Kanad Rishi Ne Nuclear Test Kiya Tha?
Ramesh Pokhriyal “Nishank”, then BJP Member of Parliament (later Union Education Minister) · 2014-12
During a Lok Sabha debate on a bill concerning the School of Planning and Architecture.
Exhibit A · The claim
“All other sciences dwarf in front of astrology... astrology is the topmost science in the world.” On the same occasion: “Today we are talking about nuclear tests. Lakhs of years ago, Sage Kanad had conducted a nuclear test.”
Exhibit B · What the record says
Nuclear fission was first achieved in a laboratory in 1938, and the first nuclear test took place in 1945. Anatomically modern humans have existed for roughly 300,000 years, and there is no archaeological or historical evidence of nuclear technology at any point in that span, let alone “lakhs” (hundreds of thousands) of years ago. Sage Kanad is a real, credited figure in the history of Indian philosophy, an early proponent of atomism as a philosophical concept, which is a genuine and notable contribution, but distinct from nuclear physics. Astrology has not been validated by controlled scientific studies as having predictive power beyond chance, and is not part of the peer-reviewed physical sciences.
Kanad's philosophical atom and the physicists' atom share a name. Splitting one of them is considerably harder than the other.
The JUMLE