Daily Times

In a historic win for science, India’s Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the Moon on Wednesday, carving its mark as the fourth nation to achieve a controlled lunar landing. The achievement becomes all the more noteworthy because India landed at high altitudes and on the heels of a crashed mission sent by Russia. Getting inspired by an adversary, especially when it is ready to pounce on any opportunity to smead mud all over your face is incredibly hard. As expected, New Delhi seems more interested in its commentary on what is happening in Pakistan than calling its moon landing as a phenomenal win for an aspiring power. Of course, it would be just as hard to steer the discussion away from what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has willingly closed his eyes to as he tried to seize a bigger chunk of the global pie. Raging flames in Manipur, never-before-seen subjugation of fundamental right to identity in Kashmir and widespread movement to dehumanise the largest minority group in India would go down in history as glaring failures of his administration. However, Pakistan would be much better off using this success of its neighbour, especially when it had entered the race long after the launch of its first rocket Rehbar-I in 1962, to take stock of its own priorities. Those sitting at the helm of the affair should introspect what went wrong in our quest for scientific marvels.

Key deliberations should include the rife interplay of religious extremism with everything and anything in this incredible land. The fact that we had chosen a different path right after striking gold as being among the first countries to send missions in space (the only country in South Asia) is enough reason to recalibrate our priorities. There could be no better revenge for India’s vicious concoction of tragic facts with bigoted fiction than Pakistan allocating a larger share of its budget for scientific research. Let’s aim for the moon, once again. *