Scientific Temper: Beyond the world of science in India

On April 17, the Chief Minister (CM) of Tripura, Biplab Kumar Deb said, “This is the country where the episodes of the Mahabharat war were narrated to Dhritarashtra by Sanjay. This means technology was there, Internet was there, satellite was there...” State’s Governor, Tathagata Roy further backed the CM’s claims, by tweeting the following:


Earlier, a minister of state in Human Resource Development Ministry had claimed that Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong. These series of unscientific claims comes with a heavy attack on premier educational institutions, fund cut in basic research and replacing it with courses in religious tourism, training pandits and vaastu shashtra.

To confront the ongoing attacks on rational and scientific thoughts, scientific community have come together to take a few promising efforts inside the institution and on the streets to ensure and promote scientific temperament among the people.

On April 14, the scientific community comprising of scientists, technologists, teachers, scientific workers, and supporters of scientific thought marched for science in 38 major cities of India with the following demands:

Allocate at least 3% of GDP to scientific and technological research and 10% towards education.

Stop propagation of unscientific, obscurantist outdated ideas, and develop scientific temper, human values and spirit of inquiry in conformance with Article 51A of the Constitution.

Ensure that the education system does not impart ideas that contradict scientific evidence.

Enact policies based on scientific evidence.

This was the second edition of March for Science call given worldwide in more than 600 cities. "The March for Science champions robustly funded and publicly communicated science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity," says the mission statement of the March. Protesters also raised issues of caste-based attacks and irrational thought process behind it.

On April 10, Indian Academy of Sciences and Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, JNU had organised a panel discussion on “Marching with the Sciences: Issues of Complexity, Diversity and Democracy” to address the global delegitimation of expert knowledge, relation between social sciences and natural sciences, access to higher education and gender bias issues in science. “The panel discussion seeks to explore the relationship between democracy, expert knowledge, and the concerns of complexity and diversity.”-reads the concept note. An organiser of this event and a professor of history and philosophy of science, Dhruv Raina says, “For the first time in 50-60 years, there is a kind of decoupling between the world of science and the state. More or less scientific establishment have always been able to convince the political establishment and by and large the political establishment have obliged. On a number of matters and decisions, the political establishment have also turned to expertise of science. But, now we have reached this moment of disjuncture.” He further adds, “We need a science movement and a regular engagement to popularize science education.”

Carrying forward the legacy of popularizing science, students of Presidency University, Kolkata, had organised a seminar “Infinity to Beyond: Understanding Stephen Hawking” on April 6, 2018. In this seminar, a particle physicist of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Soumitra Sengupta narrates the journey of mankind from believing God as the creator of this universe to the invention of Galileo’s telescope, Newton’s theory of rest and motion, Einstein’s general relativity theory, Quantum theory leading to Stephen Hawking’s grand-unified theory.

“A balanced discussion of philosophy and its implications on the society was the objective of this event.”- says Ujan, an undergraduate student of Presidency University.

Jadavpur University had also organised a similar event for students from across the disciplines and specializations to commemorate the works of Stephen Hawking. “Dr. Harshwardhan should organise such discussions instead of falsely claiming that Vedas have superior theory than Einstein’s e=mc^2”, -said an undergraduate student.

One should start thinking whether scientific temper and thought can be promoted through just the policy implementation and allocating funds. Perhaps, demanding a logical explanation is also a mode of protest, in the recent times.