Fact checking Chakravarti Sulibele
I happened to listen to a talk from Chakravarti Sulibele that he provided recently. The recording of his approximately 50 minutes speech is available here.
Unfortunately he goes on to make several false claims and several simplistic, but wrong and unhelpful, narratives throught the talk. Here are some of them.
False Claim 1: Hindu religion is getting stronger, and other religions are getting weaker.
I’m not sure what Chakravarti Sulibele considers as an index of strength, but the below chart from this 2015 report from Pew indicates that Islam will have the largest number of people switching into the religion than any other religion in the world, and the number of people coverting into Islam will be 30 times more than the number of people converting into Hinduism.
False Claim 2: Satellite imagery has proven the existence of confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati rivers at Prayagraj
Satellite imagery has shown the presence of a river that flows roughly along the course of the current river Ghaggar, and further into Rann of Kutch. But this river — as can be seen in this ISRO report (page 9) — does not go anywhere near Prayagraj where it is believed that the rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Sarswati converge.
This is either a case of stupidity (restricting the reading to headlines), or malice (trying to hoodwink people with false information).
False Claim 3: The word Dravida was coined by Bishop Caldwell.
Irony probably died the moment Chakravarti Sulibele said this, because just the previous day many of those in the audience had sang the Soundrya Lahari from the same dais, the poem in which Shankaracharya calls himself “draviḍaśiśu”.
False Claim 4: India is world’s third largest exporter of wheat, and hence has a strong lever in global politics
The below data from OEC tells the story.
As this chart shows, tiny countries like Estonia export more wheat than India. Such false claims lull us into a sense of complacency when the fact is India has one of the lowest productivity in agriculture. We need to do a lot more for agricultural reforms.
As for India’s lever in global politics, Chakravarti Sulibele conveniently forgets that the wheat export ban was imposed much before the Nupur Sharma controversy.
False Claim 5: In today’s world, the fruits of actions are also seen immediately
This is probably the most damaging claim CS makes in the whole damn-worthy speech. This demolishes the basic foundation of karma as propounded by Sanatana Dharma and many saints and sages for many years. If we start valuing actions based on immediate results, then the fact that most of the corrupt politicians go on to lead quite good and prosperous lives means there is no value for truth and honesty. His story of the corporator is probably another cooked up story. But even if true, it is an anecdotal evidence, and we all know that by and large wards of politicians are doing quite well.
False Claim 6: Only five countries are capable of producing vaccine for Covid
This chart from World Trade Organisation shows there are many countries who are exporting Covid vaccine. India’s share of vaccine export is a paltry 2.4% of global exports. See the charts from WTO below.
In addition, Chakravarti Sulibele’s selective amnesia came in handy when talking of Brazil — who’s President’s tweet gave him so much of pleasure. He forgot to mention that after the first two shipments in Jan-2021 and Feb-2021, Brazil suspended the contract in April because of allegations of corruption when signing the contract. Brazil has not taken a single dose from India since Feb-2021. Not just that, in April-2022 WHO suspended procuring any more vaccines from Bharat Biotech because they were not following global standard practices in manufacturing, and that suspension still remains.
False Claim 7: US insisted that countries should pledge their assets to get vaccine from them
This probably summarises the buffoon that Chakravarti Sulibele is and the simplistic but wrong narratives that he pushes in his speeches. US government did not do any commercial export of any vaccine. It was companies like Pfizer that deployed arm-twisting tactics to obtain indemnity, and in its’ absence peldging of national assets. If anything, US has exported six times more vaccine than India, and — as the chart below shows — US government is the single largest donor of vaccines to the Covax initiative. Try finding India in this chart.
In conclusion
That Chakravarti Sulibele made a speech with so many false claims — and false narratives — in front of Jnanashakti Subramanya makes it all the more disappointing. When we deify such charlatans, do we have a right to aim to be a vishwa guru?