MARGIN SPEAK

brigade accompanied by the deafening

silence of the state.

Saffron Science

Comic Claims
Anand Teltumbde

The space given to pseudoscience

of the Hindutva variety at the
Indian Science Congress must be
viewed as part of the ominous
process of all-round saffronisation
that is presently underway.

Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a

writer and civil rights activist of the
Committee for the Protection of Democratic
Rights, Maharashtra.

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Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the

measles of mankind.
Albert Einstein

he culture vultures belonging to

the Sangh Parivar have long been
preying on every kind of lie and
falsehood about the history of the subcontinent to establish their supremacist
claim. The roots of the current Hindutva
project may be traced to the intellectually rich incipient initiatives of the early
stalwarts of the so-called Hindu Renaissance in Bengal from Raja Ram Mohan
Roy and Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to
Swami Vivekananda towards Hindu
revivalism. But the palpable beginning
of this supremacist project can only be
traced to the intellectual juvenility of the
Chitpawan reconstruction in Maharashtra, provoked mainly by the fall of
Peshwai. It was articulated by Bal Gangadhar Tilak (The Arctic Home in the
Vedas), Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (Six
Glorious Epochs of Indian History), the
progenitor of Hindutva, and the likes of
Purushottam Nagesh Oak (claiming Taj
Mahal as a Shiva temple and a Rajput palace named Tejo Mahalaya, this in his
book, Taj Mahal: The True Story). Bordering on lunacy (or idiocy), Oak claimed
that not only every medieval structure
but also the Kaaba in Mecca as an
ancient Hindu monument.
These claims implicitly included Hindu
supremacy in the sphere of science and
technology, but they were never voiced
aloud in specific terms, and in such an
august forum as the 102nd Indian Science Congress (ISC), held recently in
Mumbai under the aegis of the University of Mumbai. The shrillness of these
claims was particularly discomfiting in
the wake of a series of Hindutva overtures such as love jihad, ramzade
haramzade, Bhagavad Gita as national
scripture, Madarsas as dens of terror
training, Godse as a patriot, etc, that
have been played out by the saffron

The ISC was formed on the lines of the

British Association for the Advancement
of Science, with the initiative of two
British chemists, J L Simonsen and
P S MacMahon, to stimulate scientific
research in India through an annual
meeting of research workers. Right from
its first meeting that took place from 15
to 17 January 1914 at the premises of the
Asiatic Society, Calcutta, with Asutosh
Mukherjee, the then Vice-Chancellor of
the Calcutta University, as president, it
has been conducted rationally, discussing actual research in the sciences supported by empirical evidence. The ISC
has never provided a platform to anyone
unrelated to science. Given this convention, it is symptomatic that the ISC in
Mumbai, the homeland of Hindutva, has
given a platform to Hindutva ideologues
to present their bizarre wares before the
scientific community. On the second day
of the Congress, a symposium on the
Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit had
been scheduled, inviting eight speakers
to speak on ancient Indian botany and
topics like the Neuroscience of Yoga,
Scientific Principles of Ancient Indian
Architecture and Civil Engineering,
ancient Indian aviation technology, and
ancient Indian surgery.
On ancient Indian aviation technology, one captain Anand Bodas, a retired
principal of a pilot training facility,
delivered a 30-minute speech based on a
paper he co-authored with a lecturer at
Mumbais Swami Vivekanand International School and Junior College. He
claimed that the sages Agastya and
Bharadwaja had invented jumbo aeroplanes in the Vedic age, 7,000 years ago.
These planes flew not only from country
to country but also to other planets;
not just forward, but backwards and
even sideways. They used various types
of metal alloys in their construction and
were piloted by men wearing virusproof, water-proof, and shock-proof
jackets made of fabric from underwater
vegetation.

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Economic & Political Weekly

MARGIN SPEAK

Bodas exhorted the younger generation to study Bharadwajas book Vimana

Samhita, make the alloys in India and
save foreign exchange. The radar system,
called rooparkanrahasya, presented the
actual shape of the aeroplane to the
observer, instead of the mere blip. He
claimed something which nobody on
this earth seemed to know, that in 1895,
a full eight years before the Wright
Brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina, USA, a Marathi couple, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade and his wife gave a
thrilling demonstration flight on the
Chowpatty beach in Mumbai. It is a different matter that the technical basis of
the Vedic Ion Engine supposedly used
by Talpade was trashed by researches
that examined the technological feasibility of such flights (H S Mukunda et al,
A Critical Study of the Work Vymanika
Shastra, Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore) way back in 1974.
Similar fantastic claims were made
by other speakers. One ayurvedic physician, a general practitioner in Mumbai,
described the advances made by Indian
surgeons thousands of years before the
rise of the modern surgery. Indians had
developed 20 types of sharp instruments and 101 blunt ones for surgeries.
The former were so sharp that they
could split a human hair. Another presenter spoke of how ancient Indian
engineers had adequate knowledge of
Indian botany and they effectively used
it in their construction.
The forte of this symposium was such
that most ministers of the Modi government at the conference heightened its significance. For instance, Harsh Vardhan, the
Union Minister for Science and Technology, said,
Our scientists discovered the Pythagoras
theorem, but we ... gave credit to the Greeks.
We all know that we knew beejganit much
before the Arabs, but selflessly allowed it to
be called Algebra.

Such irrational claims by intellectuals of

the Sangh Parivar were not unusual but
they were now being made in a science
forum before the scientific community.
The claimants were surely emboldened
by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who
said at the dedication of a hospital of
the Ambani Group in Mumbai on
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

febrUARY 7, 2015

25 October last year that the existence of

Ganesha and Karna proved that plastic
surgery and genetic science had existed
in ancient India.
National Phantasm
Some scientists did publicly protest
against the inclusion of such a pseudoscience in the ISC programme. The
online petition initiated by an Indian
scientist working for the US government
agency, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, was signed by
about 1,500 scientists. But there were
obviously many in the ISC and outside
who condescended.
None asked such simple questions to
those comedians as to how and when
this ancient treasure trove of knowledge
had vanished to leave historical India
pitiable on every conceivable count. All
people are endowed with the capacity of
generating and possessing knowledge
which comes about in face of challenges.
Indians, because of the rich natural
endowment of the country, perhaps did
not face as big challenges as others did
and hence they did not have to use their
capacity to invent/discover things. Moreover, this complacent state was fossilised
by the contrivance of the caste system
which permanently blocked the majority
of people from access to knowledge.
India did contribute to the pool of
scientific knowledge in certain branches
that were monopolised by the parasitic
class of Brahmins who maintained an
exclusive dominance over knowledge.
For instance, they wove intricate philosophies and developed cognitive constructs
and systems which covered astronomy,
astrology, mathematics, and alchemy.
The zero largely acknowledged as
Indias contribution necessarily falls in
this class. It is in the abstract sphere that
India seems to have made a significant
contribution but in spheres that interface with labour, she had little contribution to make.
India lagged in science and technology for production as it was cut off from
the sphere of formal knowledge. For
example, it did not know the arch, the
most efficient curve in engineering,
which made the superstructure with
heavy cross-beaming too heavy for the
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foundation, eventually to collapse and

vanish. It is therefore that India does not
have any architectural evidence of her
greatness, including, of course, the
interplanetary aeroplanes and surgical
instruments. It perhaps did not know
about the stitching of clothes until medieval times.
Fascist Stratagem
All these things, including External
Affairs Minister Sushma Swarajs shocking proposition for making Bhagavad
Gita the national scripture or Human
Resource Development Minister Smriti
Iranis outrageous move to impose Sanskrit on the school curriculum are actually part of a well thought-out strategy
of the Sangh Parivar. This is to transform India into a fascist state as fast as
possible. Jingoistic cultural nationalism
is a proven vehicle to create a national
community required to realise the fascist motto of one people, one culture,
one leader. Projecting a development
focus, promoting super power discourse,
posturing with rhetorical bravado, picturing a glorious past, shadow-boxing
an enemy, all this with massive inputs of
lies and falsehoods, and with a deliberate anti-intellectual stance, are also
established characteristics of the fascist
modus operandi.
If this is understood, there may not be
any more surprises about the raw antics of
certain constituents of the Sangh Parivar
and silence of the so-called saner people
within it. The process necessarily involves
othering, which is served well by these
antics. They are meant to communally
polarise people so as to consolidate and
expand the Parivars Hindu constituency. Adivasis and Dalits, a potential threat
to the Hindutva project, having been
Hinduised and Brahminised, respectively, the other minorities would be terrorised into submission.
The project of speedy saffronisation of
all institutions is in full swing. Space to
pseudoscience presentation in the ISC is
just a gauge to assess it. A minor protest
of a thousand odd scientists in an online
petition in a country that boasts of the
second largest pool of scientists and
engineers in the world reveals that the
danger of fascism is close upon us.
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