While our Constitution mandates the promotion of scientific temper, the present regime in matters of policy-making is bypassing the rational approach not only in science research and education but also in matters related to social policies.
13 march 2024
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
With the ‘Hindu nationalist’ BJP in the saddle for the past decade, there has been a deliberate promotion of a pattern of policymaking in education which is based more on faith and glorification of those aspects of the past which are not verified by reason. As such, India has seen a good development of rational thought in the past. Charvak contributed to rational philosophy while Charat and Aryabhat contributed to medicine and astronomy in a very significant way. But what is glorified today are aspects like plastic surgery being used to plant elephants’ heads on Lord Ganesha or Karna being born from the ear as an example of genetic science. Not to be left behind, aviation technology is also attributed to our glorious past when Pushpak Vimans and even interplanetary travel prevailed. Such claims from mythology being true abound.
Not only are such ‘facts’ being taught in the schools but they are also determining the allocation of funds for science and technology research. Huge funds have been deployed by IIT Delhi for research into Panchgavya. This is a mixture of five products from cows: milk, curd, ghee (clarified butter), urine and dung. This is supposed to be a panacea for the treatment of various diseases. Cow urine is being promoted separately as being of medicinal use. Even before this government came to power in 2014, the BJP’s parent organisation RSS floated many organisations to promote faith-based knowledge through school education.
Dinanath Batra has been heading the Shiksha Bachao Abhiyan Samiti and the RSS-affiliated Shiksha Sanskriti Utthan Nyas (SSUN) for many decades. His nine books have been translated into Gujarati and introduced in 42,000 schools in Gujarat. A sampling of Batra’s books gives a good idea of what is being implemented.
A quote from one of the sets of books, ‘Tejonmaya Bharat’ (Radiant Bharat) tells us about one Dr Balkrishna Ganpat Matapurkar whose research has been inspired by the Mahabharata. According to him, Gandhari’s womb delivered a huge mass of flesh. Dwaipayan Vyas was called. He observed this hard mass of flesh and then preserved it in a cold tank with specific medicines. He then divided the mass of flesh into 100 parts and kept them separately in 100 tanks full of ghee for two years. After two years, 100 Kauravas were born of it. On reading this, he (Matapurkar) realised that stem cell technology was part of Indian heritage.
According to him, Indian rishis, using yoga vidya, would attain divya drishti (divine vision). There is no doubt that the invention of television goes back to this… In the Mahabharata, Sanjaya sitting inside a palace in Hastinapur and using his divya shakti (divine power) would give a live telecast of the battle of Mahabharata… to the blind Dhritarashtra. (Page 64) What we know today as the motorcar existed during the Vedic period. It was called anashva rath. Usually a rath (chariot) is pulled by horses but an anashva rath means the one that runs without horses or yantra-rath, which is today a motorcar. The Rig Veda refers to this, he claims. (Page 60)
The RSS has also set up a consultative body called Bharatiya Shiksha Niti Ayog (BSNA), whose policies are guiding the Modi government to “correct or Indianize” the national education system. Now organisations like the Indian Council of Historical Research, National Council for Education, Research and Training amongst others, have got heads whose qualification is not excellence in their disciplines but their proximity to the ideology of the ruling dispensation.
The Indian Science Congress has for the past many years been accepting papers which have no scientific basis and are based on mythology. Pained by this, prominent scientists have come together and issued a statement calling upon the government to stop undermining scientific methods and thinking. “They point out that this attitude has been particularly evident in the government’s promotion of unverified or unscientific ideas, exaggeration of ancient Indian knowledge, and certain responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.” And further the statement “… emphasizes the need for a united front among scientists, academics, and policymakers to combat the erosion of scientific integrity and promote rational, evidence-based discourse in the country.”
While our Constitution mandates the promotion of scientific temper, the present regime in matters of policy-making is bypassing the rational approach not only in science research and education but also in matters related to social policies. In the New Education Policy 2020, there is a focus on ‘Indian Knowledge Systems’. This basically means promotion of faith based understanding of knowledge related to material and social sciences.
Those political streams which support the movement for social change towards equality try to adopt rational and scientific approaches to knowledge and social issues, the major examples being Gautam Buddha, Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar and Nehru in particular. Throughout Indian history those who want to impose the status quo of social relations, those who want to maintain relations of inequality generally resort to faith based knowledge, taking mythology as the gospel truth and imposing it on society. The communal fundamental streams accept technology with great avidity, even as they dislike rational thinking and the scientific spirit.
The statement of these outstanding scientists is a timely urge to implement social and science policies founded on reason, on scientific temper.