Dr Satyapal Singh wants Darwin's apes-to-human theory be removed from text books

Dr Satyapal Singh

Union minister of state human resource development (HRD) and former Mumbai police commissioner, Dr Satyapal Singh, has kicked up a controversy yet again, this time by challenging Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution. He feels Darwin was completely wrong in saying that humans descended from monkeys or apes.

Dr Singh suggested that reference to Darwin's apes-to-human theory be removed from text books. This statement bears great significance because the former Indian Police Service officer is part of the ministry that regulates academics across the country. Dr Singh was speaking as chief guest at Akhil Bharatiya Vedic Sammelan at Aurangabad in central Maharashtra on Friday. He credited humans' language skills to God's vedvaani. "Humans learned the vedvaani first. They learned the language through the knowledge Gods imparted. This is the ultimate truth," he said, adding that it's only the Hindi language that can unite the country.

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The speech was widely reported in local media and a video of the same has also been uploaded on YouTube. According to Dr Singh, the ape-to-human evolution theory was dismissed by some Indian scientists 35 years ago, and, it was asked that textbooks be corrected accordingly.

"The human race existed on the earth from the beginning and they will continue to remain the human race.," he said. "The stories our grandparents told us never had any reference to the apes-to-human theory. Has anyone seen apes getting converted into humans, but we continue to teach Darwin in schools and colleges," Dr Singh added. He also said that some scientists established the theory that the human race learnt to communicate by listening to birds and animals. "I say that the children of these scientists should be sent to jungles, and let's see what language they learn there with the help of birds and animals."