The slow death of scientific temper

Priyanka Gandhi's remark in Parliament, referring to a member of the government's examination reform panel as a "gomutra expert," has triggered the predictable outrage. The truly comical part, however, is that although she did not name anyone, leaders and supporters of the ruling dispensation seemed to identify the individual almost instantly.

Within hours, numerous right-wing social media handles had shifted into the familiar pattern of lavishing praise on his academic credentials, portraying him as an eminent scientist beyond reproach, and directing a barrage of personal attacks at Priyanka Gandhi instead of engaging with the substance of her criticism. It was a masterclass in changing the conversation. The question was never whether the individual possessed impressive academic qualifications, but whether occupying one of the highest scientific offices in the country confers him the licence to publicly legitimise claims that fail the most elementary standards of scientific evidence; and why a country that aspires to be a global scientific power has reached a point where such a remark could resonate with millions of people.

The individual at the centre of the controversy is not merely another random commentator on television. He heads one of India's premier scientific institutions. When someone occupying such an office publicly lends credibility to claims about the medicinal virtues of cow urine that are unsupported by established clinical evidence, he is not speaking merely as a private citizen. He is speaking from a position that derives its authority from science itself. And that distinction certainly matters.

Institutions such as the IITs, IISc, AIIMS and ISRO command public trust because they represent the triumph of evidence over superstition, experimentation over assertion and scepticism over dogma. Their authority is earned through decades of painstaking work by scientists who understood that nature does not negotiate with belief. When the custodians of those institutions blur the line between evidence and conviction, the damage extends far beyond one controversial speech. It corrodes public trust, confuses young minds, and diminishes the very institutions they are entrusted to protect.

ALSO READ | Who really won the exam protest?

Science has never demanded that we abandon tradition. It asks only one thing of every claim, irrespective of whether it emerges from a laboratory in Bengaluru or an ancient manuscript in Varanasi. Show us the evidence, and if the evidence exists, science embraces it. If it does not, science rejects the claim without fear or favour. There is no patriotic exemption from peer review, and there is no nationalist substitute for reproducibility. There is no constitutional privilege that allows mythology to masquerade as medicine.

Yet, over the past decade, India has witnessed an increasingly disturbing inversion of these principles. The head of one scientific institution praises medically unsupported claims. Another public scientific figure suggests that the entirety of modern scientific knowledge was already known to ancient India and merely appropriated by the West. At various public forums, astonishing claims about ancient aviation, interplanetary travel and advanced biomedical procedures have been presented with a confidence inversely proportional to the evidence supporting them. These are not harmless eccentricities. They are public statements made by individuals who hold offices funded by taxpayers and are entrusted with nurturing scientific excellence.

The problem becomes even more acute when such rhetoric travels upward into the highest political offices. The Prime Minister has, on different occasions, cited the birth of Karna as evidence of ancient genetics and the figure of Lord Ganesha as suggestive of ancient plastic surgery, not to mention mathematical pronouncements that seem to obey neither algebra nor common sense. One may appreciate these stories as mythology, philosophy or religious symbolism. They have immense cultural significance, but what they certainly do not constitute is scientific evidence. Confusing metaphor with medicine and mythology with molecular biology does not elevate India's civilisation. It simply trivialises both science and mythology.

Perhaps the most unfortunate consequence is that India increasingly finds itself defending claims that the global scientific community does not regard as credible. The nation that sent a spacecraft to Mars on a remarkably modest budget, pioneered affordable vaccine manufacturing, built a world-class digital public infrastructure and produced generations of exceptional mathematicians, physicists and engineers should not also have to explain why pseudoscientific assertions repeatedly emerge from prestigious public platforms. That is not merely embarrassing; it is self-inflicted. There is an irony here that should trouble every Indian who values both heritage and reason.

Our Constitution anticipated this challenge decades ago. Article 51A(h) places upon every citizen a duty to develop "the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform." Those words were not inserted as ceremonial ornamentation. They reflect a profound constitutional understanding that democracy depends not merely upon universal suffrage but upon an informed citizenry capable of distinguishing evidence from assertion. Scientific temper is not hostility towards religion, nor is it contempt for tradition. It is the refusal to suspend critical inquiry because a claim happens to flatter our civilisational pride.

ALSO READ | Ayodhya, Parliament and a protest losing steam

Indeed, genuine respect for India's intellectual heritage requires precisely the opposite. Ancient Indian mathematics, astronomy, linguistics and metallurgy deserve admiration because they represented remarkable achievements for their time, grounded in observation, logic and disciplined inquiry. Their greatness does not require embellishment, nor do they become more impressive because someone imagines jet aircraft in the Vedas or genetic engineering in the Mahabharata. Civilisations secure their place in history through what they genuinely achieved, not through fantasies projected backwards into antiquity.

The response to pseudoscience cannot and should not be embarrassed silence. Nor can it be the reflexive defence that every criticism constitutes an attack on Indian culture. Culture and evidence occupy different domains. One nourishes identity and the other discovers truth. The health of a modern republic depends upon knowing the difference. That is why public figures who occupy scientific institutions carry a burden greater than their predecessors. Their words shape public understanding, and their offices confer legitimacy. They are free to hold private beliefs, as every citizen is. But the authority vested in their institutions belongs not to them but to the Republic. It has been built over generations by scientists who understood that ideas must earn respect through evidence, not inherit it through office.

India's scientific future will not be secured by invoking imagined glories of the past. It will be secured by preserving the habits that created its genuine achievements; through curiosity instead of certainty, evidence instead of assertion, and intellectual humility instead of institutional grandstanding. The Republic deserves nothing less. And neither does science.

(The author is a National Award winner for Best Narration and an independent political analyst. Views expressed are personal.)