Piyush Goyal says ‘Maths never helped Einstein discover gravity’, Tweeple respond with memes

Piyush Goyal, however, was quick to clarify his remarks. In a statement issued, Goyal said: "The comment that I made had a certain context. Unfortunately, some friends have sought to remove the context, pick up one line and create a very mischievous narrative

By: Trends Desk

New Delhi | Updated: September 13, 2019 09:37 AM IST

3 min read

Piyush Goyal’s Einstein gravity remark started a meme-fest online.

Union Minister of Commerce Piyush Goyal Thursday, speaking at the Board of Trade meeting, erroneously confused Albert Einstein with Sir Issac Newton while urging the youth to work towards India’s growth.

Goyal said, “Don’t get into calculations that you see on television… ‘Oh if you’re looking at a $5 trillion-economy, country will have to grow at 12 per cent, today it is growing at 6-7 per cent’. Don’t get into those maths. Those maths have never helped Einstein discover gravity.”

Goyal, however, was quick to clarify his remarks. In a statement issued, Goyal said: “The comment that I made had a certain context. Unfortunately, some friends have sought to remove the context, pick up one line and create a very mischievous narrative. I would like to share with people the exact context with which I made the comment.

“I said ‘let’s work together collectively with new ideas, with a new spirit of engagement and with new ideas believing nothing is impossible and together we can achieve $1 trillion dollar target.’ I said ‘don’t get into calculation, don’t get into math, math has not helped discover gravity… The next line along with it is not being added and shown correctly. After this, I said ‘If he had gone only by structured formula and what was past knowledge, I don’t think there would have been any innovation in this world’. This operative line has not been correctly projected. It is an effort to make the people confident, give them the spirit of positivity and in that spirit of positivity, I think if we live in the past we will never be able to make youth achieve very ambitious goals. This is a nation of youngsters who dare to dream big things in life and the entire group assembled in the board of trade meeting today is going with the enthusiasm.”

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Twitterati shared memes and GIFs, drawing parallels to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s remarks where she had blamed the changing “mindset of the millennials” for the slowdown in the auto sector recently.

As the video of his gaffe went viral, Einstein and Netwon started trending on Twitter. Here’s how netizens reacted to his remark.