Descending Into Dogma and Superstition

A calendar showed up on my WhatsApp feed yesterday. It was a calendar designed by the newly-formed “Indian Knowledge Systems” school in IIT Kharagpur, one of the most prestigious technical institutes in India, part of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), which are institutes of eminence in India and famous world-wide. The calendar made the focus of the IKS very clear: to establish the supremacy of a supposed ancient native Hindu civilization in India and to debunk the well-known theories of Aryan invasion and migration — theories that hold that Hinduism is the product of an indigenous civilization of India (the “Dravidian” civilization) and an invasion or migration of foreign tribes (known as the “Aryans”) from Iran/Central Asia into the plains of today’s Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and other parts of north India.

I was stunned to see this calendar. To me, this represented the final nail in the coffin of Indian scientific and rational thinking. That such a calendar could come from one of India’s IITs was unbelievable.

Let me explain what is wrong with this.

Research Does NOT Begin With The Conclusion In Mind

First, let us look at the cover page.

So, one could ask, this looks innocuous enough. What’s wrong in exploring and researching ancient Hindu philosophy and thought? It is part of our culture, after all. What could be wrong with it?

What is wrong is that the whole goal of the Indian Knowledge Systems school in IIT Kharagpur is defined in advance. This is clear as you leaf through the calendar. The conclusion is stated before the research is done. IIT Kharagpur is wading into areas which are still points of debate, and stating upfront that they want to reach a certain conclusion about things that are either unclear or patently false. This is NOT the scientific method. The presentation of the material is also decidedly unscientific, with numerous points being presented with exclamation points.

This is not research, it is a point of view.

In his highly-acclaimed book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Stephen Covey says that effective people begin with the end in mind. For a scientist, that “end” is the discovery of a new principle or a new theory. But the scientist does not know what the new theory is when he begins. He or she does not begin with the conclusion in mind. That is exactly what the IKS is doing.

Inaccurate and Scatterbrained

To take some of the issues with the calendar:

First, the Aryan Invasion Theory is still actively debated. A recent paper by Richards et al. (2016) informs us that the genetic history of India shows a sudden influx of male DNA from outside India in the Indian genetic mix around 2000 BCE, which is when the Indus Valley Civilization began its 700-year decline. This is conclusive proof of either an invasion or a migration by foreign people at that time.

Second, current scholarly opinion (for example, research by the late Iravatham Mahadevan) suggests that the Indus Valley Civilization was Dravidian and that its language was related to Tamil. While this is not conclusively proven, these are topics of current research.

Third, Current scholarly opinion also informs us that what is understood today as “Hinduism” is a blend of pre-Vedic deities such as Shiva and Muruga with the Vedic deities of Indra, Agni, Vayu, etc. Even the Vedas are considered to have incorporated parts of the local deities such as Shiva. In fact, it is puzzling why the calendar takes issue with Shiva being a Dravidian god. If the objective is to prove that Hinduism is of “Indian” origin and had nothing to do with any Aryans from outside, it would make sense to claim not just Shiva and Muruga, but all Hindu deities as Dravidian, because we know the Dravidians did not migrate from central Asia into India. But this would mean giving importance to Dravidians, and perhaps saying that the origin of Hinduism was in the Dravidian civilization, the representatives of which are the southern states of India today. This is a problem for the BJP, with its Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan vision of Hinduism and India.

Fourth, the calendar mixes images that make no sense. In the slide for March, there is some discussion of the Rigveda, but the image shown is that of the Buddha. The same image has the image of the “Pasupati” seal (what is considered to be the “Shiva” image — the primeval yogi) found in the Indus valley seals to the right of the Buddha’s head (from our perspective), but has a nonsensical image on the left side that is not seen in any seal.

Fifth, in the leaf for May, there is some talk about a mother goddess, but juxtaposed with the painting by Abanindranath Tagore is the famous Indus dancing girl. This latter sculpture is by no means necessarily related to any notion of a mother goddess or anything sacred or divine. This is the kind of meaningless and confused fanciful linking of unrelated things that the Hindu right is legendary for. Even if the Indus dancing girl had any religious connotations, to connect it with Tagore’s depiction of India as a goddess is wildly fanciful and totally out-of-context.

Sixth, in the leaf for June, an attempt is made to connect the so-called Indus Valley Unicorn with the sage Rishyasringa from Indian mythology. But Rishyasringa was not a unicorn, according to the Mahabharata. He was supposed to be a man with deer-like horns, born of a human and a doe. This is typical Hindutva grasping for straws.

Seventh, after this, there is some confused blather about the similarity between Sanskrit and European languages. It is unclear what the point of this drivel is.

Eighth, following this, there is yet more gibberish about the two World Wars which were supposedly fought for the cause of Aryan supremacy, whereas in fact only WWII was fought on this basis. What this establishes is not clear.

Now, one may disagree with some or many of all the things the calendar takes issue with, but these are contentious issues on which final consensus has not been arrived at. A research institute, therefore, must not take the approach that a certain viewpoint is wrong and that the purpose of a center is to prove the correctness of a certain ideology or “debunk” inconvenient ideas.

Technology is NOT Science

At the end of this calendar, some details of the Indian Knowledge Center are provided. There are some impressive-sounding words on the techniques that the Center will use: GPR Exploration, Lased-induced breakdown spectroscopy, photo-luminiscence dating, paleo-radiology, computer tomography, micro-CT scans, paleo-botany, advanced geo-hydrological exploration studies, Natural Language Processing, advanced satellite imagery, HMI (Human-Machine Interface), image processing, iconographic exploration (semantic and semiotic), and many more fancy words.

All this is fine, but the first requirement of good research and good science is not technology, but the absence of bias. While it is impossible to remove bias completely, no research will succeed in revealing the truth unless an honest attempt is made to eliminate bias. The Indian Knowledge Center at IIT Kharagpur is the very opposite of that ideal. Its very founding has a mission to reject alternative viewpoints and promote a particular ideology.

This is not the way science works. Science works on the principle of falsifiability — that any theory is falsifiable and should be rejected if the evidence does not support it. If a research center has an ideological bias, then it will reject all evidence that contradicts its ideology and cherry-pick from the facts only those which suit its ideology.

The output of such a “Center of Excellence” is propaganda, not knowledge.

A highly esteemed research institute like IIT Kharagpur should not need lessons on what scientific integrity means. It should understand these things without being reminded. But we are compelled to remind them of this because they seem to have forgotten the scientific temper that Nehru established the IITs to foster in the Indian population. It is sad that IIT Kharagpur was the first IIT to be inaugurated by Pandit Nehru, and has now wandered into the dark alleys of superstition and dogma.

So, why did IIT Kharagpur go down this path?

The Saffronization of Indian Academia

To understand this, we need to understand this move for the political masterstroke that it is.

After seeing this calendar, it is clear that the objective of the establishment of the IKS is to capture the intellectual space of India and make it subservient to the ideology of Hindutva. It is to make India’s premier technical institutes serve the BJP’s Hindutva ideology. And so, it is clear that IIT Kharagpur has completely immersed itself into the Hindutva vision of India’s history. It is now evident that the capture of Indian academia by religious fundamentalists is already complete at the highest levels. The purpose of this effort, which will likely soon be rolled out all over India, is to institute indoctrination of the Hindutva ideology from the primary school level, after which it will be impossible to remove from the Indian psyche.

In a world in which countries increasingly rely on technological advancement and rational thinking to get a competitive edge, what this throwback to dark superstition and dogma will do is to set back India in its quest for global parity and in its attempt to become a “Vishwa-guru,” or world-teacher.

Do not be surprised if, in the future, Indian students make asses of themselves in international conferences by claiming that India had airplanes or knew about plastic surgery and stem cell therapy 5000 years ago, or similar things. It is one thing for an uneducated Prime Minister to say such things, far more disastrous if students educated in India’s finest institutes say the same things.

Seshadri Kumar has a BTech from IIT Bombay and an MS and a PhD from the University of Utah, US, and writes about social and political issues, science, music, movies, literature, and religion.