The 102nd Indian Science Congress held in Mumbai will be remembered for a very long time to come, but for all the wrong reasons. For the first time, the science congress had a session on “Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit”.
Culturally dwarfed entities, which may be diffident about the future, tend to grasp at any shadow of real or imagined past greatness to make sense of the present. The orchestrated campaign of self-glorification of the Hindu Right falls in this category. The latest manifestation of their irrational exuberance came at the annual session of the Indian Science Congress in Mumbai, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Regrettably, the Prime Minister came away without warning the purveyors of falsehood against seizing a forum of scientists — whose work revolves around evidence and reasoning — for their crude ends.
But unfortunately, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself setting the tone for this antiquity frenzy with his implausible claims that cosmetic surgery was practised thousands of years ago and in-vitro fertilisation-like procedure was resorted to long back, and different political leaders following it up with several other incredulous claims well before the start of the national event, the reason for the inclusion of the session becomes supremely clear. Today it is Modi promoting religious fiction as science. During Vajpayee rule, it was Murli Manohar Joshi, who incidentally was a Professor in Physics. Education alone does not enlighten the closed mind!
For the sake of discussion, let’s fall for the saffron yarn woven at the science congress — that the ancient Indians could send out planes on inter-planetary missions. “So what”, it’s logical to ask. “What good is that to us now when we are unable to put together even a decent car with our own design and technology, leave alone an aircraft?”
But that doesn’t impress the religious Right. It has a vicious agenda which can’t be quelled by asking logical questions. In singing of past greatness, the Sangh Parivar’s purpose is to suggest subliminally to Hindus that the advances they made were stopped with the arrival of Islam — and later Christianity — on the scene. There can hardly be any question about the dazzling contributions of ancient India to multiple fields, including science. But these became well known to us, and duly became part of our cultural DNA, long before the RSS appeared on the scene.
Nevertheless, the followers of the Parivar seek to spread the tale that they alone take pride in India’s past achievements, just as they spread the word that they alone are patriotic. Those who differ with their myopic view of the world are sought to be put down as atheists, secularists or colonial apologists.
It’s time the lid came off the hypocrisy and we recalled that some of the most elaborate expositions of advances made in ancient India have come from the writings of secularists (literally), as in the case of Professor Irfan Habib (a Muslim, to boot) or Mahapandit Rahul Sankirtyayan. In fact, it is hard to recall anyone inspired by the narrow religious chauvinism of the saffron variety who has made a serious study of our ancient past that would stand up to intellectual scrutiny.
If the Indian Science Congress had long lost its eminence as a forum where results of serious science being done in the country are presented and discussed in most sessions, the inclusion of ‘Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit’ now has only lowered its standing further. Even as a public session, there is no real reason whatsoever for it to have been included in the proceedings. At best, a session could have been devoted to the history of Indian science which has real and substantial achievements to celebrate, with serious scholars working on the subject presenting papers.
Instead of fostering scientific temper as mandated by the Constitution of India, the congress has provided a forum to seed the minds of young people with pseudoscience. Some of the papers presented were about Indians’ “knowledge of making aeroplanes” that could undertake interplanetary travel, between 7000 and 6000 BC, and “radars” that worked on the principle of detecting energy given out by animate and inanimate objects and finding out if a body was dead or alive.
Science is grounded on the principle of reproducibility of results. The claims of advanced science and technology in the ancient world are based on some references in ancient scripts that may be wholly imaginary. Flying, for instance, has caught humankind’s imagination across cultures right from ancient times. Such references should be taken for the myths they are, not as scientific facts.
It is one thing for a poet like Kalidasa to visualise a “pushpak ratha” and quite another for the scientific community to give it a session to discuss this. If we really knew about “brahmastras” as mentioned in the Mahabharata, we surely would have developed ballistic missiles centuries ago. And it would not have taken ISRO so much effort and so many years to build the PSLV and GSLV. It is one thing to visualise in a play of imagination and quite another thing to design and fabricate such a vehicle. Professional bodies must protect themselves from this sort of stray, unsubstantiated thinking.
If we were so advanced in the field of aviation then why have we not been able to produce an indigenous aircraft after HF 24 (Maruti)? Also if in medical sciences we were leading in ancient times why so many people died prematurely on account of asthma, TB and diarrhoea? If plastic surgery was invented in our land, why thousands of women perished during pregnancy? Why are millions of Indians without eyesight? When shall we learn to draw a clear demarcation between a myth and rational thinking that is science?
Scientists have been able to create animal chimeras that have cells/organs of different species, much as what Greek mythology describes. Should the Greeks then be taken as pioneers in the science of chimera production?
Thanks to our understanding of genetics and the ability to fertilise eggs outside the body, producing designer babies is no longer in the realm of science fiction. Should the creators of the science fiction then be credited with devising the procedures? Compare this with how Sir Arthur C. Clarke documented his idea of communications satellites in a concept paper published in 1945. Dozens of geosynchronous satellites launched each year do precisely what Sir Arthur had visualised there.
The fanatics are not only going on about “ghar wapsi” and alliterating about “Ramzada” and “haramzada”, imperilling the social cohesiveness of the country, but are also seizing top bodies of scientists and historians to propagate their low philosophy. They believe they have gained the levers of power. The Hindutva brigade will only destroy the prospects of Indian science with these mindless and nonsense claims. This is a very serious challenge to the Indian society.11 January 2015
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