 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today, we'll be talking about what many have termed the attack of science and the rise of pseudoscience in India, especially ever since the far-right wing government of Narendra Modi came to power. To talk more about this, we are joined by Professor Satyajit Rath. Professor Rath is a member, is part of the Indian Institute of Science Education Research and is also an activist with the Delhi Science Forum and the All-India People's Science Network. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. So India is quite unique in the sense that it actually has mention of scientific temper and the constitution. And we've always had, of course, a group of people, a fringe, if you can call it so, who have talked about how India is the origin of all civilization, how Indian science achievements have been the greatest in the world, etc. But what we do see is that over the past many years, especially since 2014, when Narendra Modi came to power, this has acquired a certain structural element and there's been a lot of institutional support to it from the level of the Prime Minister. So could you talk a bit about how these kind of narratives, which were always thought to be, say, minority of fringe narratives have acquired this legitimacy? Well, let me start with something of a disavowal. In these times, people like us tend to think that in fact, there was a mainstream commitment to science rationality and the scientific temper in days and years gone by. This is a particular privilege of the elderly, but many of us think this. And I think it's important to remember that this is not the case. So has India had a commitment to scientific temper? Yes, but there are two interesting and instructive components to that commitment. The first one goes back to the man who sort of coined the phrase, sort of coined the phrase Jawaharlal Nehru. And when he talked about scientific temper, he talked about its two components in shall we say lopsided ways. He talked about the contributions of science and technology to public policy and public good in very prominent ways. He also, to be fair to him, intended for science, scientific temper and rationality to be the basis of citizenly empowerment. He did. However, if you ask whether he talked about that as effectively talked about the technological mediation of science for society, I must admit that he did not. Now, at what point did scientific temper get incorporated into our constitutional citizenly duties? It's the 42nd Amendment. And the 42nd Amendment, which committed us both to a secular republic and to the dissemination of scientific temper, was passed during the emergency. There are many instructive ironies in this to unpack. But for this particular context, let me make one follow-on point from there. And that is, until recent years, India's commitment, Indian society's commitment to scientific temper was aspirational in the main, meaning that we didn't behave rationally. We didn't necessarily display any great evidence of scientific temper. We displayed all sorts of other temper. But we had a common shared aspirational hypocrisy, if you will. That scientific temper was a good thing. Rationality, evidence-based approaches to public policymaking for the public good were all good things. We sought of kind of wish that we had them. And to some extent or the other, in fits and starts, we made attempts at it. It's exactly, forgive me for bringing up yet another of our many subcontinental sore points. But it was exactly like declaring in our constitution that we did not accept caste-based inequalities. It was aspirational. That said, the aspiration was deeply meaningful because it formed the basis of what I'm calling these small attempts in a variety of ways, not all of which went anywhere and so on and so forth. But it was the basis of the attempts to achieve this. So what I would argue the last five, six years have done is not so much that we have seen a fringe or a minority opinion become the dominant driving measure of discourse. It's much more that we have abandoned our aspirational ideal of scientific temper. And we have done so in two different ways. One in what let me call the Uncivil Society and the other very prominently in state forward matters of state and governance. So when we think about what the past few years have done, I think it's important for us to remember that it is this shift rather than simply a sort of lunatic fringe opinion that suddenly comes in out of nowhere and takes over discourse. We need to be clear about what the transition is that we're talking about. So you mentioned these two elements. That is one of course at the level of state policy and institutional structures and one is at the level of the Uncivil Society itself. Now the Uncivil Society bit has got the far more attention because you often see many proclamations sometimes by people in power, sometimes by scientists also, which make absolutely no sense at all. But how does this function in the realm of state policy and institutional structure because that can often be the more long lasting and enduring, that can have a more enduring impact on people? Yes. And I'm not quite convinced that both components have not received equal prominence in public discourse and in media. I suspect they have, but in any case, again, a little contrarian style, let me respond by giving examples which sort of sit in no man's land between these. So let me give you an example. Changing textbooks. At one level, this is an exercise of state power. To change textbooks and to change textbooks of social science and history and so on and so forth away from evidence based scholarly interpretations and towards a mythologizing, glorifying perspective is, despite the fact that it's a street textbook that's being altered, I think an example of the systematic retreat from scientific temper. But it's been talked about. The example of should we be examining what the cow gives us for its medicinal, nutritional and related properties? Particularly, mind you, the Indian cow, not this... Inconsequential, not to say foreign cow. So, Baas Taurus and Baas Indicus as the examples. In all of these, you have the Indian Council of Medical Research making commitments. You have various state agencies making all sorts of commitments to examining this. You will have pushback. Was this not done earlier? And the answer is yes, it was. It's in how much, how aggressively that we see the shift. Now, to give an example of exactly this, India has, and this is a controversial example, India has currently a government ministry that is called Ayush. And Ayush is one of those copywriters, advertising copywriters, fantasies come through. It says life in India's original sacred language. But in the language of the colonizer, whose claims to empire we continue to assert, it is an acronym, and it is an acronym for Ayurveda, Yoga, Yunani, Siddha, and Homeopathy. Homeopathy is not subcontinently. So, again, there is much to unpack in this. The interesting thing is, it is in the last five years that the ministry of the department of Ayush was created. True, but the acronym doesn't date back to only then. The acronym dates back earlier within the apparatus of the state. The acronym dates back earlier with a council, a board, a commission, and various sort of intermediate entities. So, it is in quantity and aggressiveness that the shift is most prominent. Added to this is the example of where these kinds of efforts from the state rather than being directly influential in and of themselves as acts of governance. Things don't necessarily change because the state wants them changed. It's not as if there is a monumental amount of money spent in huge numbers of biomedical researchers who are examining cow urine. There are not. There is a small handful. So, what difference does it make? So, the difference it makes is that when the state makes these gestures of governance that are committed to an anti-scientific ideology, what you have is the emboldening of the anti-rational, the anti-scientific in public discourse. And again, let me give you a borderline example. You're familiar with one of India's central universities, the Banaras Hindu University, is currently ongoing one of more than one controversies. This one relates to the appointment of a Muslim gentleman as an assistant professor in a certain department. A letter written by 20 scholars in the subject has been submitted to the president. And the letter claims two interesting things. One, the letter claims that the department is a department of theology. The theology is a peculiarly Christian concept. And it's instructive that the prevailing dominant atmosphere of homogenizing Hindutva is borrowing these terminologies. Even more interestingly, the letter then apparently goes on to say, from media reports, the letter then apparently goes on to say that this department examines subcontinental sacral traditions and practices, such as it lists Sanatana Dharma, the ancient way, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and therefore, the adherent of any one of these subcontinental faiths would be alright, but not the adherent of a non-subcontinental faith. And quite suddenly, you see a peculiar utilization of apparently logical rational discourse in the service, in an instrumental sense, in the service of a xenophobic agenda. So to kind of pick up on this a bit more, one of the issues we are also seeing is that, say, the kind of impact this is having on people in general. And this comes at an interesting time because on the one hand, India is claiming to be aspiring or claiming to be some sort of a technological superpower. It has been an IT major for so many years. That's the way the brand is being sold in many countries. For instance, in the field of space research, there has been considerable achievements. So how does exactly this sort of anti-scientific, anti-rational spirit work at a time when India is also marketing itself, especially the state, as one of the frontrunners and one of the countries in the forefront of a technological evolution? So it's interesting and particularly so if you think about that question in a global context. Globally, conservative, right-wing, xenophobic, elitist ideologies are deeply enamored of the technology that science provides. They want you to have your smartphones. They just don't want you to read the wrong kind of stuff on it. Technology in its consumer sense is welcome for right-wing ideologies. Technology in its emancipatory potential is not, which is why all the technological achievements that we are talking are on the background of a steady increase in the push to withdraw from public sector manufacture in the public good. And all of them are on the background of what I'm calling a growing and steady separation of science for private sector profit-making technology contributing to the economy and to consumer satisfaction on the one hand and the ability of science, of evidence, of causality and ideas of causality in empowering ordinary citizens, particularly empowering the disempowered to give them cause and effect and is to give them control, is to give them agency. The withdrawal is not from all of this. The withdrawal is very strategically from the empowering agency providing potential of scientific temper of rationalism but it is not supposed to touch marketable technologies. So to move a bit on to the aspect of resistance itself. So one of the major developments that has happened due to the processes you are describing is that the notion of actually in a scientific manner examining say India's scientific achievements or what has been the progress of science and technology seems to be like it's vanishing because the right has almost claimed complete hegemony over that space. So from a completely different perspective how would you see the possibility of serious examination of these achievements? Okay, so a realistic one with all its wants. Yeah, no. So let's look at it this way. Every time resistance to this conservative, revisionist, xenophobic ideological agenda is asked what is your response to the prime minister of India or to the education, human resource development minister of India saying that India had transplant surgery because we have stories of mythological entities with elephant heads and so on or that we had wireless or that we had aircrafts etc. What is your response to this? And one way of responding to this is to say very earnestly and sincerely no, we didn't. There is no such evidence. That's not what's called evidence. That's not what's called cause and effect. The reality is that we are being trolled. The reality is that this is a stylistic device being deployed in the same way that the current incumbent of the US White House deploys his tweets. They are not somebody said this about him and I think it applies to the broader point. What they say is not to be taken literally, but it is to be taken seriously. That distinction is a distinction that their supporters understand more than we in the resistance do I sometimes think. We need not to be responding to them literally in any seriousness. All literal responses need to be as a return trolling because it's the only way that you can respond. What we need to take is the subtext seriously and when we take the subtext seriously, we cannot be responding. Resistance must aggressively set the agenda by describing nuanced, sophisticated, evidence-based and deeply researched ways of recasting the narratives that are being used for trolling. So to give really just a couple of examples, I'm not saying this for the first time. Everything I have said, better people than me have said in the resistance in India and outside far better than I have said it. So in that spirit, ancient subcontinental contributions to science and technology have been deeply researched and have been talked about. What we don't do enough of is to insist that it is those very real achievements in all their interesting, fascinating complexity that need to be in our textbooks. Rather than saying this should not be in our textbook when an assault on rationality and science is facing us, we need to be proactively setting the agenda by saying current textbooks are insipid and anodine because they don't have this. We need to be including this. The narrative of the ingenuity and the complexity and the persistence of the human spirit globally needs to be foregrounded in our own narratives. Rather than simply in response. So to give an absolutely contemporary example, there has been a great deal of talk about the peopling of South Asia and about the civilizations, so-called civilizations. I'm not sure one can call them civilizations, but at least cultures that have developed in South Asia have disappeared in South Asia and who were these people? Where did they come from? How did the culture evolve? How did the culture disappear? Who are the inheritors of the culture? These are all interesting questions. And recent weeks and months have provided startling examples in India of how extremely complex, extremely interesting, extremely nuanced additions to that story can be essentially reworked wholesale into a mythology that supports the xenophobic right-wing conservative narratives. And my argument is rather than simply responding to those components in that narrative, no matter how dominant it is, we need to be able to say what is truly interesting, what is truly empowering about those narratives. And finally could you just talk a bit about the March for Science, especially over the past couple of years you've been an active participant. What is the kind of impact that you've seen over the past couple of years and what is the agenda you're looking forward in the coming years as well? So, here's an interesting thing about the March for Science. The March for Science in India has been in a variety of elements, a complexly sourced effort. All sorts of loosely allied groups and components and movements have come together in the various Marches for Science. Inevitably there have been creative disagreements as well. If one fairly common component is this is a western import that we are simply following. This is, as I said, sufficiently trolling and nonsensical that I am not going to respond to it seriously. If we are not all human beings together across the world, then we are nothing. But let me take an example of a criticism that's been made of the March for Science, which is, oh, these people are asking for more money for themselves because they are asking for somewhat better stipends and salaries. They are asking for a little more money into research, into higher education and so on and so forth. Oh, these are just people who are asking more money when people are not, et cetera. Is this true? So, in the first place, is it true that there is a demand for greater funding? Yes. But what we need to do is to look at this in the context of what's been happening. And what's been happening is not so much a reduction in funding. There has not been any great increase in funding. And if you count inflation and everything, there is a reduction in funding. But the point isn't whether there is an increase or a reduction in funding. The point is the priorities being set by the government are altering to the point where scholarship in science, where the kind of empowering agency providing cause and effect insight for ordinary people that the narrative of science provides is getting less and less support. What is getting support is technology development. And in that, what is getting support is technology development that is attractive to the private sector for making money. And it is this that has politicized in the March for Science a very large section of natural science students who typically in India consider themselves apolitical. And what that really means is consider themselves quite content with status quo, whatever status quo is. There is no such thing as apolitical. But consider themselves status quo. And it is instructive that it is over these past few years that this so-called apolitical category of upper middle class India has begun to be deeply concerned about the way funding for science, for scientific research and for higher education in science is being organized and funded. And that I think is a remarkably interesting development given what we started with that we have a state ideology that is inimical to the power of science and rationalism to give agency to the disempowerment. Thank you, Professor Rath. Thank you. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.