I think it is much less innocent and far more fraudulent than being merely a honest reaction to a honest (if totally unsupported) perception that the west may have stole their idea.
Rather it is calculated move to serve the interests of people in the Indian society who had customarily felt themselves made secure, or justified some privileged position, by claiming special association with some ancient mystical wisdom, which are fraudulent as any mysticism fundamentally are. When the ancient wisdom proved manifestly impotent next to western inventions, and the methods and the social progress that made these inventions possible, these people would lose their privileged position to others who might rightly seek to sideline these fraudulent mysticism and seek to adopt western progress instead. So this bullshit about ancient achievement is concocted to whitewash the fraudulence of the basis of these people’s social privilege.
This is the same with biblical literalists in the west, the champion of traditional qi and medicine in China, and all sorts of people who uses a fraudulently misrepresented past or tradition to try to steal the thunder from the genuinely knowledge and invention made possible by the rise of true science in the west.
Rather it is calculated move to serve the interests of people in the Indian society who had customarily felt themselves made secure, or justified some privileged position, by claiming special association with some ancient mystical wisdom, which are fraudulent as any mysticism fundamentally are. When the ancient wisdom proved manifestly impotent next to western inventions, and the methods and the social progress that made these inventions possible, these people would lose their privileged position to others who might rightly seek to sideline these fraudulent mysticism and seek to adopt western progress instead. So this bullshit about ancient achievement is concocted to whitewash the fraudulence of the basis of these people’s social privilege.
This is the same with biblical literalists in the west, the champion of traditional qi and medicine in China, and all sorts of people who uses a fraudulently misrepresented past or tradition to try to steal the thunder from the genuinely knowledge and invention made possible by the rise of true science in the west.
