If Donald Trump believes in something, he does not care a hoot if others do or do not. If he does not believe in something, he does not care a darn if others do or do not. He either believes or disbelieves. And that is that.
But, in recent weeks, he has been heard expressing some doubt, some prevarication totally untypical of him. Speaking in June this year in YouTuber Logan Paul’s podcast Impaulsive, Trump said: “Am I a believer? No, I probably can’t say I am.” That was about the most tentative thing he has said about anything. Not many then could have thought they were hearing the next President of the United States (US).
What was he talking about? Not the climate crisis, about which he is a non-believer. Not about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) on which he has his own very Trumpist views.
He was answering questions about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) and whether they could, in fact, be, “aliens”. Congress discussed the subject last year with both Republican and Democrat Congressmen questioning the US military on “alien activity” in outer space. And whether there was any hiding of facts on the subject.
In his first presidency, Trump had faced the issue and spoke about UAPs dismissively. But now, in June this year, he was more cautious and less Trump-like. “But”, he said, “I have met with people that are serious people that say there’s some really strange things that they see flying around out there.” Alluding to his earlier consideration of the subject as President, he said, “I’ve never been convinced, even despite that, you know. For some reason, it’s not my thing. But a lot of people believe that it’s true. A lot of very good, solid people believe it’s true.”
Then, in September, he was asked in Gutfeld!, an American talk show, whether there were aliens in Area 51, the high security and secretive US air base in Nevada, which it has been said for long has been following the ‘aliens hypothesis’.. Trump said he had spoken to many pilots of the US Air Force about it and had been told that they had come across mysterious flying objects. One especially notable story involved a pilot who asserted on witnessing a round object moving at a speed four times faster than his F-22 fighter jet.
This was Trump, on the threshold of becoming President yet again, not going back on his well-known scepticism about aliens but qualifying his position. But then, I remembered former President Barack Obama speaking in May 2021 on the subject. On the Late Late Show, Obama revealed, “The truth is that when I came into office, I asked, ‘All right, is there a lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and spaceships?’ And you know, they did a little bit of research and the answer was no.” Immediately after that, Obama said something quite extraordinary:
“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there are, there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they moved, or their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that people still take it seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.” The Pentagon and footage on “objects in the skies” is a subject that needs to be better known, if only because speculation on aliens is well-nigh universal and very, very old. Its link with any state agency is extraordinary.
These reflections have been occasioned by a statement made in August this year by the highly respected chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), who led India’s third lunar exploration, Chandrayaan 3. On the Ranveer Show, S Somanath said he believes alien life is likely to exist in the universe and that alien civilisations may be much more advanced than humans. He has also suggested that lifeforms in the universe may have different structures. Even more significantly, Somanath warned that contact between different life forms could be dangerous and that one life form would likely have to dominate the other. He also said that he would prefer to avoid meeting with extraterrestrial life.
This is the first such statement I have heard an Indian official make on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But the importance of Somanath’s statement lies in it having come from India’s biggest name in space. If an Indian politician had said it, I would have given it scant attention.
We now have two presidents of the US, Obama and Trump, and India’s top space scientist, Somanath, talking about aliens being a possibility. Somanath, of course, added another layer, by talking of the “threat” that could come from them.
Somanath’s statement about the “dangerous” dimension of alien life was within his remit, his zone of expertise. But there is another ‘zone’ – the nuclear risks faced by the world intensified in recent months on which government leaders and scientists need to speak up. Why have we not heard from nuclear scientists in India, physicists, chemists and experts in aerodynamics, on the real danger of World War III?
It was given to another American to speak of it. Speaking at the Institute of International Finance last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said Russia, North Korea, and Iran as well as China, are actively working together to “dismantle” the systems set up by the Allies following World War II, such as Nato. “We shan’t be naive. What we should be thinking about is we can’t take the chance this will resolve itself. We have to make sure that we are involved in doing the right things to get it resolved properly.”
Indian diplomacy has been active in the matter of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine conflicts. But is a resounding warning of the dangers lurking around the world and a denunciation of all war-like activity being heard?
We are proud of our scientists who have given us sinews for national defence. But why do we not have Einsteins, Oppenheimers, Russells, and Rotblats in India who tell us, as scientists who know better, of the horrendous hazards in a world that has grown nuclear, biological, and chemical claws? And now plays with cyber and Artificial Intelligence which terrorism can co-opt?
The reason, perhaps, is that the kind of questions that were put to Trump and Obama and to Somanath about extraterrestrials, and then to Dimon about the state of the world, are not put to those who must address those issues. Former Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud recently remarked that sunlight is the best disinfectant. The night of our callousness, we might say, is the worst “infectant”.
Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former administrator, is a student of modern Indian history. The views expressed are personal
