Most famous words by Sherlock Holmes, right? There's another famous one:
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
In the age of facebook and whatsapp, where there are real quotes and real images floating around, there are hell lot of misquotes and doctored images floating around. Eager people, without verifying facts, immediately share these through social media. These are just impossible, forget being improbable.
Most of these are so blatantly false and misleading, still the sharers either do it deliberately or do it without applying logic or verifying facts.
Some of the ones that I have been regularly receiving, are both tragic and hilarious. Just check these as examples of the innumerable ones floating in cyberspace.
Lord Macaulay's speech
Receiving the above image with the quote since ages. When I read it for first time, it did not seem at all spoken by Macaulay. The man, who had brought education reform in India, who was part of drafting and implementation of Indian Penal Code. Such a man could not have used such simple and modern sounding English.
A simple search reveals this. In 1835, he was in India, and not in British Parliament, with the responsibility of implementing the modern style educational system in English. Because he argued that the existing languages of high learning, Sanskrit and Arabic, were not good enough to implement modern scientific learning acquired by Europe, which he wanted the Indians to learn. And he certainly had very low impression of what is claimed in this quote, of ancient education system and her culture. This is what he actually believed, in his own words:
"Can we reasonably or decently bribe men, out of the revenues of the State, to waste their youth in learning how they are to purify themselves after touching an ass or what texts of the Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat?"
"But I would strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books. I would abolish the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta.
Letter by Jwaharlal (!) to Attlee
This one takes the cake being the most hilarious! And it was actually circulated by leading media and websites as being a letter from the declassified Bose papers. I mean, media did not get the spelling mistake in writer's name; which person could spelt incorrectly own name! And, unsigned letter. And, getting address wrong, Down Street instead of Downing Street? And, not considering the language style whether could be of the brilliant and erudite Nehru.
So be careful before you share that next whatsapp image. And burst myths of others. Election campaigns have been conducted using battery of cyber army, trolls are lurking at every corner waiting to pounce on you for any critique or criticism against the Supreme Leaders of the world. Communal flareups happen due to doctored images. Due to all these forwards, we are now convinced that Modi had swept floors, sold tea and fought with crocodiles before becoming the PM, and Rahul Gandhi had accepted British citizenship and betrayed India.
P.S. Sherlock never said “Elementary my dear Watson” in any of the original 56 short stories or 4 novels starring his character. This has been a misquote attributed to him. It was actually written by, of all people, P.G. Wodehouse!
