Chandrayaan-3 Success Triggers 'Mass Indigestion' – And How!

The success of Chandrayaan-3 was a mass bonding moment for Indians everywhere. Students cheered so loudly in their canteens that they brought the ceilings down. Commuters paused at suburban railway platforms to watch the landing, and then burst out in spontaneous cries of ‘Ganpati bappa moriya!’

Rich or poor, young or old, when the Vikram lander touched down safely on the moon, every Indian instinctively realised that, it wasn’t just the world which was becoming our oyster, but space too.

Our innate potential as a civilization, long-suppressed first by a millennium of subjugation, and then by ideology for half a century, had finally found its place in the sun.

And yet, because the world is what it is, this majestic success proved indigestible to some. As a result, they sought to devalue the achievement, and their efforts came in many shades.

One British anchor adopted the patronizing, racially-superior approach, to archly ask why his government continued to give aid to a nation which wasted its resources on vanity missions to the moon instead of eradicating poverty. All he got for his efforts was ‘a whole lotta love’ from Indian social media (the quotes to his post are hilarious).

The anchor was also factually wrong, since Britain stopped giving aid to India years ago, at India’s request. It just continues to be billed as aid, by the British government, but these funds are, in fact, policy tools employed by Britain in India, in the fields of climate, infrastructure, and economic development, with long-term diplomatic and trade objectives in mind.

The point to be noted here, though, is how a foreign media house deliberately played up the India poverty angle to downplay our lunar success.

Reuters, the international news agency, took the wet-blanket approach to a much more egregious level. Only four nations have managed to successfully reach the moon – America, Russia, China, and now, India. And yet, they actually labelled the landing locations of the first three countries by name, and labelled India, the fourth, as ‘Other’.

This was bizarre, to say the least, not to mention downright insulting. Perhaps the staff in the Swarajya office can pass the hat around and send Reuters a large box of antacid tablets. It is the only cure for this sort of indigestion.

At home, the wonderful moment was swiftly politicized by the Lutyens media. This was, in part, a Pavlovian response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public address soon after the Vikram lander touched down safely. 

One senior anchor circumvented this by posting a video clip from 1984, hours before the touchdown. It was the one of Indira Gandhi speaking to Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma in space. The post urged all to not forget those who built up the Indian space programme over many decades.

No one will, but the point to be noted here is the unerring tendency to play up the past to downplay the present.

Elsewhere, a strategic affairs ‘expert’ of Indian origin, working for a major American think tank, wondered why ‘that’ old cartoon by the New York Times was still living ‘rent free’ in Indians’ heads, even on this day of great achievement. This was a reference to an insulting 2014 cartoon which showed a rustic Indian farmer holding an indolent cow by a rope, knocking at the doors of a  plush ‘Space Club’ within which sat corpulent Occidental men in business suits.

The responses, ranging from the witty, which asked her in return why what Indians tweeted was still living rent free in her head, to the profane. But the point to be noted here, is that our heady celebrations were sought to be dampened by Brown Sahibs and Sahibas, who never miss a chance to play the role of apologists for the west.

The communists and the contrarians were on their own trip, though, which celestial body they were orbiting, and what fuelled their propulsion, is anyone’s guess. Mixing high school arguments with Marxist thought and postmodernist binaries, they said that Chandrayaan-3’s success was a win for science and a loss for superstition.

This was an echo of the outrage they expressed when our space scientists visited the Tirumala temple at Tirupati to seek the blessings of the gods prior to our moon shot. As usual, these sorts missed the mark by a light year.

The reason is that they are incapable of comprehending the fact that we design and build such complex systems with the specific intention of reducing uncertainties, so as to increase the chance of success; and, after having done so, leave the fate of its functioning to the gods. That is not superstition, but the courage of conviction born of a realization of the truth; an acceptance, that humans can never control the forces of nature, but merely harness it to the best of their abilities.

Arrogant, godless Marxists will never understand that the greater the mind, the greater the humility; that science is but one thread by which sentient beings reconcile their collective existence with the natural order of things. And in that ignorance lie both their eternal failing, and the reason why Indian society has pushed them to the fringe.

Stepping back, we have to ask, in conclusion, why it is so difficult for some people to be happy for the success of others. Is it envy? Is it jealousy? Or, is the psychology at work here a lot simpler? Are they incapable of being happy for others because they cannot be happy for themselves? There is even a formal medical term for this sort of behaviour – anhedonia. 

We can understand it if those who cribbed were solely foreigners, but the question is difficult to answer when we note that the list includes Indians. While this level of rank churlishness is incurable, perhaps the best we can is accept that it takes all sorts to make this world. Leave them be, and let us look forward to more scintillating Indian space missions, to Venus, back to Mars, to the Sun, and beyond.