The Unscientific Indian

We invest heavily in nuclear energy, believe we have always known everything, while policy managed by bureaucrats neglect basic necessities like water, electricity, health and education.

Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India, Robert S Anderson, The University of Chicago Press.

This book was published in 2010, but contemporary politics, over the course that science should take in the country has necessitated a second visit to this excellent work of scholarly research.

This January, the 102^nd Indian Science Congress and the organising science establishment drew a lot of flak for including a session on “Ancient sciences through Sanskrit”. Held in Mumbai University, it was curated by Gauri Mahulikar, head of MU’s Sanskrit department. Justifying inviting the two speakers she had called to speak on ancient Indian aviation technology, Mahulikar said,

“If we had chosen Sanskrit professors to talk about the references to aviation technology in Sanskrit literature, which includes information on how to make planes, the dress code and diet of pilots, the seven types of fuel used, people would have dismissed us. But Captain Anand J Bodas is himself a pilot and his co-presenter, Ameya Jadhav, holds an MTech degree besides an MA in Sanskrit.”

Former Director of National Aerospace Laboratories, Roddam Narasimha, however, had no hesitation in saying that the book the two speakers based their hypothesis on, Vaimanika Prakaranam or Vimanika Shastra, has been studied in great detail and “the accepted view in the scientific community is that the descriptions given in it are not scientifically correct”.

Five other professors, HS Mukunda, SM Deshpande, HR Nagendra, A Prabhu and SP Govindaraju of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in an article in the journal Scientific Opinion, have also said that the Vimanika Shastra is “not an ancient text” and “cannot be dated earlier than 1904”. They have also said that the planes described in it are “poor concoctions” and “unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying”.

The Science Congress seminar was in keeping with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s claims that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is rooted in the Vedas and that the world’s first nuclear test “lakhs of years ago” took place in India. This is not the first time that science in India mirrors the politics of the day. Science Congresses have been inaugurated with Vedic chants, drawing considerable criticism. There is no doubt, however, that science in India is ruled by its political masters of the day.

Robert Anderson’s Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India, 2010, splits wide open the Indian science establishment to public view. It is a chronicle right from the mid-1920s to late ’80s that tells us how the nation where non-violence evolved came to boast of itself as a military giant, how universities fell off the development map (like the Karachi, Calcutta and Allahabad universities) and a science elite favoured the growth of the Department of Atomic Energy above all other sectors and created a science bureaucracy that minds India’s own kind of proxy science in great secrecy and dismisses public demand for transparency — almost saying aloud, ‘What do people know?’ — and how women were left out of the policy discourse. It is only the 99th Science Congress that was theoretically dedicated to women scientists in India and included a discussion of their role.

Bob, as he is lovingly called, is a gentle professor in his 70s, in the School of Communication at the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. He has been following India’s nuclear ambitions since he stumbled upon it as a subject of study, visiting Shantiniketan in 1962, when he was a witness to India’s faith, idolatry and the meaning of ‘unscientific culture’. He noted, in the 1998 Science Congress in Hyderabad, 36 years later, at the end of an academic session on science and society, “a very large crowd gathered and the path was strewn with rose petals by beautiful young women” and how an exclusive audience listened in rapt attention to Swami Ramachandran expounding on the “greater glory of India”.

Discussing the 1980’s joint statement from Coonoor on “scientific temper” by Raja Ramanna and PN Haksar, Anderson comments, “They were addressing two million scientists and technologists in India as if they were all in one great epistemic community.” He adds, “It is unclear what specific challenge they were responding to,” and goes on to quote Shiv Visvanathan, “We proudly talked about ‘the scientific temper’ as if it was a vaccine that would immunise us from all forms of superstition.”

Tracing the personal visions and chequered career paths of Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, CV Raman, SS Bhatnagar, Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai and others — the triumvirates and duos in science leadership — Anderson visits Meghnad Saha’s birthplace in Mymensingh (now Bangladesh) and JC Bose’s lab, which are not places of pilgrimage for Indian scientists (but Pokharan is). He notes, there is little biographical information and anecdotes on Indian scientists.

Anderson goes on to point out that “distinctions” made individual members of India’s larger scientific community fight with each other (pg 542) using even rhetorical euphemisms like “obscurantism”.

As a researcher at the University of Chicago and the McGill University, doors in India were opened to him that enabled Anderson to take a close critical look at development of science in this subcontinent, a peep that no Indian perhaps would have been or will be allowed. Among those who helped his perspective were Irfan Habib, Shiv Visvanathan, Ashok Parthasarathy and many others. Anderson’s science history of India, complete with bibliographical notes, detailed references and indexes, makes a fascinating read.

Anderson’s outside view came at a time when, opening the 98^th Science Congress in January 2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had noted that,

“scientists are not just servants who do the bidding of their paymasters…”

He went on to add that the fundamental achievement of scientific revolution is that it has separated the realm of religion and science.

“… How science is used depends on the values and priorities of the time in society… The question is… whether scientists should step beyond their discipline and at least guide the social discourse on the use of scientific knowledge. Should they develop a code of conduct that defines the limits within which they will work on the application of their discoveries?”

The economist prime minister quoted from Bertrand Russell:

“I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.”

Importantly, Anderson does not mince words and does not take sides in the politics of science in India. He does not preach, yet manages to pose questions like “What value has India received from its investment in science and technology?” and “What is India’s contribution to other intellectual traditions across the world through science and technology?”

“Though funds went to nuclear India and its achievements, clean drinking water from a tap remained a privileged luxury at the end of the century,” Anderson writes. It still does 15 years on. Did India’s scientists not “step beyond their discipline and at least guide the social discourse on the use of scientific knowledge?” How did a country preparing for a manned mission to moon and a successful mission to Mars arrive at such a pass that 400 million of its people, mostly without the promised electricity, live below the poverty line, without healthcare and basic amenities required for a life of dignity? Perhaps more anthropological overviews are required to cut through the bureaucratic platitude that India is getting there — a knowledge powerhouse and a superpower.

In the unfolding drama of India’s early science is also the colourful and hugely networked player Patrick Blackett, a military officer and scientist, adviser to the UK government and to the Indian government, who gave direction to India’s science policy for almost four decades, sometimes upfront, sometimes behind the scene. He first popularised the word “innovation” in India in the 1960s.

The author records that at the end of the 1970s, “there were no women scientists in the committees advising the cabinet on science and technology and none were directors of major laboratories or projects discussed here”. Suicides by scientists, beginning with the first one by a woman, are also discussed.

Two interesting women inspirations taken note of are Edwina Mountbatten and Indira Gandhi, who controlled much of science policy till the late ’70s and pushed for technocrat policymakers. This leads to tracking how,

“the DAE became the conglomerate for the development of the scientific community, first by excluding interference, second by screening for best young talent, third by supporting ‘nonessential work’… neither the Planning Commission nor the scientific committees advising the cabinet were able to challenge”.

Anderson acknowledges how this began to change in the Rajiv Gandhi era, following the success of the Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishath, the SACC movement and with Rajiv inducting personalities like Sam Pitroda to steer the literacy mission, telecommunication, safe drinking water, immunisation and other programmes.

Anderson’s stories of the growth battles of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, CSRI labs, Saha’s institute, CV Raman’s institute, the Indian Institute of Science, multiple science publications, bitter rivalries among great scientists are interview and documentation based.

“Disorderly too was the competitive inter-organisational rivalry among people supported by the same government funds while reporting to different boards and ministers. While the conditions of life and mobility of many thousands of highly trained workers were at stake, these laboratories, projects, institutes, universities, agencies, and the like were themselves the scenes of struggles over best use of resources and best paths of action.” (pg 548)

“… the cabinet had good intelligence available through its science and technology committee, yet made so little systematic use of it. It is as if politicians preferred things a bit disorderly”

Anderson says.

Sounds familiar even today, doesn’t it? Anderson also quotes A Rahman (CSRI policy planner) who gave the analogy of grass hockey at which Indians were the world’s best at one time. Then the rules of the game changed; “that change has occurred in scientific research… and Indians are no longer working in the right way for a prize”.

What emerges out of this collector tome is how never-discussed, never-admitted policy and planning mistakes by India’s big men of science has led today to a nation grappling with skewered development.