Scientific distemper

For a whole decade, health organisations the world over have been preaching that there is only one cure for AIDS: information. It is a pity that the message has not reached the Minister for Science and Technology yet. Since the minister also holds the Human Resource Development portfolio, the message is unlikely to reach schools and colleges either. Joshi’s statement to alarmed men of science at the National Institute of Immunology (NII) relating AIDS to western aid could have been dismissed as a feeble attempt at humour, had he not chosen to enlarge upon his theme. The uninformed harangue that followed has exposed all that is wrong with the BJP’s brand of swadeshi. Was Joshi suggesting that the NII produced its HIV kits with Vedic technology when he lauded the transfer of swadeshi technology to swadeshi companies? It is common knowledge that this technology was developed through judicious use of the scientific method, a system of applied logic that is exclusively of western provenance.

It is ridiculous torefuse to give credit where it is due, and doubly so to regard the West as the source of all that is wrong with the world. All progress in science owes exclusively to the scientific method. Joshi’s belief that the study of the Sanskrit texts will lead to a great technological leap forward is valid only to the extent that new properties and uses for materials may be found there. But it would be remarkably optimistic of him to expect that whole new technologies lurk in the ancient texts. For that, Indian scientists will have to fall back upon the Baconian tradition, which the swadeshi school seems to heartily mistrust. Too bad, but the Nyaya school of logic is simply not up to the job. The minister should realise that in any attempt at an exclusionist indigenisation of science and technology, progress will be the first casualty.

Suspicion of the West has its political uses only on the campaign trail. Power calls for the contrary: acceptance and assimilation. The Congress had politically used the boycott offoreign goods and the denial of foreign law only upto 1947. After Independence, it realistically accepted the Westminster model and worked hard at maintaining British infrastructure and retaining their technology interests in India. Such a positive attitude applies particularly to science and technology, which today knows no borders. Their practitioners speak a global language. They have more in common with colleagues from halfway around the world than they have with their next-door neighbours. To expect them to go against their basic training and become culturally paranoid is to expect too much. It would be equally impractical for them to switch to a swadeshi scientific idiom, as Devi Lal found to the mirth of many when, as deputy prime minister, he insisted that Hindi should be made the official language of Indian science. Joshi should appreciate the fact that though he trained as a physicist, most of his life has been devoted to politics. He should let practising scientists and technologists get onwith their work, without imposing his fantasy of a wild West upon them.