HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ (File photo)

MUMBAI: “Nasa believes that Sanskrit is the most scientific language for programming,” said HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ on the country’s past to the graduating batch of IIT-Bombay on Saturday.

He said, “Nasa has said in near future if computers have to speak, then they can only do so on the strength of Sanskrit, else computers will crash because Sanskrit is a scientific language.” Pokhriyal was delivering the 57th convocation address at IIT-B.

Students told TOI that a hoax on NASA’s “Mission Sanskrit” has been viral on the internet for a year now. They said the minister’s address was peppered with “facts” picked off the internet that have no basis in reality. Social media was soon abuzz with reactions to the speech. A student tweeted: “Time to get fact checkers to validate the speech before it hits the floors.” Another post read: “At the IIT-B convocation, HRD minister R P Nishank is dropping some port truth bombs. In the Vedic ages, sadhus discovered space travel. NASA has officially accepted that.”

Pokhriyal also spoke of bringing back glory to academics. “When there was nothing in the world, we had Takshashila, Nalanda and Vikramshila, which were the nodes of knowledge and science.”

