Science and the Indian Tradition

When Einstein Met Tagore

David L. Gosling

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781134143320
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

This new text is a detailed study of an important process in modern Indian history. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, India experienced an intellectual renaissance, which owed as much to the influx of new ideas from the West as to traditional religious and cultural insights.

Gosling examines the effects of the introduction of Western science into India, and the relationship between Indian traditions of thought and secular Western scientific doctrine. He charts the early development of science in India, its role in the secularization of Indian society, and the subsequent reassertion, adaptation and rejection of traditional modes of thought. The beliefs of key Indian scientists, including Jagadish Chandra Bose, P.C. Roy and S.N. Bose are explored and the book goes on to reflect upon how individual scientists could still accept particular religious beliefs such as reincarnation, cosmology, miracles and prayer.

Science and the Indian Tradition gives an in-depth assessment of results of the introduction of Western science into India, and will be of interest to scholars of Indian history and those interested in the interaction between Western and Indian traditions of intellectual thought.

1 Introduction

Tradition is generally understood to include a substantial component of religion, which many people believe to be incompatible with science. It is therefore not surprising that there is a large body of literature which attempts to reconcile science with tradition, much of it by scientists who are religious believers. But these publications are predominantly concerned with the situation in the West, and very little research has been done on science within the context of the Indian tradition, of which the Hindu element is the most unfamiliar to European Christians, and also very complex. What follows attempts to correct this imbalance and open up new avenues for understanding the relationships between science and religious belief in an inter-faith context.

Science in India

Early in 2005 the New Scientist devoted a special edition to ‘India, the next knowledge superpower’.¹ While the first indications had appeared eight years previously with claims in the media that young Indians were ‘stealing’ information technology (IT) jobs from wealthy nations, the trickle has become a flood. Between 2000 and 2005 alone, more than a hundred science-based and high-tech companies have set up research laboratories in India, recruiting their personnel from India’s 250 universities and prestigious technology institutes – a pool of just under 3.5 million science graduates in all. During the same five years the contribution of the IT industry to India’s economy in terms of Gross Domestic Product has risen from 1.5 per cent to just over 3 per cent.

India’s pharmaceutical industry has undergone a comparable revolution. Thanks to distinctive patenting laws which allow patents to be taken out on the processes whereby medicines are made, but not on the actual medicines, cheap generic versions of some of the West’s most important drugs have been produced at a fraction of the price for sale in India and other developing countries. Thus life-saving therapies for AIDS which cost US$10,000 a year in the West have been made available in Africa for less than US$200. New international patenting rules have now made such undercutting of Western products more difficult, but the expertise gained has led to the creation of approximately 9000 Indian pharmaceutical companies. Herbal therapies, a major part of India’s traditional ayurvedic medical system, are being tested in the most modern laboratories, in some cases improved, and marketed in India and for an increasing global market.

India’s president, Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, is a distinguished representative of two scientific fields in which the country excels, space science and nuclear power. It was Indira Gandhi – India’s longest-serving prime minister – who maintained that a successful space programme is not only important for science, but essential for national development. Thus India’s six remote-sensing satellites observe rivers and coasts to enable rural and coastal communities to anticipate geographical and climatic changes. Seven communication satellites beam television and extend education and healthcare to the rural poor. The tsunami which hit India’s eastern coasts late in December 2004 deposited seven metres of seawater on top of the foundations of the country’s first commercial fast breeder reactor – an unanticipated setback to a nuclear power programme stretching back half a century. India is short of oil and natural gas; indigenous coal is available, but a major pollutant; and hydro-electricity and most of the renewables are subject to geographical limitations. The argument for nuclear power is therefore strong though some are opposed to it.

Medical research and treatment, which incorporates spin-off techniques from nuclear power research, stands at a high degree of capability. In Hyderabad, for example, the L. V. Prasad Eye Institute is pioneering a stem-cell cure for levels of eye damage extending beyond the cornea and limbus to the conjunctiva. In spite of the high degree of sophistication of this research, the charitable status of the institute means that the consequent therapies can be made available at minimal cost. Other major areas of science and technology in which India excels include computer engineering, aeronautics, radio astronomy and agricultural research on genetically modified (GM) crops. GM crops developed in India are less open to failure and exploitation than those imported from abroad.

While the benefits of progress in science and technology have been assimilated primarily among the burgeoning middle classes – variously estimated at between 150 million and 250 million out of a total population of just over a billion, poorer people have been quick to utilize high-tech products. Fishermen now price their catches using mobile phones before landing, autorickshaw drivers take orders by phone (the quality of their lives having been improved enormously by a switchover in several cities from diesel fuel to compressed natural gas), and solar panels are being installed in remote areas to produce electricity (one such device is in use at a Vaishnavite (Hindu) monastery on Majuli Island in Assam, another at a mosque in Srinagar, Kashmir).

Problems remain: there is a gap between the academic world and industry; water, road and rail projects are often undertaken half-heartedly; overemphasis on IT and management has drained some of the brightest students away from science; and research remains underfunded. But if these and other mismatches can be negotiated successfully, it is estimated by leading investment banks in North America that by 2050 India will possess the third largest economy in the world, after the USA and China. And science will have played a large part in the transformation.

Science and the environment

No account of science in society is complete without an acknowledgement of its impact on the natural environment and its potential for improving it. In India this became a significant issue in the 1970s, originating at the political level with Mrs Gandhi’s contribution to the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972. In her speech she described the wanton destruction of forests and biodiversity, matching this with the importance of meeting the needs of the poor:

The environmental problems of developing countries are not the side effects of excessive industrialisation but reflect the inadequacy of development…. [But] how can we speak to those who live in villages and in slums about keeping the oceans, the rivers and the air clean when their own lives are contaminated at the source? The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty.²

The importance of holding together developmental and environmental needs was acknowledged by subsequent UN conferences, culminating in the Earth Summit held at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and its successor, which took place in Johannesburg ten years later. The role of science is to address these twin areas of need as far as possible together. Thus, for example, it is no longer responsible science to build a large dam on a river to provide electricity for the manufacture of some shiny new technology, if in the process communities above and below the dam are flooded and deprived of their livelihood. This is an extremely controversial issue in India.

Climate change came to the forefront of international concern in the 1980s, and led to the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in Toronto in 1988. The Indian argument from the start was that since the industrial countries were largely accountable for the emissions responsible for global warming, they should make the greatest effort to reduce them. But for India this issue has constantly been bedevilled by misleading data and statistics. Thus the Washington-based World Resources Institute put out a pre-Summit report claiming that greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries are far more extensive than is the case. The Tata Energy Research Institute and the Centre for Science and the Environment, both based in Delhi, successfully challenged their figures. One hundred and fifty-four countries, including India, but not the USA, finally signed the climate change convention.

Nowadays misinformation about global warming has become more sophisticated. Thus we are frequently told by Western news agencies that India is the sixth largest global emitter of carbon dioxide. Maybe, but then the single state of Uttar Pradesh, taken out of India, would be the seventh largest nation in the world. More pertinently, the per capita production of carbon dioxide is 10 per cent of that of an average American.³ A lot is at stake in the global warming blame game, and vested interests are ruthless in bending science to suit their wishes.

During the 1970s and 1980s a considerable number of non-governmental environmental groups appeared in most Indian states. They are essentially groups of concerned citizens worried about deforestation, waterway and other types of pollution, basic healthcare, women’s education, resource depletion and the essential needs of predominantly rural communities. It is remarkable that one hundred registered as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the Earth Summit.⁴ A number of these couched their aims in cultural or religious (largely Gandhian) terms, as did the Indian Government’s official submission, which included quotations from the Upanishads and reference to sacred groves, Ashoka’s pillar edicts, the Chipko and Appiko movements, and Gandhian ethics.⁵

Unlike their counterparts in the West, which have progressively adopted an anti-science ideology, members of Indian environmental organizations are proud of their country’s scientific achievements. This does not mean that they are totally uncritical of GM crops, nuclear power and the other bêtes noires of Western environmentalists. But their responses to new technologies are more in the form of questions and calls for more or improved testing of products than outright opposition. Sunita Narain, a research chemist, directs the Society for Environmental Communications (Centre for Science and the Environment), and edits Down To Earth, a penetrating and lively fortnightly magazine mainly devoted to Indian environmental issues, but including perceptive critiques of international topics. It is interesting, for example – and pertinent to the overall concerns of this book – to see what such an influential Hindu scientist has to say about the current Western preoccupation with creationism and ‘Intelligent Design’:

The question of the epistemological status of religion and science is best showcased in the creationism debate. In several countries of Europe and the US it has been argued that students should be given the choice of studying creationist, Biblical theories as an alternative to scientific theories about the creation of the universe. The idea is sheer bunkum.

Creationist theories are not based on any form of verifiable evidence, and do not follow the principles of testability, the very hinges of science. Doubtless, people are free to believe that [God] created the world. But that belief cannot be elevated to the status of science and taught in a science curriculum…

Religion, a philosopher famously said, is the heart of a heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed creature. Thus far the going is good. But what it cannot do is set the conditions under which the pursuit of knowledge of the physical world or scientific innovation must happen.⁶

It is refreshing to read such a forthright condemnation of Western obscurantism dressed as science by a leading Hindu science editor!

Regretfully, in the chapters that follow, we shall not be able to quote from many Indian women scientists. The reasons for this omission are complex. According to Frontline, a leading weekly news digest published by the Hindu group of newspapers in Chennai,

There is an overwhelming body of empirical and qualitative evidence to suggest that a strong gender bias pervades institutions of science in India…. Although there is no explicit discrimination against women in enrolment and recruitment at the college, university or faculty levels, attitudinal biases against women and unsupportive institutional structures have…operated as powerful forces against talented women realising their full potential in…careers in science.⁷

India is by no means alone in this respect. Out of 776 Nobel Prizes awarded in the fields of physics, chemistry and medicine (and from 1969 economics), only 34 have gone to women!

Society and tradition

The social dimension is often the most appropriate point of entry into India’s religious life, and this is as true of young Hindu scientists as of other sections of the community. Following a debate about reincarnation organized by the Hindu Society of the University of Cambridge, I asked a postgraduate student researching micro-organisms where he came from. On learning that he had studied in the catchment area for the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, where I once worked, I enquired about his social origins. ‘Are you asking me my caste?’ he retorted indignantly. I changed the subject, and we happily discussed the implications of science for reincarnation, which he believes in. Later he told me that his family are Iyer brahmins, but that although the Iyers are Śaivites (i.e. believers in Śiva), he prays to God as Krishna (i.e. an incarnation of Vishnu), who is his friend.

The initial sensitivity of this young scientist about his caste contrasted with that of research scientists I met at the Indian Institute of Science, who readily identified themselves as Iyers, Smarthas, Iyengars, Saraswats, Madhvas, non-brahmin Śaivites and Vaishnavites, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. These groupings were also evident from where people sat at meal-times. Community, caste and family are the traditional determinants of Hindu identity, and since Hindus account for 81.3 per cent of India’s population, the remainder are usually classified according to their community. The corresponding figures are as follows: Muslims, 13.4 per cent; Christians, 2.3 per cent; Sikhs, 1.9 per cent; Buddhists, 0.8 per cent; Jains, 0.4 per cent; plus some others, such as the Parsis. These are the communities which constitute Indian society, and there is enormous variety among and within them.

The social dimension of a tradition represents only one aspect of its existence, but in most of Asia it is foundational. Socio-religious rituals and personal experience are also significant, whereas beliefs about God (or gods, that is, ‘celestials’) and ethical behaviour are more important in Western societies. By ‘Indian tradition’ we mean – following Ninian Smart – all the social, ritual, experiential, doctrinal and ethical dimensions of the various communities which make up the sub-continent.⁸ An...