Vineeta Bal, a former member of the Prime Minister’s task force for science, narrated a humorous poem by the Marathi poet Sopandev Chaudhari last week to underscore the importance of scientific temper.
The poem points out that Newton could think of the law of gravity when he saw the apple fall to the ground while some of us can only think of eating the fruit. And so on. What he meant was we need a scientific temper and he wrote this many years ago.
She was speaking on the theme of glorification of pseudoscience during the present times at the two-day session of the Mumbai Collective, a unique platform, celebrating freedom
and pluralism.
The session held on December 9 and 10 at Y.B. Chavan Centre in Mumbai, brought in activists, scholars, artists and others dealing with subjects ranging from Kashmir, foreign policy, the culture of fear, fake new, the myth of the Gujarat model, the crumbling of the economy, rewriting of history , RSS style and politics in the times of Hindutva.
Vivek Moneiro, a CITU union leader trained in nuclear science, said Tipu Sultan’s armed forces had developed expertise in plastic surgery to treat injured soldiers and it had developed military rocket technology which the British subsequently developed. Instead of talking about such expertise, pseudo-science was distorting our history and science.
Tejal Kanitkar, an assistant professor in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, while citing the growth of irrationality said quite a few students introducing themselves in the classroom ended up telling about their zodiac signs.
Two of the sharpest observations on politics came from non-political figures. Atul Bharadwaj, a retired Naval officer and defence analyst, said the independence of the Indian state was being subverted from within by the rulers who were serving imperial interests of Western powers.
He also expressed concern over the politicization of the Indian military forces, dividing the officers and jawans, privatizing defence production by bringing in people who were no better than middlemen and who had not the technology to even manufacture a car.
He also referred to the plunder and loot of Indian money by corporate in response to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s call for releasing the animal spirits of free enterprise.
Kiran Nagarkar, the prominent author, said the tolerance shown by Mrs Sonia Gandhi to rampant corruption during the UPA regime had helped the BJP to come to power.
True, Mrs Gandhi and Mr Singh are way above Mr Narendra Modi in stature but much of our political analysis has been too soft on them.
Mumbai Collective now in its second year is indeed a unique platform bringing together everyone loving freedom and caring for democracy. Saeed Mirza, noted film director, said it was a beacon of light. He was very hopeful about the future with young people becoming so socially conscious. R Ramakumar, economist, professor in TISS and one of the most prominent figures in the Collective, said it was proposed to reach out to people through more such programmes.
Kanhaiya Kumar, the student leader, called for all democratic forces to come together sinking their differences in the common cause of defeating the forces of fascism.
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