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HomeReportIt’s actually the Drone-Acharya Award: Wikipedia page links modern tech to Mahabharata

It’s actually the Drone-Acharya Award: Wikipedia page links modern tech to Mahabharata

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Page on Dronacharya Award given out to sports coaches says ‘award is named after modern day drone technology’, which ‘existed during the Mahabharata era’.

New Delhi: After Tripura chief minister Biplab Deb’s insistence that the internet existed during the age of the Mahabharata, now a page on Wikipedia is crediting modern drone technology to the same era.

The Wikipedia page for the Dronacharya Award, the national sports award for excellence in coaching, has been edited to reflect this ‘fact’.

The page for the award reads: “The award is named after modern day Drone technology, which existed during the times of, epic Mahabharata of ancient India. Warriors during those times were masters of drone technology based advanced military warfare.” (sic)

The page not only tries to justify the presence of the technology during mythological times, but also seems to have an insight into how it functioned. “The inventor of Drone Technology was appointed as the royal preceptor to the Kaurava and the Pandava princes for their training in drone based military arts and astras (Divine weapons),” it says.

Dronacharya Award
Screenshot of Dronacharya Award Wikipedia page

It is not known if the changes were made out of ignorance or by miscreants, but the changes are credited to Sportslogon.com, an Indian sports news portal. When reached on the contact number provided, the spokesperson asked ThePrint to forward questions via email. A response is awaited.

In the Mahabharata, Dronacharya was the Kauravas and Pandavas’ guru, who also taught them the art of warfare. The Haryana government recently renamed Gurgaon to Gurugram, since Guru Dronacharya’s gurukul is said to have been located in the area.

The Dronacharya Award is given out by the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports each year. Awardees get a prize money of Rs 5 lakh, a statuette and a citation.

This is the latest in a long line of attempts to link ancient Indian myths with modern technology and dismiss scientific theories. Junior HRD minister Satyapal Singh dismissed Darwin’s theory of evolution, while many attribute the invention of airplanes to the Pushpak Vimana myth from the Ramayana.

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