Sometime in 1700 BC in ancient Egypt appears the first mention of the brain in a papyrus purportedly written by great physician Imhotep. Scholars such as Rudolf Hoernle found that Sushruta taught brain surgery to students using fruits like Pushpaphala and watermelon for models. There is evidence of trepanation—boring holes in the brain for surgical and other purposes—in Harappan skulls. Now, 3,719 years later, IIIT researchers who created the first Indian Brain Atlas have concluded that the Indian brain is smaller than Western and other Eastern brains. This is sure to agitate some nationalists who may believe that the synapses of ancient Indians were firing faster than anyone else’s in the world. However, anthropologists and cognitive scientists insist that the size of the human brain has nothing do with the smarts since it has been shrinking for the past 20,000 years.
Judging by the performance of news anchors and politicians, the relationship between brains and IQ is crystal clear. Didn’t the shouter-in-chief call Sunny Deol, Sunny Leone? A DD News anchor pronounced Chinese President Xi Jinping’s name as ‘Eleven’ Jinping, confusing Xi and the Roman numerical. Rahul Gandhi’s scatterbrained approach decimated his party—in India earlier this year and in Haryana last month. Voters’ brains proved to be superior: the Congress fared better in places where Rahul and Sonia did not hold election meetings. Other netas with swollen brains did not see vote share and cranial matter contracting symbiotically.
How do you explain leaders like Salman Khurshid, whose left temporal cortex and left parietal cortex got him through Oxford, concluding that the last poll results show his party’s decline is over when the Congress failed to come to power in both states? Kanhaiya Kumar’s left lobes and ideology do not compute well. Donald Trump’s words and actions on immigration, the Middle East, NATO and the US economy prove he is totally brainless and has been brainwashed by Putin to betray his country. Imran Khan’s brainwave was a common border to Japan and Germany. A CBSE textbook said non-vegetarians are violent liars who commit sex crimes. That a Bollywood brainbox continues to make flop movies and floppier serials shows that all what happens in the cortex is not cognitively cool.
Mainstream scientists do not place mind over brain matter. This is why they cannot see beyond the heart’s corporeal form. The thing pulsing inside the skull influences our decisions, but the invisible, unexplained and immense entities called the heart, the mind and the soul endure even after civilisations die. Says the Bhagavad Gita about the soul: “Weapons cannot pierce it, fire cannot burn it, water cannot moisten it and wind cannot dry it (2.23).” The brain is just an ambassador of history. Its shrinking does not matter so long the heart is expansive and the mind is free in the vast depths of the human soul.