The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Minister Inder Singh Parmar said on Tuesday (September 10) that instead of Christopher Columbus, it was an Indian sailor who had discovered the United States of America.
Some of the other claims made by the minister at a convocation ceremony on September 10 included that Bal Bahu, an Indian architect had helped design the city of Beijing in China and the Rigveda was the first to predict that the earth revolved around the sun, reported The Indian Express.
Parmar made the statements while attending the convocation ceremony of Barkatullah University. When he was making the statements, Madhya Pradesh Governor Mangubhai C. Patel and Chief Minister Mohan Yadav were also present.
The Higher Education Minister said that back in the 8th century, an Indian sailor had gone to America and built several temples in San Diego, which are still documented in museums and libraries.
“When we went there, we helped develop their culture, the Maya civilization, by integrating with it, which is India’s way of thinking and philosophy that should have been taught to students… If something needed to be taught, it should have been correctly taught – that our ancestors discovered America, not Columbus,” Parmar said, reported The Indian Express.
Parmar went on to add that Vasco Da Gama had followed Chandan, an Indian trader but historians wrongly teach students that the sea route to India was discovered by Vasco Da Gama.
“Past archaeological excavations in Gujarat’s Rann of Kutch have unearthed the remains of two big stadiums which were 5500 years old. This means that our ancestors knew in detail about sports and built big stadiums thousands of years before the modern Olympic Games started,” said Parmar, reported The New Indian Express.