The motto of the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) is “to advance and promote the cause of science in India”. Since its inception in 1914, the ISCA has been organising the Science Congress. In 1947, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru provided a major boost to the ISCA by connecting it with the science-based national agenda and the Constitution’s commitment to inculcate and nurture scientific temper in society at large. In 1976, national issues that had scientific and technological implications were brought on the ISCA agenda. Later, other components, such as science communicators’ meet, science for school students and women in science, were included. The involvement of political leaders in the Science Congress was aimed at their participation in the discussions and taking a cue from the developments in the world of science to see how the nation can position itself and move forward. The showcasing of achievements of Indian scientists is also part of the ISCA agenda; lately, international participation of eminent scientists has been incorporated.

The Science Congress has moved away from its agenda in the past several years. Previously, in the post-Independence era, politicians came to the event to gain legitimacy from science for nation-building activities. Lately, this role has undergone an inversion. Political leaders attend it with a view to use and influence the Science Congress. They seem keen to set the agenda that they think scientists should adopt. Over the years, scientists have withdrawn from this arena. Nobel Laureate Prof Venkatraman Ramakrishnan once alluded to the Science Congress as a circus in which most prominent Indian scientists didn’t take part. There are several reasons for this withdrawal: Indian scientists think that it is not possible for them to participate in this event meaningfully as they perceive it as a state-organised show, not a serious scientific event; there is also a general apathy among scientists towards engaging with the public and they feel that their own career progression is more important. Very few Indian scientists make it a point to step out in the public arena, popularise science, disseminate scientific thinking, or try to inculcate scientific temper in different sections of society.

In this situation, the space provided by the Science Congress has been hijacked by the proponents of pseudo-science, which has always been making grandiose claims. Unfortunately, during the 106th edition held at Phagwara recently, this agenda unfolded during the session for school students.

What pseudo-science wants to do is to pretend that modern science already existed in ancient India. This is an injustice both to ancient civilisational knowledge systems as well as to modern science. History uses tools/methods to ratify the historicity of a claim. These claims should also be put to the test of scientific rationale — to verify their historicity and truth value. So far, the tall claims of test-tube babies and aircraft and missile technology made by proponents of pseudo-science at Science Congress meetings have failed this test.

Science is an ever-changing and evolving system of knowledge, where knowledge is generated on the basis of rational enquiry, empirical evidence and by an agreement within the community of scientists. Several concepts that were considered scientifically true earlier have now been replaced by new ones. In recent years, it has been realised by scientists that there could be a transfer of information from generation to generation which is not through DNA, which was earlier considered as the only agent for such transfers. As scientific knowledge gets updated, will we correspondingly be willing to update the holy books? This will sound blasphemous! These are just a few of the problems that emerge when attempting to mix modern scientific knowledge and the holy books. The schism between the two knowledge systems is even deeper; science is a human knowledge system created by scientists as a community, based on the scientific method, and hence this knowledge is always incomplete and perpetually in the process of getting updated. The spiritual knowledge of the holy books is supposed to have a divine origin and is hence always complete, unchanging, and final. Thus, the possibility of meshing these two knowledge systems is inherently contradictory.

Furthermore, we need to think beyond science as a means of generating technology and start thinking about science as a way of life. A scientific method equips an individual to analyse situations on the basis of scientific rationality. This aspect has been neglected by policy-makers, educationists while designing science curricula, and even by scientists themselves. There are institutions in India dedicated to promoting scientific temper and scientific thinking among the masses — the Science Congress is among the vehicles for this venture — but this task is not being pursued seriously enough.

The Science Congress organisers should ensure that the event is held in true scientific spirit. Efforts should be made to involve the scientific community more strongly. The country’s three science academies — the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Sciences — should have a closer involvement with the Science Congress. The government should participate as a facilitator with a view to promoting the cause of science, not to push an agenda. It should be ensured that the talks and presentations are made by people who have a clear professional standing in the field concerned. Science academies can help in this process. The history of science and the history of ancient contributions to science in India should be left to historians of science to evaluate. If these measures are taken, the Science Congress can be brought back on track and can play an important role in integrating science with Indian society.

Arvind is Professor of Physics at IISER Mohali.

This piece appeared originally on The Tribune and has been reposted here with permission.

ੲਿਸ ਲੇਖ ਨੂੰ ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਵਿੱਚ ਪੜਨ ਲੲੀ ੲਿੱਥੇ ਕਲਿਕ ਕਰੋ।

Update (21-Jan-2019): Link to the Punjabi translation of the article has been added.

Dear Colleague,

With all the swift changes that we see around us today, it appears that India is at a tipping point. A revolution is underway in the Indian financial sector. But a revolution of this size and scale is not likely to be confined to its native domain; it is likely to spread to other areas… perhaps to Indian science, or yonder to Indian academics in general.

In this context, I wish to present a few reflections, as one Indian scientist to another. The current scenario in Indian science is such that, if you wish to survive and thrive, you can only do so by consenting to be part of Western coteries of science, and be willing to be in a sense subservient to their activity. You imbibe their ways of thought, you echo their views, you accept their unsubstantiated opinions, you repeat their utterances in slightly repainted jargon, you confirm their conclusions in a thousand ways, and, as if that’s not enough, you even entertain them in a wide variety of non-academic methods. Then you can have a life, your career rests securely on the bedrock of western modality.

But if you work in isolation, exploring new avenues, fumbling, groping along, taking great risks, trusting your intuition in search of something else (which is how a true scientist works, we learnt in our early years from the fairy tales of scientists’ lives), be prepared for your doom.

These philosophies, or strategies if you will, of scientific career-building, are reflected year after year in the manner we organise our international conferences and workshops. We invite a shining host of dignitaries from the West, beseech them to stand tall on the dais and pontificate; we invite the struggling, uninformed, purblind hordes of the locals, and order them to stay in the well and slurp in all the knowledge that they can, gratefully, in knelt positions.

Any number of Indian scientists, particularly those active today, would have had this ignoble experience. They turn out a piece of work which they are legitimately proud of. The manuscript is submitted, with hope and justified confidence, to a top journal like Nature or PNAS. It promptly gets rejected for some fragile reason. The descent then begins, like that of Ganga from her heavenly abode, in stages, to this lowly earth. The manuscript gets rejected, in stages, by lesser and lesser journals, until it gets published at a level that is way below the quality of the science that it proudly set out to proclaim.

The misery doesn’t end there. A few years later, a very similar work shows up, from the great Elsewhere, in a top journal and — the juiciest part — they don’t cite the Indian paper.

Therefore, a growing young scientist in India today tries to build her/his career completely by looking westward, by making sure at every step that her/his equation with these western Temples of Learning is just right. By corollary, we don’t look up to or look at — if not look down upon — the work of our Indian colleagues. We rarely follow the scientific work of other Indian colleagues, perhaps because such attention has no practical and material consequence. Thus, we constantly face what is popularly called a “double whammy.” As it is, the Western academics care two hoots about our work and, what’s more, we are also written off by our beloved compatriots.

These difficulties are seriously compounded by the current practices — necessary but increasingly becoming unhealthy — of reducing scientific quality to numbers. These days, when two Indian scientists meet, the most interesting questions asked are not “what are you working on these days?” or “what are the IDEAS with which you are preoccupied of late?” but “where have you published?” and “where are you going this summer?”

You don’t have to read papers anymore to judge science. Thanks to the whole Impact Factor revolution, the task of assessing the quality of scientific work, the depth of a scientific idea, can now be deftly handled by anyone who knows how to add up to the second decimal.

This kind of sidelining of science at a national level is experienced by other Asian nations too. But the way they cope with it seems to be quite different. The Japanese, with their strong sense of nationalism, will lose no opportunity to project the work of a fellow Japanese scientist, over a comparable piece of work from the West. Russians too are eager to substitute, or at least insert, the name of a deserving fellow Russian where a comparable piece from the West is discussed (e.g., not Hopf bifurcation but Andronov-Hopf bifurcation).

This slavish mindset seems to be entrenched among students also. If there is a new line of thought about a research topic that comes from one of us, pitted against something from the Establishment, they comfortably, unhesitatingly choose the Establishment. I had to spend hours in patient discussion with my own students to convince them that there are other, more interesting ways of looking at a problem, leading to more comprehensive solutions. My experience with an undergrad student was memorable: he would refuse to even consider my line of thinking about a topic simply because “this person from Yale and that other person from RIKEN doesn’t think so.”

It is supposed to be our duty and mandate to train the next-gen scientists to judge a piece of work as it is, without the aid of the irrelevant socio-academic tags (impact factors, etc.). They seem to begin their careers with a subconscious conviction that the Indian science is intrinsically inferior and salvation lies elsewhere. The Advaita Vedanta assertion, ‘Brahma satyam, jagan mithyaa [The Brahman alone is the Truth; mundane life is an illusion]’ seems to be echoed here as “Western science is true and glorious, the sole existent; and Indian science? Ah! It’s a myth”.

The somewhat dogmatic mindset has crept beyond the walls of our academic campuses also. How often do we see the local media covering the scientific work of an Indian colleague? I once saw a piece of work on computational neuroscience from a United States university reported in a local Chennai paper. It is a standard piece of work. Many of us in India have more interesting things to say. Why isn’t it talked about as much? I asked. I was told that the media doesn’t like to cover Indian science, as much as it does science from abroad, simply because the readers don’t like to read about it.

Why are we not proud of what we do — of what we are? Why are we often embarrassed (or even sorry) about our work? How come we don’t share and discuss the work we do here, in our country, in India, and talk about it with excitement, energy and self-confidence? Why don’t we lower, just for a moment, our gaze, which is constantly fixed upon the Western stars, and look here, look around, and be surprised by the fresh blossoms of science blooming everywhere?

There have been bright stars — the Boses and Ramans — among us all along, those who worked and shone in the darkest nights. But they are solitary heroes. They rose high over a ground that is barren, in a scientific community that was generally comatose.

But today, if Indian science — alongwith the Indian scientific community at large — is to grow and occupy its rightful place, it can only be done with the powerful propulsion that can come from a genuine spirit of nationalism. (Of course, not a crude, semi-blind nationalism that sacrifices Truth at the altar of Tradition.) That’s how any nation such as U.S., Japan, Germany that climbed to a high place in science has done it. All that it takes is an iota of self-respect, a tiny drop of conscience, a brief moment of self-reflection. If we but redefine ourselves, we may reclaim our rightful place in world Science.

Sincerely,

Yours truly

Prof V Srinivasa Chakravarthy is associated with Department of Biotechnology at IIT Madras.

This article appeared first in thREAD of The Hindu.