If all these steps taken down the Hindutva road present but a preview, where does the road of full-blown fundamentalism take science and technology? To answer the question a brief look at mathematics and physics in Pakistan is sufficient. In an essay on ``Ideological Problems of Science in Pakistan,'' the Pakistani physicist Prof. Pervez Hoodbhoy (see Khan, 1985) presents a graphic picture of the collapse of attempts made in the 1960s and 1970s to build science in Pakistan. By the 1980s the Department of Physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, which a decade or two earlier was an active centre of research in theoretical physics, had lost its founder and a number of other scientists, who were dismissed or resigned. Mathematics, according to the author, has ceased to exist as a research discipline in Pakistan and a prize committee for young mathematicians was unable to find a single applicant with a record of original publications. An admissions test for entrance to graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.A) was not cleared by a single student, most students falling significantly below the minimum required. In contrast, a decade ago several students would have made the grade. Chemistry and biology are perhaps somewhat better placed, but research is confined to one or two centres.
Serious scientists work heroically under overwhelming odds in such circumstances; good or outstanding scientific work done is despite the milieu. ``Islamic Science,'' whose proponents claim that the Koran contains all possible science, makes constant inroads into positions of power in educational and Research and Development institutions, and obscurantism has been elevated to a position of dignity. The author cites a number of examples of the non-science that is produced as a result. A senior scientist of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, committed to `Islamic science,' argues that Koranic evidence supports the existence of jinns as fiery beings possessing unlimited energy, and that this energy can be used as fuel. Another author proposes that atomic charges are carved out of ``spiritual forces'' and ``not simply the blind electromagnetic forces that the materialists would make us believe.''
Prof. Hoodbhoy concludes: ``Indeed, the reaction against science as an instrument of reason, whether applied to social matters or even natural phenomena, appears to intensify with increasing technological dependence on the West ...However, one clear consequence has been the tremendous elevation in importance of the transnational corporation, the most important purveyor of modern technology. The import of technology makes possible the simultaneous coexistence of mediaevalism with the space age.'' The relevance of these words for India is too close for comfort.