Tag: Manohar Lal Khattar

One scorching May afternoon in 2015, as nearly a hundred men and women employed by an Indian government project dug across villages in search of the mythical river Saraswati, a trickle of water appeared, bubbling out of a paddy field. Pilgrims and tourists thronged from far and wide. “This is groundwater. With the discovery of river Saraswati, the Hindu right wing in India is jubilant because it aligns with its nationalist claims that Hindus are indigenous inhabitants of India and that Hindu civilization is the oldest in the world. The argument is simple: The Vedas were written 10,000 years ago, and they mention the river Saraswati, proving that an advanced civilization existed then. The minister of state for human resource development, Satyapal Singh, proclaimed that since none of our ancient texts mention apes turning into men, Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong, and he cautioned against its being taught in schools. Accumulated over the past 500 years, learning based on experiments and empirical evidence has freed us from the fetters of absolute truth offered by religious texts, whether the Bible, the Quran or the Vedas. Attributing all human progress to religious texts written thousands of years ago is a reversal of the building blocks of the modern world. Their first feature documentary, “The Cinema Travellers,” has won 19 international and national awards. Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists.