THE MASSACRE OF 132 SCHOOL children in Peshawar, the daylight murder of 12 Charlie Hebdo satirical journalists in Paris and the open, uninterrupted and continuous atrocities inflicted upon women and children by Boko Haram in Nigeria and in Iraq by ISIS militants claiming to be warriors of Islam, has brought this ancient theology — once renowned for its egalitarianism and promotion of the arts, sciences and refined civil discourse — into global disrepute. A great disservice is being done to the estimated billion law-abiding Muslims by rabid preachers promoting militant Islam.
With a clutch of despotic princes and quasi-literate prelates hell-bent on preventing modern, liberal interpretations of Islam and the Quran, the silence of the Muslim intelligentsia and educated middle class around the world is widely being interpreted as tacit approval. This is particularly true of educated Muslims in India who have permitted clerics and vote-bank-driven politicians to speak for the country’s 150 million-strong Muslim community, which has arguably the most prolonged experience of democratic adult franchise and governance than of any Muslim community worldwide.
In this context it’s pertinent to note that leaders of the community who led India and Pakistan to independence — Jinnah, Maulana Azad, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, among others — were highly educated individuals with an enlightened nation-building outlook and genuine interest in the progress and development of their community, beggared by the divide-and-rule politics of the British colonial administration.
Therefore, it’s a mystery why in post-independence India the educated Muslim middle class has allowed leadership of this community with a long history of culture, learning and entrepreneurship, to pass into the hands of orthodox imams and self-serving politicians who have little interest in negotiating a mutually beneficial modus vivendi with fellow citizens of all communities and religious persuasions.
Quite clearly, religious intolerance is absurd and at odds with new global realities in which cooperation across sectarian, political and ideological fault-lines is the only alternative to perpetual low-intensity civil strife. As India’s shameful periodic communal riots have proven, religious minorities cutting across all classes suffer disproportionate loss of lives, property and business at the hands of majoritarian fundamentalists and bigots.
In the circumstances, India’s substantial Muslim intelligentsia and refined middle class have no option but to assume responsibility and provide intelligent leadership to the Muslim masses to avail the protection of the Constitution and the law and enable them to enjoy the full benefits of the officially secular and socio-economically egalitarian Indian state. Admittedly, given that Wahabi radicals have a stranglehold on the community, this is a dangerous undertaking. But the well-being of the community and survival of its educated middle class depends on it.
Indian scientists need to look ahead
RISIBLE ASSERTIONS ABOUT THE fantastic achievements of unheralded scientists of ancient India overshadowed the deliberations of the 102nd Indian Science Congress held in Mumbai on January 3-7. Unsubstantiated claims about airplanes and inter-planetary travel in the Vedic (1,750 BCE-500 BCE) period, and proof of plastic surgery being practiced in the subcontinent several millennia ago, have raised doubts about the spirit of enquiry, research competence and contemporaneity of this country’s scientists, who don’t seem to value empirical evidence and peer review.
Ever since the Narendra Modi-led BJP government was voted into power at the Centre last May following its spectacular victory in General Election 2014, there’s growing apprehension in Indian academia about the new dispensation resuming the cultural agenda of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP. During the past seven months, the Central government has suborned the Indian Council of Historical Research; introduced the ancient scriptural language Sanskrit in schools, and attempted to diminish the importance of Christmas. Now at the prestigious Indian Science Congress, a national forum was given to an RSS-affiliated scientist to make unsubstantiated claims of the 21st century achievements of Indian scientists 7,000 years ago.
Unfortunately, such delusions of a Hindu golden age of science cannot serve to camouflage the pathetic condition of contemporary Indian science and research. According to a Thomson Reuters Report (2012), India’s share of current global research output is a mere 3.5 percent (cf. USA’s 22 percent and UK’s 15 percent). Moreover, more than half of Indian postgraduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) disciplines prefer to conduct further education and research abroad, mainly in the US. If Vedic Indians were able to build aeroplanes and rocket ships, why does the public sector behemoth Hindustan Aeronautics import 96 percent of its components?
The plain truth is that Indian science needs to be urgently rescued from ultra-nationalists harking back to India’s mythical prowess in science and technology. It’s time for our small but influential community of scientists and academics to speak up against unproven claims being made in public forums.
Moreover, the BJP which is tacitly tolerating if not actively encouraging hindutva ideologues in their mission to popularise ‘Sanskrit Science’, needs to focus its attention on larger issues such as under-funding (India spends a mere 0.8 percent of its GDP on research cf. US’ 2.79 percent), and lack of contemporary R&D facilities which are exiling the best Indian scientists to foreign countries. Forward-looking policies rather than regressive jingoism is the path to catching up with the rest of the world in cutting edge scientific and tech excellence.