Alan Turing-The Real Life Vasudev
The title is very flattering isn’t it. For those who don’t know who Vasudev was he was an incarnate of Lord Vishnu who single handedly helped Pandavs fight against the injustice of Duryodhan the crown prince of hasthinapur who had ordered his brother Dushashan to tear off clothes of Drapuadi the wife of the Pandavs and harassed her . Here in Turing’s case the Hasthinapur is the Nazi Germany and the Duryodhan is Adolf Hitler and the Dushashan is Hermann Goring as it is Goring who was ordered by hitler to bring Britain to its knees by bombing it too rubble . Vasudev and Alan Turing both were one man armies. When I say of one man army one thinks of a man with brute force whatever but they both were unarmed and contributed with their very intelligence . Why do i say so? Winston Churchill the the wartime prime minister of the British empire once said that only one thing scared him in the war was the U-boat( submarine) menace not a invasion whereas the whole British psyche at the time after the fall of Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Poland, Yugoslavia,, Greece and most of Soviet Union was about how to repel a invasion.
Just see how isolated Britain feels yet Winston Churchill was not scared about a invasion but the U-boat menace. Now Great Britain being a island and industrialised nation depended heavily on food imports without which it could starve and Hitler knew it and devoted all the naval resources to the U-boats not a single capital ship let alone a battleship but one man foiled all his plans . His name was Alan Turing. U -boat is able to cut of food supplies because of its secrecy and stealth . It is hard to detect a submarine even today with all the Satellite technology just imagine what it would have been 80 years earlier. The u boat relied upon its cipher-enigma to communicate with base back home securely and Alan Turing broke it. This single act was the greatest of all in the war . Winston Churchill even privately acknowledged that Turing made the single biggest contribution to the allied victory. Both men outpowered their enemy not with force but with their very intelligence .That is why I see a parallel between them. As good as this story sounds it is braced for a very tragic ending . Alan Turing was homosexual . It is a persecuted crime even today in most of the world just imagine what it would have been 70 years earlier. He was committed of gross indecency . He was given two options either to accept imprisonment or undergo probation. He chose the latter one. He was betrayed by the country he served. However recently there have been many protests against the injustice served to Alan Turing. He has been given a royal pardon by Her Majesty and The Bank of England has decided to honour his contribution for saving the humanity by printing his photo on 50 pound note
My views
For me Alan Turing definitely shortened the war by over 2 years and saved countless lives in the process. Alan Turing is the greatest mathematician to live because not only did he contribute to maths but contributed to the cause of humanity by breaking the Nazi codes otherwise if they would have been given 2 more years then they would have definitely killed all the untermenschen(sub-humans) in the entire world .
If you want to know more about Vasudev and other Hindu characters I would recommend you watch Mahabharat it is available on Disney+Hotstar and if you want to get a rough idea about the terror the word U-Boat caused in the minds of allied Naval men please watch Greyhound trailer