A patent at fifteen. Three books by nineteen.
Vivaan Prashant Karulkar grew up in Mumbai with an unusual pair of obsessions: the night sky above the city, and the Sanskrit texts on his family's shelves. He has spent his teenage years arguing that the two belong in the same conversation.
How a schoolboy ended up in the record books
Vivaan was thirteen when the country went into lockdown. Where most of his classmates found time, he found a subject: he made a short animated film about the pandemic that earned him his first press coverage, and then he started reading. Not the syllabus, but the Vedas, and everything he could find about asteroids.
At fifteen, that second interest turned into paperwork. He filed an in-principle patent relating to Near-Earth Objects, placing him among the youngest patent holders anywhere in the world. It is the achievement he still gets asked about most, and the one he says taught him that age is mostly an administrative detail.
The books came next, and quickly. The Sanatan Dharam: True Source of all Science arrived at sixteen: forty-six chapters, written around school hours, launched at the Ayodhya Ram Mandir on the day of the Pran Pratishtha. The first edition sold out in thirty minutes. A second title followed at seventeen, a third at eighteen.
“Everything the West calls a discovery, I believe was written down first. We simply stopped reading our own books.”
Age fifteen
The patent that started it
Long before the books, Vivaan was reading about Near-Earth Objects, the asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them close to our own. The question that held him was not whether one would arrive, but what anyone would actually do about it.
The result was a pre-sanctioned, in-principle patent filed at fifteen. He has since walked through the whole process on camera, partly because so many students asked him how a schoolboy files a patent at all.
How I filed a patent at the age of 15
Watch on YouTubeWhat the books actually claim
Vivaan's central thesis runs through all three titles. You do not have to agree with it; he would rather you read the references and decide.
Start with the source
Each chapter opens with a verse or passage from the Vedas and other classical texts, quoted and cited rather than paraphrased.
Set it beside the record
The passage is then placed next to the modern discovery it is said to anticipate: relativity, gravitation, cosmology, flight.
Leave the verdict to you
Vivaan's position is unambiguous, but the structure is built so readers can weigh the two columns themselves.
Milestones
The road here
A short film during lockdown
Vivaan makes an eight-minute animated film about the pandemic, and earns his first national press coverage.
An in-principle patent on Near-Earth Objects
Filed and pre-sanctioned, among the youngest patent holders in the world.
First book launched at the Ayodhya Ram Mandir
True Source of all Science is released on the day of the Pran Pratishtha. A copy is placed at Ram Lalla's feet.
Second book launched in Delhi
True Source of all Technology is unveiled before RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat, ISRO Chairman S. Somanath and Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi.
A biography of Elon Musk
Elon Musk: The Man Who Bends Reality trends at #3 on X and enters the India and Asia Book of Records.
International recognition
The International Author Excellence Award, the Sahitya Sparsh Award, Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the Kolkata Literary Festival and the Dickens Medal.
Start with the book that started it all
Forty-six chapters, available in English, Marathi and Gujarati.
