
Parmar alleged that historians ‘systematically undermined India’s strengths’, adding that false facts gave India a negative image in the world.
Urging Indians to be free from inferiority complexes, he said that our ‘ancestors were advanced in every aspect of knowledge, skill, and capability.’
Expanding further, he said teaching Columbus’ discovery of America was irrelevant to Indian students.
He called for teaching about the atrocities committed by those followed Columbus, their destruction of the indigenous societies who were ‘nature worshippers and sun worshippers, and how they were massacred and converted.’
Parmar said that an Indian sailor “went to America in the 8th Century and built several temples in San Diego, which are still documented in a museum there and preserved in libraries”.
Parmar claimed that Indians helped develop the Maya civilization by integrating Indian thinking and philosophy in it, and he said ‘our ancestors discovered America, not Columbus’.
The minister said that historians wrongly taught students that Vasco da Gama had discovered sea route to India.
He said that Gama followed Indian trader Chandan to find the sea route to India and he further claimed Gama had written that Indian trader’s ship was two to four times bigger than that of his ship.
The minister said that Copernicus’s theory of the Sun as stationary, and Galileo’s all planets including Earth revolve around the sun were already stated in ancient Indian texts.
Most important of all, he said that those who wrote the Rigveda said Earth revolved around the sun.
Also, he said that the city of Beijing was designed with the help of an Indian architect named Bal Bahu who made statues of Lord Ram and Buddha.