Plea To The Science Textbook Writers In The NEP 2020 Era

Notwithstanding the antiquity of major civilisations (major in terms of the number of people and the extent of the physical land impacted), without any loss of generality it can be stated that it was indeed the polity hand in glove with religion, which framed the broad principles of living and regulated livelihood for the mass.

The ever curious brain of humans coupled with basal instincts to seek control over material resources gave rise to conquests whereby the civilisations expanded and confronted ‘others.’

At some point in time, the self-inquiry and reasoning gave a tough fight to dogmatic beliefs.

This resulted in terrible schisms and what followed is a never-ending saga of one group trying to overpower and perhaps overthrow the other with either brute force or subtle assertions.

Terms like believers and rationalists started gaining currency as label for communities, although, with one pitted against the other in a diabolical manner.

Whereas questioning and doubting were quintessential aspects of day to day lives of the rationalists, people harboring these traits were considered blasphemous, heretics bordering lunacy, were ostracised and in a few cases, even persecuted.

Science makes an appearance in such a juncture and the rationalists heralded it as a paragon of all virtues and deemed it as the best weapon to establish supremacy over the believers.

Believers on the other hand were grappling with this new ‘demon’ and their process of taming it is work under construction.

When European science was introduced in our country in the nineteenth century, it had a very interesting reception.

Given that the Indian mind was engaged in questioning and doubting right from her early days, accepting European science was not a challenge albeit the interim Islamic rule.

Along with science came also the social aspects associated with it whereby the altercations between the believers and rationalists of Europe was also brought to India in lock, stock and barrel which, in hindsight, is actually irrelevant.

Indeed, science is method or means to get acquainted with reality and by doing so, the mankind has experienced several remarkable discoveries and invention that have drastically changed the human life on this planet.

For instance, the way we instantly communicate with each other shunning all spatio-temporal impediments. This may appear as thaumaturgy for even scientists from a century or two before.

The spinoffs of science, namely technology, has direct links with market and hence economy and commerce. Needless to say, science is powerful.

But one must not miss the fact that science is a method which is characterised by evidences that are both cognised and communicated by humans.

Although science is considered universal sans any geography or state machinery, in practice it is quite the contrary. If intellect is shaped by culture, then science is not an exception. Scientific principles and truth are indeed universal, but these are not the totality of science.

Since human cognition and communication are inseparable from science, the subjective aspects of science need to be taken cognisance of, with due diligence.

A civilisation that has successfully kept her people in good spirit, producing intellectuals and leading the world GDP for the whole of the first millennium and nearly half the second, could not have been possible without stupendous acumen and bhagiratha achievements in science and scientific practices.

It is either per chance or choice, for long the contributions made by ancient Indians in the field of science has been either ignored in totality or given a cold treatment in the textbooks written by an Independent India.

The new National Curriculum Framework must reflect all these aspects in-as-much science is concerned, yet taking adequate measures to keep jingoism, tokenism and propaganda strictly light years away.

By and large, the science that we teach or learn today in our country, as well as in the states is primarily of European origin.

There is absolutely nothing wrong to learn something that originated in a foreign land for we believe in the dictum “Ā no bhadrāḥ kratavo yantu viśvataḥ,” meaning, “let noble thoughts come to us from all directions.”

But somewhere down the line pursuing the western science, we have now come to a situation where the youth of our country have no clue about the scientific achievement of our ancestors.

There have been attempts in the past and a few ongoing, to actively look for “scientific interpretation” for our rituals and other day to day activities.

Notwithstanding the good intention behind such attempts, this subtly reveals the colonised mind-set, for subliminally the “western science” is kept on a higher pedestal and we only try to “elevate” ourselves to these scientific truths.

This is a double whammy as far as our cultural ethos are concerned, for it not only undermines our heritage but also inherently submits to the ill-perceived superiority of the western science.

When scientists like Schrodinger, Heisenberg and a number of others hold the intellectual culture of Bharata in high esteem, we have a section of our peers and so-called intellectuals who have projected an altogether different narrative.

This narrative has resulted in eliciting a sense of bemoan in our youngsters, as they feel it highly regressive to dwell on our country’s intellectual past.

Complete delinking of our youngsters from our intellectual and cultural moorings of the past is a dangerous locus and will have sinister outcomes in near future.

Somehow the textbooks convey to our students that Indians in the past had some contribution of worth in fields like linguistics and maths, but were completely ignorant about science.

For instance, when the classification of matter is introduced, there is absolutely no mention of the Indian philosophical systems, especially the Vaisesika, which had its own indigenous way of classification, but our students are not at all informed about the same.

In subjects like chemistry and physics, the current textbooks do not mention anything about ancient and medieval Bharata’s contributions to this field.

There needs to be a serious shift of focus and gaze from the Eurocentric history of science.

The textbooks should help our students acquaint, assimilate and appreciate the irrefutable fact that the deep sense of inquiry and analysis is ingrained in our civilisation right from the Rig Vedic period, which is universally accepted as the world’s oldest and Rig Veda, the oldest living literature produced by humans on this planet (Ref: Vedic and Indo-European Studies by Nicholas Kazanas; Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi), 2015 ISBN 9788177421378).

The esoteric discussion on the origin of this universe, creation is the crux of the Nasadiya Sukta (Rig Veda.10.129) whose salient points are equally relevant and accurate even in our contemporary times.

The existence in nature of a self-supporting principle was inferred (Rig Veda.10.129.5). Among various other things, the possible genesis of conch-shell and pearl were discussed in the Atharvaveda (4.10. 1-7).

In the Satapatha Brahmana, a theory of material evolution (6.1.3 1-5) is offered.

Even the idea of building blocks of matter like atoms and molecules (not exactly related to the modern sense of atoms and molecules though) are found in Katha Upanisad (1.2.20).

And according to Debiprasad Chattopadhyay, one of the historian of science of our country who worked on the Lokayata contributions, notwithstanding his ideological biases, Uddalaka Aruni of the Chandogya Upanisad fame, a historical figure, who traveled from Taksasila to North Bihar, was a materialist or hylozoist, who propounded that everything in the universe, including man, evolved out of three elements, and even mind being a product of matter.

He preceded Theles of Greece by nearly two centuries, and has therefore been claimed by Chattopadhyaya to be the ‘first scientist in the world.’ (Ref: A. K. Biswas; Indian Journal of History of Science, 45.2 (2010) 241-285 and Debiprasad Chattopadhyay; History of Science and Technology in Ancient India-The Beginning, Firma KLM Private Ltd., Kolkata, 1986).

All these go on to highlight the scientific temper and the spirit of inquiry of our ancestors, which are the bedrock of science.

Science has its roots in and is as old as our Bharatiya culture. Armed adequately with the accurate epistemological tools like the pratyaksa, anumana, sabda etc., it is not at all an exaggeration to say our ancestors were one of the early ones who had conceptualised science.

The textbooks should be able to communicate to our students such details of our lofty past.

Our ancestors did not just confine themselves to merely conjecturing. There are several elements in the history of science that ancients and medieval Indians have contributed immensely and some of which are yet to get their long awaited due recognition.

Right from the drill ploughs (Ref: Dharampal’s The Beautiful Tree Volume 1; First published by Impex India in July 1971 Reprinted in July 1983 by Academy of Gandhian Studies, Hyderabad) in vogue since the Vedic era, till the invention of the semiconductor junction by Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose, there are many examples of Bharatiya breakthroughs which have not got their due recognition.

It is high time we have a Needham for India. (Note: Prof. Joseph Needham is a historian who has extensively studied the Chinese contribution to science and technology from ancient times, resulting in 27 volumes brought out in the years 1956 to 1966)

One may argue that such topics are for the subject of history and not for science. But it is well established that introducing the history of science is an effective way to arouse curiosity in the students (Ref: Koliopoulos et al, “The Use of History of Science Texts in Teaching Science: Two Cases of an Innovative, Constructivist Approach” The Science Education Review, 6(2), 2007).

So dwelling into the scientific contributions of our ancestors falls well within the ambit of science education and this is very much part of the ‘Knowledge of India’.

Furthermore, elementary scientific topics, like our ancestors having made longstanding observation of the visible sky, about the geography of our planet, the way plants produce food, the way blood circulates in the body, science of medicine and managing disease, abstract mathematics and computations, medical surgery, rainwater harvesting, water cycle which find copious mention in ancient Bharatiya texts and that too at that instance in the history of mankind, when there was no commensurate or comparable achievement in the rest of the world, are not introduced to our children in the textbook at all.

Well established facts like the author of the Rasarnava knew how to arrange metals in the order of their reactivity, something that we learn today as the electrochemical series, needs to be told to our students.

Bharata is perhaps the first country in the world to have described in detail the flame test for different metals, but paradoxically our students are completely oblivious to such historical accomplishments.

Various laboratory apparatus used in Rasarnava and Rasaratnasamuccaya introduced in contemporary textbooks will go a long way in informing our students about both science and heritage at one go.

Science textbooks should be oriented towards not only informing our students of ancient and medieval achievements but also inspiring them to read more of these texts in their original versions.

This will not only create a sense of appreciation for our heritage but will also sensitise students to different subjects like manuscriptology, preservations etc, which may help them to charter alternate professional paths in their individual life.

It is worth reiterating that merely highlighting the accomplishments in a fact box with one or two colorful images would not suffice. More details need to be thoroughly explained and our students should be given a holistic view.

There are ample resources which are rich in detail (as a start, the two edited volumes on History of Indian Science and Technology brought out by the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, under the editorship of one of the celebrated savants of Karnataka Dr B V Subbarayappa) and it is highly recommended that the textbooks take cognisance of such resources.

‘Bharatiya health systems’ is a topic which is dealt with very rarely in the texts of the school education.

Some of the topics to be included in this subject are: Perspectives from Ayurveda, daily and seasonal regimens, suppression of natural urges, pre-natal and post-natal care, introduction to indigenous health systems: Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani etc., Health benefits of exercise: perspective from Yoga and Ayurveda, holistic lifestyle changes for wellness, eating and drinking habits for good health: Concepts from Ayurveda, types of water and its effect on health, concept of sleep, Prajnaparadha in detail.

Texts like Vrksayurveda, Asvayurveda, Gajayurveda etc have to be discussed in appropriate stages to inform our students about such intellectual practices from our past.

When it comes to what is animate and what is inanimate, is a matter of great concern in science, particularly the way it is informed to our Indian impressionable minds.

Although the Indian way has defined concepts like jada and caitanya, the contemporary Indian textbooks hardly discuss them vis-à-vis living and non-living things.

This apparent dichotomy and the tension has emerged well in the dialogue between Prof Richard Dawkins and Satish Kumar, which is quintessentially the diverging point for the Indian way and the Western way to look at things albeit in a scientific manner.

It is high time that the Indian science textbooks inform our impressionable minds about these aspects in a systematic manner.

Indian logic (including the Buddhist and Jaina) have gone a long way in systematising epistemology and today when a student of physics is introduced to logic gates, must have a good grounding on these aspects too. This will only help them in their understanding the concepts in a more holistic manner.

Cross-disciplinary approach is highly encouraged in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and nothing closer comes as an illustration than the Indian masterpieces from both technical and pure literature background.

Take for instance the Sharangadhara Samhita (5.48,5.49), we get a precise yet poetic description of respiration in the following words:

which means, “the prana vayu (life breath) starts from the navel region, touches the heart region and exits through the throat. Then it tastes the nectar (oxygen) and returns swiftly back to the body and thereafter it stimulates our internal metabolic processes.”

The journey of the life breath is described in a very poetic manner where after exiting through the throat it is said to have attained the Visnupada and at this place, the oxygen is compared to nectar.

If poetry was used as a convenient medium to instruct pupils on the nuances of respiration, we have the poet Kalidasa who takes recourse in explaining a literary idea with an analogy from science.

In his monumental work called Kumarasambhava (2.59) the poet says:

where Kalidasa uses the simile of a magnet attracting the iron.

Elsewhere, even in lofty fields of knowledge like darsana, Sankara the great uses the similie of magnet to drive a point.

He says in his Brahmasutra bhasya (2.2.7) thus:

पुरुशाष्मवदिति चेत् तथापि (….like how a magnetic stone (lodestone) attracts….).

For philosophers and poets to use a scientific concept like magnetism so seamlessly in their work, goes on to show how the common people were aware of magnetism and how such a concept was very much a commonplace back in those times.

Today world is grappling with the evils of excessive utilitarianism and whether it is to one’s liking or not, science has been a major contributor in this because science, although a method, has proven itself to be a convenient weapon to win over a rational mind.

So it is all the more important that today, the impressionable minds of our country be informed that science is not subservient to supreme human, rather science is a method for even humans to realise that we are also a very tiny quantum in this mammoth universe/multiverse.

Not just relegating Indian science to obscure ‘fact boxes’ or indulging in merely stating trivia like how Mendeleev was inspired by the systematisation of arranging syllables in Sanskrit language or the etymological connects, say between ‘sulfur’ and ‘sulvari’, our science textbooks must go a long way by informing our impressionable minds that we are not merely here to consume, rather our goal is to comprehend and attain higher realms of consciousness.

If our science textbooks can do this, nothing better!