There were previously only 3 countries in the world that have landed a spacecraft on the moon.
Now there are four.
After a failed attempt nearly four years ago, India achieved a historic milestone by successfully landing the Chandrayaan-3 - or "moon craft" in Sanskrit - near the relatively uncharted south pole region of the moon.
This accomplishment places India in a select group alongside the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, who have all achieved moon landings.
Indian PM Modi was reported to have said that the mission’s success “belongs to all of humanity.”
Hearing the Indian Prime Minister reminded me of the first astronaut to step foot on the moon, Neil Alden Armstrong, who said that his achievement is “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Mankind, by the way, is always on the mind of a nation that has set its mind on conquering the moon.
As a rule of thumb, when a country lands a craft on the moon, it means it has desires to rule mankind. When it lands a man on the moon, it means that it will actually attempt to rule mankind.
When both America and the now defunct Soviet Union desired to rule mankind in the post-World War 2 era, they subliminally telegraphed their desires by developing a space program.
The Soviet Union started the space race by launching the Sputnik in 1957, but it was won by America, when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon’s surface in 1969.
For all you know, it was America that mankind accepted as the leaderof the world, simply because it was America that won the space race with the Soviet Union.
On 23 August, India has landed a spacecraft on the moon.
In May, China launched a three-person crew for its orbiting space station and hopes to put astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.
Will India and China develop a similar rivalry that America and the old Soviet Union developed during the cold war?
Who knows.
They are already engaged in a border clashes, and now they look like they are involved in a space race too.
As they say in China, “there cannot be two tigers in a mountain.”
Asia, and perhaps even the world, might be too small for two Asian superpowers.
Nehru Sathiamoorthy is a columnist at FMT, a frequent contributor to the South China Morning Post, a mathematics teacher in the Klang Valley and a seeker of the meaning of life. So far, there are three things that he holds to be unequivocally true. The first is that the purpose of life is to pursue happiness, the second is that you cannot be happy unless you carry your fair share of the world's weight and the third is that you can never underestimate your ability to take your own side.
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