All the Sultan's Rockets

As Hezbollah and Israel trade rockets in a military conflict that is sure to claim a thousand lives, India is celebrating the first military rockets ever made. In 1792, the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, unleashed the first rocket barrage on invading British troops and sent them into flight. The British were so startled by the attack--no one had ever dreamed of rockets before then--that during their rout soldiers picked up unexploded projectiles and sent them back to Britain for some good old fashioned intellectual property theft. A few years later the British returned with their own rocket corps and left the sultanate in ruins.

Over the weekend The Deccan Chronicle, the Hindu and Hindustan Times covered Abdul Kalam's (the President of India) to Mysore and claimed that those rockets were the inspiration for all missles to come.

"This was the beginning of the rocket technology and the contribution of the ruler and his men is unforgettable. How the original idea came to his mind is amazing. Our rocket and missile technology is actually based on the same principle," he explained in an article in The Hindustan Times

Though the first rockets were fireworks produced in China, Kalam and the DoRD (Department of Research and Defense) want the world to know that they are ultimately responsible for some of the most murderous technology produced to date.

I'm not sure why it is so important to visit this particular point in India's past right now--is it perhaps some sort of endorsement of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah where some of the world's most advanced rocket technology pinpoints and destroys vast tracks of Lebanon while the Hezbollah responds with rockets only slightly better than what Tipu Sultan came up with two hundred years ago?

Or, is it more along the lines of good old fashioned Hindu fundamentalism where pundits and faux-scholars like N.S. Rajaram proclaim that India produced the first nuclear weapons five thousand years ago?

Sepia Mutiny also has a thing or two to say about it.