The junior minister for higher education, Satyapal Singh, has said that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution should be removed from school and college curricula because no one "ever saw an ape turning into a human being". He is correct. No one, at least no human being, was witness to this birth that did not happen. But the reverse could be seen to have happened in Hindu religion and myth, claimed to be the foundation of the ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party Singh belongs to. And it was a fait accompli.

In the Ramayana, the king of the apes, Sugriva, and his tribe formed the army that marched to Lanka to decimate Ravana and his rakshasas (another sub-human species). Hanuman found his place at the feet of Rama, who had earned Sugriva's eternal gratitude by killing off the latter's courageous brother, Vali, in a not very honourable way.

Monkeys were used, or disposed of, at will by Rama, the ' narasrestha', the noblest man. He and his people were men, concentrated in Ayodhya and around. The rest were creatures.

Did the epic turn men into monkeys to accomplish Rama's moral-imperial project, long, long before we were born, let alone looking? In any case, under those circumstances, monkeys would have been utterly disqualified to give birth to man. Let alone the Hindu man.

Then who did? My Mann ki Baat, which is an app on my smartphone, says it is the ' gomata', or the cow, in her incarnation as Mother.

This assumption has the force of the belief of many now. People worship the cow and kill other people in Hindu India to protect the life and sanctity of the cow, just as they would, one assumes, kill for their mother, or motherland. In the religious-political iconography of the nation, the idea of motherhood is a collage of these images, which seem to be in no conflict with the idea of empowerment of the woman or the girl child that the Union government is advertising so strongly through short films and other media.

But can we have descended from the cow? Apart from stark physical dissimilarities, there are other doubts.

The cow is a serene, beautiful animal with large eyes. It is an animal that does not protest when its milk is extracted by others. It still looks on serenely. Think of the world without cow milk. It is true that only a mother, perhaps, is capable of such unstinted love, such largeness of spirit. It lives on little, leaves and grass. It just gives.

It has never been seen to incite riots. It has not climbed up to the top of temples, waving flags, asking for the blood of others, not even in the name of Rama. It has not arrived in slums as a murderous crowd and slaughtered innocents. It does not kill a child in a train because he belongs to another community.

When asked which community it belongs to, it will probably not answer you.

No, the gomata cannot be the progenitor of all, especially of those who are claiming to be her children.

Then who is our father, who our mother? What explains us now? Is it Manu, after all, the first man, from whom we have descended directly, with no Darwin or no evolution in between, not to mention the apes before? We need to know. Maybe Satyapal Singh should go ahead with his conference to disprove Darwin after all.