Navagraha and the heliocentric theory

Most Hindu temples have a corner for the "vigrahas" representing nine heavenly “bodies”. Not only planets; they include Sun, Moon, Rahu and Ketu. The whole assembly is a model of the solar system as perceived by the builders of temples. The Sun is in the center, facing east. The others are facing different directions. This suggests that people who adopted this style of worship had accepted that the Sun was the central body. It also suggests that they recognized that each planet revolved around its own axis independently. Wikipedia offers an article on Navagraha Temples. 

Credit is given to Aristarchus of Samos for proposing a model of the solar system with planets going round the Sun, in the 3rd Century B. C.  The world seems to have largely ignored his model over many centuries. It was left to Nicolaus Copernicus to propose this model again in the 16^th century and trigger off a revolution in scientific thought. The invention of the telescope and its use by Galileo in the 17^th century to report the sighting of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus settled the issue and made the Heliocentricism an accepted scientific theory.

The scientific world has not accepted any argument that Hindu astronomers had adopted the Heliocentric Theory before Copernicus. Can archeologists prove scientifically that the Navagraha corners as described above were built as parts of Indian temples earlier than the 16^th century? This would have great significance and give a lot of credit to Hindu Astronomy.

Why all this fuss about Heliocentrism? It is because Heliocentrism did a lot to upset the traditional belief that religious texts were reliable sources of information about the nature of the universe. It promoted the scientific view that “sacred literature” is no substitute for scientific findings. It was a victory for believers in reason. The extraordinary precision with which heliocentric models could predict the movement of planets and the occurrence of eclipses using simple laws of motion and gravity earned a lot of respect for the scientific method.

We have to recognize that no such revolution took place in India, irrespective of the time of adoption of the heliocentric theory there.  Belief in astrology continues to have an influence over large numbers of people. Visit Prof Shivaji Sondhi’s article at https://www.princeton.edu/~sondhi/nonphysics/writings/astrology.pdf  for a discussion on the thoughts of a former education minister of India and his efforts to provide funding for university courses in astrology. Mixing dubious beliefs with ancient knowledge that stands up to scientific investigation ruins our credibility. The baby gets thrown out with the bath water! Rejecting beliefs that fail repeated attempts at verification is as important as accepting verified knowledge.

A search indicates that at least one university in India advertises degree level courses in astrology. Visit

http://sastra.edu/distanceeducation/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100&Itemid=256  Their website says “Astrology, the study of the stars and their influence upon human life on earth, has been in vogue since Vedic times”. 

Yes, this institution is in the University Grants Commission’s list named “Total No. of Universities in the Country as on 14.12.2015” as item 549.

TRAI is against discriminatory tariffs

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has taken a stand against discriminatory pricing for Internet services. This is a step forward towards net neutrality. Visit 

http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Regulation_Data_Service.pdf

The Internet was born with much opposition from vested interests. There was a protocol war with the Internet protocols on one side and protocols favored by the telecom monopolies of the world at that time. A lot of effort was expended to try and save the monopolies from competition from new technology-oriented companies. The victory of a set of ideas promoting competition and innovation has brought rich dividends to the large global community of Internet users.

Many arguments had been used against net neutrality in India. One of them was that if you can have first and second class on trains, why can’t you have differential pricing for Internet services? Why can’t we give better services to those who pay us more? I would like to ask a question in this context: Can a taxi service tell me that they will take me free to one hotel but will charge me 50% more than usual fare to take me to other hotels? May be the first hotel is willing to pay you more; but you are a licensed service regulated in the public interest.

The existence of discrimination in one sector is no argument for introducing discrimination in other sectors. For instance, one cannot argue that even temples discriminate against women; therefore, telecom service providers should be free to charge women more for Internet services!

I have written earlier against the most severe form of discriminatory pricing that frightens away many potential users of the Internet. This is the business of charging a novice user several times the rate that is charged to those who pay a sizable monthly fee for a package. I am not talking about 50% or 100% higher cost for small users, but large multiples that are effectively punitive charges. It looks as the service providers are saying “How dare you small fry tread on the toes of mighty companies like ours and our big users?” Visit

The internet and education in the developing world - hopes and reality

In the article mentioned above, I have also discussed the foolishness of ignoring all other factors and expecting technology alone to solve major problems. For instance, 55% of the websites on the Internet show English as the language of their content. Indian Languages, including Hindi and Tamil, are among languages accounting for less than 0.1% of the websites each, but the bulk of the people in this country prefer to read information in their own languages, not in English. Newspaper statistics show this clearly. Challenges like this have to be understood and addressed if Internet usage in India is to become widespread among all sections of society.