In 1946, physicist Albert Einstein came into the limelight over his anti-racism remarks. He said, “Racism is a disease of white people.” But only twenty years ago, he was displaying the symptoms of the same disease in his journal writings about India, Sri Lanka and China.
The diary writings reveal how Einstein used to look down upon Indians. He had a weird theory about Indians being less capable. However, he is being proved wrong today by the rise of Indian nationals and people of Indian origin across the world.
Einstein called Indians “biologically inferior”
After Einstein’s diary entries were made public, it came to light that the physicist had described Indians as “biologically inferior”.
Einstein came across Indians in Colombo during his Far East voyage and described them as living a “primitive” life.
Einstein’s ‘climate’ theory
Einstein had even assigned a reason to prove his theory. He had said, “The climate prevents them [Indians] from thinking backward or forward by more than a quarter of an hour.”
Ze’ev Rosenkranz, the editor of the book compiling Einstein’s diary entries, said the physicist attributed the “alleged stoicism of the Indians he encounters to geographical determination [by asking]: ‘Wouldn’t we too, in this climate, become like the Indians?’.”
Proving Einstein’s theory of “biologically inferior” Indians wrong
Now, when Einstein was making his diary entries he seemed to have overlooked many things. He overlooked the fact that ancient Indian physician Sushruta had mastered the art of plastic surgery and cataract surgery thousands of years ago. He also overlooked the fact that Indians knew about the Pythagorean theorem much before the Western world. Ayurveda and dentistry have an even older tradition in India.
India gave the world Yoga. India gave the world the game of chess. India gave the world number 0. While the world was eating raw meat and living in cages, Indians created and were a part of one of the most advanced civilizations.
Yet, we shouldn’t prove Einstein wrong with our historical achievements in medicine and engineering. Or else we will be blamed for using history to save our honour.
We don’t need to go back in time at all. Presently, Indians are making their mark all over the world. Some of the top IT firms including Alphabet, Microsoft, Twitter, Adobe Inc, IBM, Micron Technology and Palo Alto Networks are being currently helmed by Indian-origin CEOs.
And Indians have kept on making some huge inventions. Guglielmo Marconi is credited with the invention of wireless communication. But Jagdish Chandra Bose is regarded as the father of wireless communication.
At a public demonstration in Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bose had sent an electromagnetic wave across 75 feet that penetrated through walls to remotely ring a bell. He had also invented the
Mercury Coherer, a radio wave receiver, was later used by Marconi to build the first two-way radio for communication.
And more recently, India-born inventor Ajay Bhatt had led a team at Intel that built the Universal Serial Bus (USB) technology, a major advancement in the IT industry.
What Indians have achieved is certainly not the work of “biologically inferior” minds.
India: The Vishwaguru:
Holding an iPhone makes you marvel at the technology behind it. We are pretty sure that many of you admire Steve Jobs for that matter. But Apple has a strong Indian connection.
When Steve Jobs went out of ideas and was struggling with life, he turned to India. He travelled to India in mid-1974 to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi ashram, in search of spiritual enlightenment. Rest is history.
Not only Steve Jobs but one of the most famous Hollywood superstars Will Smith resorted to Indian culture and philosophy when things went a little south in his life. In one of his interviews, he fondly said that he was deeply inspired and awestruck by the Bhagwat Gita and how its teachings are helping him to cope with his life.
India gave the world its first residential university, Nalanda. Nalanda university hosted students from across the globe. But alas! some Westerners fail to look at its glorious history.
India has always been a shining beacon for the world and calling Indians biologically weak, is just something out of the question.
The present and past achievements of Indians thus prove Einstein wrong.