On Saturday (August 26), Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the touchdown point of the Chandrayaan-3 moon lander will be renamed ‘Shiv Shakti’ and that of the Chandrayaan-2 moon lander will be renamed ‘Tiranga.’ As soon as the Indian Prime Minister made the aforementioned declaration, the Congress party, guided by their peculiar habit of finding flaws in every effort the BJP undertakes, quickly chimed in to criticize this endeavour as well.
The grand old party’s senior leader Rashid Alvi, who had asked for evidence of the surgical strike conducted by Indian armed forces against Pakistan and tried to cast aspersions on the Ayodhya verdict and the integrity of the apex court, went on to criticise PM Modi’s decision to name Chandrayaan 3 landing point as ‘Shiv Shakti’ point.
Alvi, for reasons best known to him, found the decision to rename the landing point on Chandryaan-3 ‘laughable’. Speaking to India Today journalist, a snippet of which is going viral on X, formally Twitter, the Congress senior leader said, “It is laughable. Who has given the right to PM Modiji to do the naamikaran of the surface of the moon? The entire world will laugh. We are not the owners of the moon,” Rashid Alvi is heard complaining, adding that the BJP party has a habit of exhibiting ownership ever since they assumed power.
Senior Congress leader Rashid Alvi – How did Modi name the landing point 'ShivShakti', He is not the owner of the moon.
— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) August 26, 2023
Anchor- But Congress govt also named Chandrayaan-1 landing point as Jawahar point
Rashid Alvi- ISRO is because of Nehru ji, Cannot compare him with any name pic.twitter.com/7XofkbbNY1
Alvi’s verbal concussion did not end there. The India Today journalist questioned the Congress leader on his hypocritical stance on this issue reminding how his party, when in power, named the landing point of Chandrayaan 1 the ‘Jawahar point’, after their then supremo Jawahar Lal Nehru. Alvi immediately went on to eulogize Nehru calling him incomparable. Rashid Alvi asserted, in reference to Modi’s selection of the name “Shiv Shakti,” which is named after one of the most revered Hindu deities, that Nehru’s name could not be compared to “any other” name.
“You can’t compare Jawahar Lal Nehru. Whatever ISRO is it is only because of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru,” Alvi argued in defence of Congress’ longstanding practice of serving as the poster child for dynasty politics and nepotism.
Well, what the Congress leader should do besides idol worshipping the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty is perhaps undertake some research to ensure that he has the facts straight. Had he done that, he would be aware that PM Modi’s decision to rename Chandrayaan 3 and 2’s landing sites is not uncommon. Not just India but also the other three nations—the United States, China, and Russia—that have made successful moon landings in the past have upheld this tradition.
As mentioned above, the landing site of Chandrayaan 1 was renamed after Congress leader and India’s first prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru.
Notably, the Moon Impactor probe of Chandrayaan-1 touched down on the moon’s surface on November 14, 2008. The MIP crashed the moon’s surface close to its south pole. The point where it did the hard landing was named ‘Jawahar Sthal’ or Jawahar Point.
List of Moon landing site names:
— Worldupdates ( Breaking ) (@itswpceo) August 26, 2023
🇺🇸 USA:
Statio Tranquillitatis
Oceanus Procellarum
Fra Mauro
Hadley-Apennines
Descartes
Taurus-Littrow
🇷🇺Russia:
Planitia Descensus
Sinus Lunicus
🇨🇳 China:
Statio Tianchuan
🇮🇳India
Chandrayaan-1 impact: jawahar Point
Chandrayaan 3 Landing:…
Likewise, the landing site for China’s complex Chang’e 5 moon sample and return mission launched in November 2020, was named ‘Statio Tianchuan’ and the landing site of China’s Chang’e-4 lunar probe was named ‘Statio Tianhe.’ Tianhe is the Chinese word for Milky Way and Statio is Latin for base.
Similarly, the site on the moon where the Apollo 11 crew members of the United States landed and walked in the year 1969 was named “Statio Tranquilitatis” (Tranquillity Base). The USA, in fact, undertook several lunar missions in the past years and gave different names to the sites each time their spacecraft landed on the surface of the moon.
In the same way, Russia called the landing site of its Lune 2 mission, the sixth spacecraft in the Luna program that was sent to the Moon was dubbed Sinus Lunicus. Its 1966 Lune 9 mission’s touchdown site was given the name Planitia Descensus. The Soviet Luna program’s Luna 16 unmanned space mission’s landing site in 1970 was known as Sinus Successus.
