NEW DELHI: DMK MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi trained her guns at BJP MPAnurag Thakur’s recent ‘Hanuman first travelled to space’ remark, expressing that “such leaders were not in Tamil Nadu.”“If you ask children who first went to the moon, they will say Neil Armstrong. Some northern leaders, however, might claim the grandmother from our folk tales or even Hanuman first set foot on the moon. Thankfully, such people are not leaders in Tamil Nadu,” she said on Saturday while speaking at an event in Madurai. Thakur received criticism for his comment he made last month during an interaction with school children on National Space Day, where he mixed science with mythology, urging teachers to go beyond “textbooks given to us by the British.” “I think Hanuman ji was the first person to travel to space,” he had said, adding “our veds, our textbooks and our knowledge.” Kanimozhi had then too criticized Thakur for equating mythology with science, noting that it mislead young minds, insulted knowledge and reason, and undermined the constitutional value of scientific temper. “A member of parliament and former union minister asking school children who first set foot on the moon, and insisting that it was not Neil Armstrong but Hanuman, is deeply troubling. Science is not mythology. To mislead young minds in classrooms is an insult to knowledge, reason, and the spirit of scientific temper enshrined in our Constitution. India’s future lies in nurturing curiosity, not confusing fact with fable,” she had said in a post on X.
