Hindu monkey-god was first astronaut, claim Indian politician
Hindutva leaders reshape education by selling myths as science, turning classrooms into arenas for propaganda not evidence
NEW DELHI, India (MNTV) — When India marked National Space Day on 23rd August, former union minister and BJP leader Anurag Thakur asked a classroom of students a simple question: “Who was the first space traveler?” The children’s answers were inaudible. Smiling, Thakur gave his own: “I think it was Lord Hanuman.” He later posted the exchange on social media with the caption, “Pawansut Hanuman Ji… the first astronaut.”
Hanuman — the monkey-god from the Hindu epic Ramayana, famed for leaping across oceans to rescue allies — is a figure of religious devotion, not science. Yet Thakur urged students to “think beyond textbooks” and treat mythology as a source of knowledge. For critics, that moment in a classroom was more than cultural pride. It was another example of ruling party leaders turning myths into “scientific history.”
A decade of pseudoscientific claims
Thakur’s comment fits into a broader pattern. Over the past ten years, senior figures from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and affiliated Hindutva groups have repeatedly advanced claims that repackage mythology as science. These remarks often surface in schools, universities, or medical gatherings — settings where students and young professionals are the audience.
Just days after Thakur spoke, BJP minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told a science institute in Bhopal that India had flying machines long before the Wright brothers, citing the Pushpak Vimana — a mythical flying chariot described in Hindu epics — as proof that drones and missiles “already existed thousands of years ago.”
The approach goes back years. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told doctors in Mumbai that Karna from the Mahabharata, who was born outside his mother’s womb, was evidence of ancient knowledge of reproductive genetics. He added that Ganesha, the elephant-headed deity, implied that early Indians had mastered plastic surgery. The symbolism of these deities was reimagined as medical evidence.
That same year, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, who later became education minister, told parliament that a sage had conducted a “nuclear test millions of years ago.”
Tripura’s then chief minister Biplab Deb followed in 2018, insisting the internet and satellite technology existed in the age of the Mahabharata because Sanjay — a character gifted with divine sight — narrated the battle in real time to the blind king Dhritarashtra. In the epic, it was a literary device. In political speech, it was presented as telecommunications.
From cows to cancer cures
The list of claims extends far beyond aviation and nuclear physics. In 2016, Shripad Naik, then minister of state for health, declared that yoga could cure cancer, promising scientific evidence.
BJP MP Pragya Thakur later claimed that drinking cow urine cured her own cancer. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Dilip Ghosh, then BJP’s state president in West Bengal, urged people to consume cow urine to boost immunity, mocking skeptics as “donkeys.”
Cow-related pseudoscience has repeatedly entered official discourse. Rajasthan education minister Vasudev Devnani claimed in 2017 that cows “inhale and exhale oxygen” and that standing near them could heal ailments.
Three years later, Vallabhbhai Kathiria, then chairman of the Rashtriya Kamdhenu Aayog, a government body dedicated to cow protection, unveiled cow-dung “chips” marketed as anti-radiation shields for mobile phones, insisting the effect was “scientifically proven.”
Even fatal diseases were reframed in spiritual terms. Assam’s chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, speaking in 2017 while health minister, claimed that cancer was “divine justice” for sins committed in past lives — a karmic explanation presented as medical science. Though he later apologized, he reiterated his belief in karma as causation.
Normalizing pseudoscience as ideology
Taken together, these statements reveal more than eccentric beliefs. They expose a systematic effort by the BJP and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), to inject Hindu mythology into the space of science. What should be taught as cultural or religious stories are instead repackaged as historical fact, presented to children in classrooms and professionals in universities.
This is not harmless pride. It is part of a Hindutva project to rewrite knowledge itself — to replace inquiry and evidence with mythology recast as “proof” of India’s eternal superiority. When Anurag Thakur tells students that Hanuman was the first astronaut, or when Shivraj Singh Chouhan invokes a flying chariot as early aerospace technology, the purpose is to blur the boundary between devotion and discovery.
Targeting the young
The choice of audience is deliberate. These claims are often made before children, students, or medical professionals — spaces where the authority of ministers and senior leaders carries weight. By feeding myths as science to the young, the ruling party attempts to normalize pseudoscience as common sense, ensuring that the next generation inherits a worldview where experiments and peer review are secondary to scripture and political ideology.
The result is the corrosion of scientific culture. Instead of celebrating India’s genuine achievements — from a lunar landing in 2023 to a pioneering pharmaceutical industry — Hindutva leaders push children to believe nuclear physics was mastered “millions of years ago,” or that cow dung blocks radiation. This is not only false, it is dangerous: it replaces education with indoctrination.
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