These are matters that should cause serious concern within the scientific community in India. But do they? The latest outrage, an award for astrology at the annual Indian Science Congress and its official defence by no less than a member of the Planning Commission, should be cause enough for serious concern. And, in fact, the award has been given to the president of an occult foundation. Professional scientists have protested but they have not been able to block the move. It is hard to imagine a major conclave of scientists in a developed country not breaking into pandemonium over such an affront to science and scientists, but this is India under the shadow of Hindutva. In fact, seen against the specific background of Ayodhya, the incident assumes even more menacing overtones. Even more shocking is the case of a physicist at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, who went to Ayodhya as a kar sevak in December 1992 and returned, with a piece of the rubble, to resume his duties in the service of science at one of India's leading S&T institutions.
We have referred in this essay to the many weaknesses of the science and technology infrastructure in India. These weaknesses are intimately connected with the overall social and economic crisis of Indian society today. If, as is widely recognised, the current Hindu fundamentalist wave is a far-Right reactionary response to the crisis, science and technology can hardly expect to remain immune to the influence of fundamentalism. Our scientific and technological institutions are not strong enough to withstand a sustained onslaught which is politically powered; it takes but a few years to dismantle active centres of research and teaching. And in the long run, give or take a few years, there could be a systematic dismantling of science and technology in this country. The direct links that Hindutva pseudo-science has with the less publicised fascist face of the Sangh parivar, suggest that if Hindutva triumphs, science and technology will be made subservient to its original dream of a pseudo-Hindu fascist state ( as elaborated by Golwalkar in 1939). If these words seem unduly alarmist, we need to remember that the current grim political situation, if it had been forecast or projected in the mid-1980s, would have been dismissed as unimaginable in India.
What does a serious and genuine commitment to science and technology mean in the current context? In a perceptive essay Jacob Bronowski (Bronowski, 1977) argues that science is not a value-neutral human activity. ``The activity of science is directed to seek the truth (about the material world), and it is judged by the criterion of being true to facts. We can practice science only if we value the truth'' (Bronowski, 1977, p.212). Without truth, science is not possible. This truth is not immutable for we find descriptions of nature only up to a certain coarseness, a certain tolerance. This, in turn, implies that science values dissent, for without dissent there would be no challenge of the established concepts and no progress. And the right to dissent needs to be safeguarded. Science values independence of thought because it is a necessary condition of dissent, and originality because it is the tool with which the new is discovered. These values are essential to modern science and science needs a society that recognises these as social values. The right of free and critical enquiry which is implied by these values is one of the abiding things that science has given to society.
We have referred in this essay to the importance of the critical and rational spirit in society for science to flourish. It bears emphasis that it is in assisting in the task of expanding the realm of operation of free and critical enquiry in society that science and scientists fulfill their social responsibility. It is this perception, affirmed and grasped at the mass level, that has led to the remarkable phenomenon of popular science movements in India which seek to empower the people through the transmission of the knowledge of science and the scientific method. Hindutva, and the obscurantism, science fraud and pseudo-science it inflicts on society at the political and, therefore, the mass level, work precisely in the opposite way. From the standpoint of science and its values, Hindutva must be judged to be a serious threat indeed.
A commitment to science is a positive commitment to secularism. The historian K. N. Panikkar has referred (see Panikkar, 1991) to the necessity of expanding the secular space in society, of seizing the initiative from communalism and promoting a positive campaign for secularism. Science belongs firmly to this secular space; if it does not, we cannot conceive of another pursuit, another activity, which does. Hindutva cannot easily challenge the popular perception of the need for science and technology as an integral part of development. This perception can be used to promote a powerful campaign that links secularism firmly with science, that demonstrates that science is impossible without the development of a critical spirit. In the ultimate analysis, the development of science and of the spirit of free and critical enquiry can make a major contribution to eradicating the blight of communalism that is upon India. References