In 2009, I was having dinner with two distinguished academics, directors of high-level scientific research centers. They both told me that they were receiving a number of excellent applications for teaching jobs from researchers based abroad. This was unprecedented; they were much more familiar with Indian scientists leaving to work abroad. Of course this still happened, but there was now also a substantial flow of scientific talent in the other direction, from the West to India.
There were several reasons for this partial reversal of the brain drain. The global financial crisis led to a reduction in funding at Western universities, which now had less money to hire new professors. At the same time, India spent more on research and studies. The Union government has recently established a chain of high-quality research centers known as Indian Institutes of Scientific Education and Research. Several new IITs have also emerged in recent years. All of them have attracted a stream of talented individuals to join their faculty.
In the 1940s and 1950s, some excellent scholars with doctorates obtained abroad returned to India, although they could have obtained prestigious positions in the West. (They included world-class scientists like EK Janaki Ammal, Homi Bhabha, MS Swaminathan, Satish Dhawan and Obaid Siddiqi.) The main driving force was his patriotism. These individuals grew up during the time of the national movement and were deeply inspired by its values. Now that India was independent, they wanted to return to their homeland to help shape its future.
In later decades, however, those who did their PhD abroad were more likely to stay abroad to work as well. This is because, for most scientists, patriotism is often not the main motivation. They also want the freedom to conduct independent research, the means to live moderately well, a social environment in which they can raise a family. They would like to work in their own country, but only if these other criteria are also met.
In 2009, the year I had that conversation in Bengaluru, the Indian scientific ecosystem looked more promising than it had in recent times. The economy was doing well, leading to rising academic salaries. And the social fabric also seemed more tolerant and more accommodating than in past decades. The communal polarization of the 1990s and early 2000s appeared to have abated.
For a young scientist looking to pursue independent research while also hoping to gain financial security and social stability, 2009 was therefore a much better time to seek employment in India than 1999, 1989 or 1979. And so, more scientists foreign graduates were transforming. returning to the West and returning home to work.
Fifteen years later, would the situation be as attractive now for a young scientist who wants to return to India after a PhD abroad? I seriously doubt it. This is largely due to the fact that the current government, led by Narendra Modi, is much more hostile to scientific research than the one led by Manmohan Singh. A scholar himself, educated at two of the world’s greatest universities, Singh deeply appreciated the contributions of modern science.
Modi, on the other hand, is self-taught and despises those with intellectual pedigree (consider his comment that he preferred “hard work to Harvard”). It is true that men educated at prestigious universities (perhaps women not so much) can be arrogant and snobbish and out of touch with the lives of the aam aadmi. But without a solid scientific research infrastructure, no economy or nation can ever enjoy sustained progress.
This was clearly the thinking of Jawaharlal Nehru, who created the IITs and strongly supported the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and of Manmohan Singh, who helped establish the IISERs. The prime ministers between Nehru and Singh also promoted basic research, particularly in biology, which now rivaled physics as the most important of the sciences.
In the 1980s, if not before, national institutions were themselves producing a stream of excellent doctors. Indian science could now draw on both talents trained in the country and people returning from abroad.
All this has changed since 2014. Narendra Modi has some time for technological applications whose fruits can bring him political capital. Hence its sponsorship of the Indian Space Research Organization. However, he has little interest in promoting scientific and technological research. This is how he allowed Hindutva ideologues to interfere wildly in the functioning of IITs. While in the past the directors of these institutes were chosen only by their academic peers, under the Modi regime the shortlists are actively scrutinized by right-wing apparatchiks, and those who are likely to toe their line are chosen. Once in office, some IIT directors pay elaborate bows to sanghi dogma, belittling meat-eating Indians, opening gaushalas on campus, discouraging independent-minded academics from speaking to their students.
The ideological penetration of Indian science by Hindutva was clearly illustrated by a series of nine interlinked tweets issued by the secretary of the department of science and technology last month. These generously praised the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore for designing a system that allowed sunlight to shine on the deity in the new temple in Ayodhya at Ram Navami.
Before taking over as head of the government’s scientific system, the person who issued the tweets was the director of one of the top IITs located in Kanpur. His tweets therefore attracted scathing comments on social media. Some critics went so far as to say that what the secretary praised as a great contribution to Indian science could have been accomplished by an intelligent high school student.
I brought the matter up to a friend who earned a PhD in physics from a major American university before spending several decades teaching and researching in India. He patiently explained to me how, by skillfully designing lenses and mirrors and placing them in strategically suitable locations, and by calculating the disjunctions/conjunctions between the solar and lunar cycles, the sunlight was made to shine on the idol in Ayodhya on the day designated. . The science was therefore moderately sophisticated but in no way innovative, and certainly not worthy of being praised in this breathless way by the country’s chief scientific mandarin.
It is possible that the DST secretary is a devout Hindu. However, he is certainly aware that it was for political rather than spiritual reasons that the Prime Minister inaugurated the temple just a few months before the general elections, presenting himself at the same time as its main initiator and motivator, indeed as his own chief priest. The DST secretary should also know that the Indian Institute of Astrophysics is mandated to carry out scientific work far more significant than simply illuminating a stone idol.
Even so, he chose to highlight what may be one of the most trivial scientific tasks ever carried out by a prestigious institute. It is unlikely that the matter concerns a favorite political project of the Prime Minister, and that this happened just a few days before the start of the elections is a coincidence.
The Modi government’s attacks on the press, its politicization of civil services and the diplomatic corps, its attempts to desecularize the armed forces and its subordination to independent regulatory institutions – all of this has been amply documented. Less noticed is his weakening of the practice of science in India. Perhaps those poorly chosen (and ill-timed) tweets from the DST secretary will finally make us more aware of the damage this regime has done to him.
The Nazis’ racial theory destroyed German science. The political dogmas of Marxism set Russian science back by decades. Now, in our own country, researchers at our best institutes are being asked to adapt their work to the greater glory of Hindus, Hindutva and Narendra Modi. What effect will this have on the practice of science and the morale of scientists in India? When the interests of science are so subordinate to those of politics and religion, what brilliant researchers working here will resist tempting offers from abroad? And which scientists trained abroad are likely to return to work in their home country?
Ramachandra Guha’s latest work, The Cooking of Books: A Literary Memoir, has just been released. His email address is ramachandraguha@yahoo.in.
This article first appeared in The telegraph.
