Sunday, March 30, 2003		Books

Punjabi literature
Unfolding strange scientific ‘truths’
Jaspal Singh

PUNJABI lovers and writers have been agitating for a long time against the language policy of the Punjab government. They feel that it is not sincerely implementing the ‘Language Act’ hence this language is not getting its due patronage from the state which, according to them, is absolutely necessary for the development of a language. What they forget is that as a literary language Punjabi is fully developed to express all kinds of delicate feelings. Different genres of literature like fiction, poetry and drama are doing pretty well in this language. Of course, a lot of muck is also appearing in print for which the writers themselves are responsible. No language can ever develop into a language of intellection if its writers fail it. Official patronage and the notings in the government files are not the hallmarks of the development of a language. Incidentally, most of the files in the Punjab government are dealt in Punjabi. Despite this, Punjabi has yet to become the language of intellect. The writers and intellectuals are solely responsible for this plight of the language. Once a top university don advised a prolific Punjabi writer to stop writing and to start reading. The great literary languages of the world like French, Russian, Spanish, English, German, Japanese, etc., were nurtured by their writers and intellectuals not by their governments and babus. Nevertheless, there are some Punjabi writers who are using this language not for composing verses or spinning stories but for writing about complex scientific matters, including astronomy and cosmology.

Kuldeep Singh Dheer from Punjabi University, Patiala, has written about Sikhism besides doing some literary criticism. But he has made a mark as a writer of scientific books doing nearly a score of them from computers to ‘black holes.’ Five of his books—Navian Dhartian Naven Akash, Taria ve Teri Lo, Dharat Amber dian Baatan, Aadim Manukh ton Stephen Hawking tak and Eh Vichitar Brahmand (Lokgeet Parkashan, Chandigarh)—specifically deal with cosmological studies being done in the advanced centres of learning the world over.

Dheer begins his tale about the present concept of the universe from prehistorical days when man was trying to understand the cosmological mysteries through mythological conceptualisations. Astronomy and astrology had not yet bifurcated. Many ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian philosophers believed in a geocentric universe which was later presented as a system by Ptolemy, a second-century Egyptian astronomer and mathematician. For centuries, the Ptolemaic system was considered sacrosanct and eternal. In fact Copernicus, a Polish scientist, was the first to give the heliocentric concept of the universe in the first half of the16th century, though later in 1600 A.D. Bruno was tried and burnt alive by the Catholic Inquisition for holding such views. Later on Kaplar, Newton and Galileo refined the heliocentric theory that treated the Sun as the centre of the planetary system.

The modern concept of an expanding universe is the product of the 20th century only when the ‘big bang’ theory appeared which post-related that the entire universe lay dormant in a tiny ‘cosmic egg’ in the most condensed form of matter before exploding into millions of ‘smithereens’ in the form of stars and galaxies. According to the scientists, this explosion took place some fifteen thousand million years ago. Within seconds, millions of cosmic bodies were born and thrown into the infinite space in all directions. Even today they are ‘going out’ at an infinite speed. If the quality of matter is less, the cosmos may stop expanding further and the ‘dark matter’ in the centre may gravitate the cosmos thus bringing the galaxies in collision against each other, releasing huge amount of energy which may lead to another explosion called the ‘big crunch’ that may eventually give another outward push to the millions of cosmic bodies. So the cosmologists hold that there is a cycle of ‘bang-crunch’ series.

Dheer in these books presents strange scientific ‘truths’ about the origin, age, expansion and dissolution of the cosmos on the basis of different cosmic theories and the recent experiments conducted in the field of cosmology at different advanced centres in the world. Brief biographical sketches of some scientists who have contributed to the formation of the modern concept of the universe from ancient times to Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time fame) have been given in these series. The scientific inconsistencies in astrological calculations are also highlighted without prejudice to astrology as a profession. These books are a welcome addition to the scarce scientific literature in lucid Punjabi. A language blossoms only when it becomes a vehicle not only of vibrant creative literature but also of advanced intricate ideas. Herein lies the contribution of scholars like Kuldeep Singh Dheer.