Djinns and miraculous murgas: How bigotry scuppered Pakistan's space programme
Like most of Pakistan's failures, the failure of its space programme too can be traced to its biggest malady — a military-theocratic state. Both India and Pakistan began their space programmes in early 60s but Pakistan got well ahead of India when it launched a sounding rocket into space in 1962, becoming the third such country in Asia.
But in a few decades, Pakistan's scientific project was appropriated by the military-theocratic apparatus and its scientists started propounding innovative theories.
A top Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood once found an easy fix for his country's energy crisis. In an interview to the Wall Street Journal, he shared his inventive solution — tame the djinns.
A djinn, similar to an angel, is a type of spirit in Arabic lore. Mahmood's reasoning was, since djinns were made of fire, they could be tamed and put to work to produce electricity.
Another Pakistani nuclear scientist, Samar Mubarak Mand, who was in charge of the country's nuclear tests in 1998, reportedly told an audience once that while organising the nuclear test, he witnessed a miraculous pot that had only five chickens but even after feeding nearly 200 people, it remained full. Salim Mehmud, a rocket scientist who went on to head Pakistan's space agency, had once tried to link space flight to miracles using the Theory of Relativity.
It would be unfair to say that all Pakistani scientists think along those lines, or they always did.
