Subhash Kak Quotes (1947-)

“The Kashmir Files became a sensation as people realized that the terrible events of Kashmir from the 1990s have been hidden from the general public... The Kashmir Files exposes layers of deceit within the ecosystem of Bharatiya media, academic, and power establishments. An artistic creation becomes extraordinary if it takes the viewer from the immediate story to the dhvani of the universal. The movie is a story not just of Kashmir, but of our times, where deceit and hypocrisy lie just one layer below professions of justice and equality.”

“Like other social media platforms, Wikipedia has evolved into an echo chamber where the user is presented with only one type of content instead of being shown a balanced narrative. This disinformation is powerful since the articles are written in an academic style and users do not see other sources that disagree with the article.... Some editors of Wikipedia are failed academics with demonic energy who wish to conquer anonymously what they were unable to do in their normal careers. And spending much of their working life editing Wikipedia articles and by the use of multiple anonymous handles they have obtained administrative status which entitles them to block opposing views. The anonymous persona of the editors and the low stakes have made Wikipedia politics much more vicious than real politics.”

“The number 108 is actually the average distance that the sun is in terms of its own diameter from the earth; likewise, it is also the average distance that the moon is in terms of its own diameter from the earth. It is owing to this marvelous coincidence that the angular size of the sun and the moon, viewed from the earth, is more or less identical. It is easy to compute this number. The angular measurement of the sun can be obtained quite easily during an eclipse. The angular measurement of the moon can be made on any clear full moon night. An easy check on this measurement would be to make a person hold a pole at a distance that is exactly 108 times its length and confirm that the angular measurement is the same. Nevertheless, the computation of this number would require careful observations. Note that 108 is an average and due to the ellipticity of the orbits of the earth and the moon the distances vary about 2 to 3 percent with the seasons. It is likely, there- fore, that observations did not lead to the precise number 108, but it was chosen as the true value of the distance since it is equal to 27 x 4, because of the mapping of the sky into 27 naksatras. The diameter of the sun is roughly 108 times the diameter of the earth, but it is unlikely that the Indians knew this fact.”