Science Secularism and Religion in Modern India

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If people become what they think they are, what they think they are is exceed-

ingly important.

Linda Fedigan, Primate Paradigms: Sex Roles and Social Bonds

Dreams of an Insomniac

Science has transformed the visual schemes of an insomniacthe stu-

dious invocation of sheep, the procession of zoological icons hypnotically

jumping a white picket fence on a soft green lawn.1 Thanks to the cloning

feat of Dr. Ian Wilmut,2 all I see today is a stream of Dollys, identical in

every manner, deftly clearing the barricade in quick succession. There is

no comfort anymore, no soporific presence. A genetically engineered

sheep is no longer innocent, naive. These icons that inhabited my nightly

imagination, the last refuge of an insomniac, are suddenly pregnant with

meaning, rich with symbolism. Life is not the same anymore.

The realm of the natural, a world untainted by human interven-

tions, has exploded into a kaleidoscope of technological wizardry. Sci-

ence has taken over that last bastion of the personal and private, the world

of ones dreams. And yet, just as science in all its quests for rationality has

conquered another realm of the supposedly irrational, religion seems to be

(re)appearing systematically and unmistakably. Religion has often been

cast as the demon in the nightmares of modern science. What do we make

of the appearance of these two supposed opposites in the same dream-

scape? For some, it is just another chapter in an ongoing story in which

the light of reason banishes the darkness of superstition. The appearance

of superstition is seen as regression, signaling the need to remind the

dreamer of the superiority of rationality. For others, the morality play,

while also long-running, moves in the opposite direction. For them, the

reappearance of religion may be a sign of return, but not of regression

a return to the time of beauty and light, the time before the outsiders and

their degenerate, fluorescent version of enlightenment.

Having grown up secure in the warm halo of modern science in sec-

ular India, with Charles Darwin as my hero, the tumultuous turns of sci-

ence and religion have been disorienting. My growing feminism has

Banu

Subramaniam

Archaic Modernities

SCIENCE, SECULARISM, AND REL IG ION IN MODERN INDIA

Social Text64, Vol. 18, No. 3, Fall 2000. Copyright 2000 by Duke University Press.

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forced me to interrogate the world around me, slowly pushing me away

from the center of the very institutions I put my trust in. My naive faith

and belief in the liberatory power of sciencethe science that was going to

eradicate poverty, and class, caste, and gender discriminationhas grad-

ually eroded. It is not that I think science cannotdo those things, but that

science has not fulfilled its promise. Eugenics, Nazi science and medi-

cine, Tuskegee syphilis experiments are part of the history of science wemust reckon with. I am a committed scientist and believe in the possibil-

ity and power of a liberatory science, but I think these promises can be

fulfilled only when we learn to create, locate, and engage with a science

that is also a political, social, and progressive institution. Mainstream sci-

encewith its claim to the apolitical, value-neutral, and objectivecannot

fulfil this mission. Indeed, the social and feminist studies of science have

demonstrated that sciences claim to aperspectival objectivity is far from

that view from nowhere.3 Instead it is a view from the pristine white

castles of power and privilege. How should we imagine this progressive

project for science? If science is an institution influenced by social, cul-

tural, and economic factors as the social and feminist studies of science

suggest, surely we must elaborate the relationship of science to another

powerful cultural force, namely religion. What does this look like?

The always unsteady science of the interpretation of dreams is fur-

ther complicated when the dreamscape and the dreamer inhabit the

worlds between these two stories, sleeping, dreaming frantically between

the binary oppositions of science and religion and religion and secularism.

What can this yield but a jumble of dream fragments?

. . . I dream of the lush landscape of the hills of Assam. I can almost smell the

fresh air and the morning dew. Memories of Budhadev Dasguptas recent film,

Lal Darja (The red door). Through dreams of his magical childhood among the

red beetles in the hills of Assam, the protagonist, a dentist, escapes his oppressive

urban life of modern day India. Juxtaposing the innocence of childhood and thecynicism of adulthood, the filmmaker contrasts a magical childhood filled with

infinite possibilities with an adult life of listless sterility. The joyous, imaginative

child, now an adult, is struck with a mysterious ailment. He feels his hands and

legs slowly turning to lead. His medical doctor finds nothing physically wrong

with his patient and can only prescribe rest, relaxation, and Valium. As the story

weaves the contrasting images of childhood and adulthood, we are given a power-

ful lesson on urbanization and modernity in todays India. Later in the film, a

news reporter on television in the background announces the spread of a mysteri-

ous illness originating in the West now sweeping Indian cities, the symptoms

matching those of our protagonist.

. . . The serenity and humor of the lush landscape is interrupted by the

cacophony of modern American academic life. Academic life as a scholar in the

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sciences and the social studies of science has meant an immersion in the infamous

science wars. Disciplines speaking from fragmented locations, in the field of acad-

eme. Uniformed disciplinary teams battle it out. Blunt arrows crisscross the aca-

demic hallways, the din of the pompous, loud voices cry in seemingly different lan-

guages: Not scientific enough. Too scientific. Youre wrong, Im right. Science is

socially constructed. Oh yeah! Try jumping off the tenth floor! The roar is deafen-

ing. Talking at and not to each other. Debate without dialogue. I feel I am in the

midst of a Jerry Springer show. The voice coming out of me cannot rise above the

din. I find myself in the midst of it all helpless.

. . . The cacophony gives way to a scene of religious fervor. Memories of my

recent trip to India and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the

arbiters of power. A Hindu nationalist government at the helm. I never thought I

would see the day. Their foray into nationalism and fundamentalism includes a

return to a Hindu science. I hear Meera Nanda reminding us that one of BJPs

first acts after coming to power in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 1992 was to make

the study of Vedic mathematics compulsory for high-school students. Explicitly

stating an interest in awakening national pride among students, the govern-

ment-approved textbooks replaced standard algebra and calculus with sixteen

Sanskrit verses proclaimed by the author, Jagadguru Swami Shri Barati Krishna

Tirathji Maharaj, the high pr iest of Puri, to be of Vedic origin. Nanda notes thatprominent Indian mathematicians and historians believe that there is nothing

Vedic about these verses. They charge that the Jagadguru is passing off a set of

clever formulas for quick computation as a piece of ancient wisdom. However, the

BJP and other revivalist cultural movements in India have begun building a new

hagiography of Indian knowledge systems by equating the author of these verses

with Srinivasa Ramanujan.4

. . . I float entranced in the rhetoric of the wonders and wisdom of ancient

India. The exultation in some mythic past that is glorious, wondrous, wise, and

brilliant. It is all around me. Priests rhythmically chanting the Vedas, scholars

extolling the virtues of the upanishads and the wonders of ancient India, the glo-

ries of a great Hindu civilization before the appearance of the invaders who

plunged the civilization into degeneracy. Initial ly, there is something euphoric,

almost hypnotic, about it. As the dream progresses, the jingoistic national priderooted in a great Hindu religious past is suffocating. While I ponder the Vedas, the

invention of the number zero, and what it means to talk about a return to a Vedic

science and mathematics, I hear a big explosion in the corner of my eye. And the

big mushroom cloud comes clearly into focus. Pokhran. India tests its nuclear

weapons.

. . . Kansas, 1999. The board of education votes to delete the teaching of evo-

lution from the states curriculum. Constructionism goes r ight wing. There are no

real truths; science is only theory, and if evolution is a theory, so is creationism.5

Presidential candidates enter the dreamscape extolling the virtues of local

choice. Gore favors teaching evolution, adding that localities should be free to

teach creationism as well. Bush agrees that both are valid educational subjects

and that it is a quest ion for state and local school boards. Dole and McCain

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emphasize the local, and Gary Bauer says he does not teach his children that

they have descended from apes.6 Epistemologies and truth claims come center

stage yet again, and ideas of a democratic science emergewe can all vote on what

we will accept as truth, theory, and thought!

. . . I find myself in my mothers living room in Madras watching television.

India seems to have solved its multilingual problem rather efficiently. Instead of

forcing citizens of var ious states to watch programs in English or Hindi that they

most likely will not understand, programs are dubbed in regional languages. In

Tamil Nadu, all the Hindi soap operas are dubbed in Tamil, as are Disney car-

toons and American sitcoms like Diffrent Strokes. For those into the surreal,

watching Gary Coleman say Whatcha talkin about? in Tamil is a must see.

The cover of a prominent business magazine sports a man in traditional Tamilian

garb, veshti and angavastram, the religious markings, the shaved head, the sacred

thread across the body, wearing chic dark glasses, cowboy boots, a Coke can in one

hand, and a boom box in the other. What delicious oxymoronic imagery! New per-

mutations of orthodoxy and technological modernity I could never have imagined.

. . . The consistent undercurrent of religion and religious identity that is all-

pervasive troubles me. Religious fanaticism from corners I would never have

anticipated. The violence and strength of it takes me aback. Friends and neighbors

begin appearing, all spouting the importance of vaastushastrathe renewed sci-ence of building homes with the right energy-flow patterns. Friends and relatives I

know renovate homes at great expense. Bathrooms become kitchens, sometimes

prayer rooms, and bedrooms become living rooms! Peoples names suddenly grow

or lose lettersas andes mysteriously appear and disappear in the hope that it

will be numerologically auspicious.

The Making of Archaic Modernities

If the above vignettes appear contradictory, jumbled, messy, perhaps even

incoherent, that is my intention. The juxtaposition of contradictory obser-

vations reflects the complexity of modern science and scientific modernity.

It is meant to displace neat categories of modernity, premodernity, and

postmodernity, of progressive and conservative politics, of democracy,

secularisms, and nationalisms. I present these images not to add to the

contemporary panic about the instability in South Asia. I do not wish to

feed the racist imagery of South Asians gone nuclear as children playing

with a dangerous gun.

The challenge of these developments in contemporary India is in cre-

ating new frameworks in which to think about science and religion simul-

taneously within the social studies of science. Some commentators have

responded by glorifying prescientific utopias and reviving our dreams of a

glorious history, and nostalgia for the simple days of yesteryeara world

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bereft of scientific and technological innovations, where humanity and

technology dont begin to fuse dangerously. Indeed, much of the rhetoric

in the BJP is specifically about the exaltation and preservation of Hindu

culture against the decadence of the West. In addition, some postcolonial

critics of science have equated science with the West and science as a

hegemonic force that is inherently violent. In their eyes, Western science

must be eradicated in its entirety as a colonizing, violent intrusion.7 Onthe other hand, science activists have invoked a defense of science, scien-

tific objectivity, and rationality. They ask how we can tolerate the growing

violence against minorities, how we can support the continued oppression

of women and people of lower castes, in the name of religion. How can

we not educate in the face of rampant ignorance and injustice? These

critics have historically fought and continue to fight religious nationalism

with the rhetoric of science and scientific rationality. For them science is

our only savior from the superstition and irrationality of religion.8 At the

heart of many of these critiques is the construction of science and religion

as oppositional and mutually exclusive practices. One must save science

by attacking religion or save religion by attacking science.

How can we work with these contradictory ideologies of science and

religion without demonizing one with the other? I want to argue that these

debates within the social, feminist, and postcolonial studies of science

have largely been constructed within Western conceptions of secularism as

a separation of church and state. Despite the Christian clerical roots of

science,9 science and religion have become inseparably distinct today.

Western secularism has co-opted science in its vision for the modern state.

As a result, we have the distinct zones of religion (church) and science

(state). The social studies of science, while demonstrating the hegemonic

power of science in the West, have not taken up the interdependence of

science and religion historically. In this essay, I argue that we must engage

with religion, a powerful cultural force in much of the world. Perhaps

science and religion are not simply antagonists where one will eventually

banish the other completely from its domain. Perhaps the question is not

whether the two are related or whether they share the same space, but

rather how. How do they interact? How do they depend on each other?

At the heart of the debate is the fact that science has been inextricably

connected to modernity, secularism, and the state. Secularism in the

United Statesdefined as the separation of church (religion) and state

has meant that the battles have been around science and religion and sec-

ularism and religion but not science and secularism. Science is central to

the dreams and visions of the state and crucial in any imagination of

progress and the future. We repeatedly hear about the need for scientific

literacy and the need for a scientifically educated population if the

What does one

do when

confronted with

an archaic

modernity? What

do you do or

think when

neither of the

dominant

narrativesthe

archaic or the

modernallows

for the

interpretation or

realization of your

dreams? Where

and in what

locations can one

dream and

envision

progressive

feminist politics?




6/20

United States is to remain a dominant force in world politics. Secularism

has successfully separated science and religion and the state and religion.

The separation of church (religion) and state (science) is most evident in

the repeated contentious attempts to introduce creationism or to abolish

evolution in schools. It has successfully kept creationism out of the class-

room (although the recent Kansas ruling has managed to keep evolution

out as well).The recurrent debate about the teaching of creation and evolution in

the schools in the United States is a powerful testament to how deep this

chasm is in our cultural psyche. As an atheist and an evolutionary biolo-

gist, I am frightened by the prospect of evolution being removed from the

biology curriculum and the teaching of creation as an equivalent theory. It

seems impossible to begin to broach the subject of religion without being

afraid of creation in the classroom. How can we talk about construction-

ism and the hegemonic power of science without reverting to the rela-

tivism where anything goes, where all ideas, beliefs, and ideologies are

equivalent?

The secularization of the United States is a long and complex process.

Scholars suggest that increased scientific and technical specialization and

the removal of some activity of life from substantive influences of tradi-

tional or organized religion were supported by Christians and non-Chris-

tians pushing traditional Christian educational concerns to the periph-

ery.10 What is so interesting to me about India and Indian secularism is

that there has been no equivalent debate until the present. The birth of

secularism in India is a very different story than the birth of secularism in

the United States. India, as we know it today, was created in 1947. Before

colonialism, the Indian subcontinent was home to a heterogeneous and

diverse collection of rulers and kingdoms, with no common religions, tra-

ditions, cultures, languages, or ideologies. Through various invasions,

many religions entered India, and yet others emerged on Indian soil. As

opposed to an American model of secularism marked by the separation of

church and state, Indian secularism in these early stages of independence

has been practiced as pluralismincluding the active support and encour-

agement of all religions. For example, Indian law accepts the religious

codes of individual religions that govern inheritance, marriage, divorce,

and so on. This has by no means been even or easy, but it is the vision of

the founders of independent India. The state has supported both science

and religion without similar contestations until now. And even at present,

the debate is not specifically about science but is only implied as an exten-

sion of the grand plank ofHindutva.

After its independence, India embarked on a scientific and techno-

logical expansion path in its quest for industrialization. Like in the United

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States, science has been adopted as the reason of the state. As Nandy

explains,

This expectation partly explains why science is advertised and sold in India

the way consumer products are sold in any market economy, and why it is

sought to be sold by the Indian lites as a cure-all for the ills of Indian soci-

ety. Such a public consciousness moves from one euphoria to another. In the

1950s and 1960s it was Atom for Peace, supposedly the final solution of all

energy problems of India; in the 60s and 70s it was the Green Revolution,

reportedly the patented cure for food shortage in the country; in the 70s

and 80s it is Operation Flood, the talisman for malnutrition through the

easy availability of milk for every poor household in the country. 11

The current rise of religious nationalism in India has brought two sets

of oppositional spaces, science and religion, together within the landscape

of contemporary Indian politics. The religious nationalists have challenged

the visions of the founders of India. Rather than disavow secularism or

democracy, the Hindu nationalists today have redefined bothsecularism

as tolerance and democracy as majoritarianism.12 The Indian case involves

a curious mix of science and religion, very different than in the West. The

form of pluralist secularism imagined by the founders of India allows us in

theory to imagine future relationships of science and religionnot in the

current regressive alliance between Western science and religious nation-

alism but in the progressive possibilities for differently conceived social

institutions of science and religion.

Religious nationalists in contemporary India have selectively, and

strategically, used rhetoric from both science and Hinduism, modernity

and orthodoxy, Western and Eastern thought to build a powerful but

potentially dangerous vision for a Hindu nation. Hindu dominance; intol-

erance of and supremacy over other religions, faiths, and traditions; and

hatred and bigotry toward non-Hindus mark the religious nationalistvision. Rather than characterize Hinduism as ancient, nonmodern, or tra-

ditional, the Hindu nationalists have embraced capitalism, Western sci-

ence, and technology as elements of a modern, Hindu nation. Since

Indias first test of a fission bomb by Indira Gandhi in 1974, subsequent

secular governments abstained from further tests. Indeed, it is ironic that

despite Indias nuclear capabilities, it was the Hindu nationalists who

defied the world to test the ultimate destructive weapon of Western sci-

ence, the fusion bomb, in Pokhran soon after they came to power.

However, these ideals of a modern Hindu nation exist alongside con-

tradictory visions of a glorious precolonial Hindu pastthe scientific,

technological, and philosophical scriptures of ancient Hinduism. Hindu

nationalists celebrate the revival of ancient Vedic sciences and mathemat-




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ics, at times replacing Western science, mathematics, and algebra in some

schools. Religious nationalists thus bring together a modern vision with an

archaic vision, that is, an archaic modernity. By strategically employing

elements of science and religion, orthodoxy and modernity, the Hindu

Right is attempting to create a modern Hinduism for a Hindu India.

They suggest that we need to return to Hindu values while incorporating

Western and Vedic sciences. Contrary to their claims, religious nationalistsare not merely reverting to tradition or decolonizing India or Indian his-

tory but appropriating modernity and Western science into a Hindu

agenda.

What does one do when confronted with an archaic modernity? What

do you do or think when neither of the dominant narrativesthe archaic

or the modernallows for the interpretation or realization of your

dreams? Where and in what locations can one dream and envision pro-

gressive feminist politics? Science and secularism have been tied to visions

of equality and the end of discrimination. On the other hand, as a Third

World woman in the halls of Western science, science has not been very

hospitable to me. Some of the most important critics of science and secu-

larism are those who have been marginalized and discriminated against by

science. While religion is the answer of change for some, religion is no

easy partner for feminists and postcolonial critics of science. To women

disqualified from participating in most religious ceremonies, the male bas-

tion of religion is no solution. How then, can we work with two powerful

yet potentially problematic institutions of science and religion with diffi-

cult pasts and contentious histories, and how can we build progressive

visions of new intellectual, political, and social institutions?

Growing Up in Secular India

The applications of science are inevitable and unavoidable for all countries

and peoples to-day. But something more than its application is necessary. It is

the scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper of science, the

search for truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without

testing and trial . . . the reliance on observed fact, and not on pre-conceived

theory, the hard discipline of the mindall this is necessary, not merely for

the application of science but for life itself and the solution of its many prob-

lems.

Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India

Having grown up with the promise of modern science in secular India, the

shift from the rhetoric of secular science to one of Vedic science within

fifty years of Indian independence is very hard to take. To understand

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why talk of Vedic sciences and scientific Vedas feels so disorienting, I

must give you some background on growing up in postindependent India.

I was born into a middle-class Hindu family, about two decades after

Indian independence. I grew up in postcolonial/independent, secular, and

urban India, all very important markers. We learned a great deal about the

Indian freedom struggle in our history classes. The fact that India defined

itself as a secular democracy was a reason for great pride. Living in secu-lar India manifested itself in several ways. Urban India was largely cos-

mopolitan, and I attended Catholic missionary schools. My family was not

very religious except for the occasional visit to temples or attending reli-

gious functions. There was no formal religious education of any kind,

and the little I know about Hindu mythology comes from memories as a

little girl of listening to stories from grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Full

of action, wars, love, hate, and duty, these dramatic stories were quite

enthralling. Most of us in urban India have but a smattering of such

knowledge and virtually no training in Hindu philosophy or history.

Growing up as one of the majority, Hinduness was never threatened and

therefore never in need of protection or revival. It was clear that there was

a great deal of discrimination around. Anti-Muslim sentiments were ram-

pant; class and caste lines were clearly visible. Visits to the small town

where my grandparents lived further enforced how deep-seated, indeed

almost feudal, these inequities were. Growing up in urban India, we

always felt a sense of superiority that we were not so orthodox or back-

ward as the villages in discriminating against members of other groups.

Urban India was the location of progress and modernity, where the future

of India lay, while the villages would have to develop and catch up with

the modern India of the cities. While this liberal discourse allowed us to

visit each others homes across religious and caste lines (mostly colleagues

from work or friends from school, or neighbors we lived with, and almost

never across class lines), and to greet and wish each other well on religious

holidays, there were clear limits. Communities largely celebrated religious

functions exclusively and married within. Cross-community marriages

were and still are moments of shame and scandal.

Education in secular India meant that students were diverse although

largely middle class, except for some poorer Catholic and Christian stu-

dents our missionary school admitted. Both religious and nonreligious

schools are accredited by the state and often subsidized (in some states) as

well. Schools are places to be educated and trained for the final statewide

exams during the tenth and twelfth grades. Education was secular in that

students were not forced into religious education of a religion that was not

theirs. In our classes, we could not sit with anyone we wanted, but instead

were seated strictly by height. On the first day of class we were organized




10/20

in an ascending order of height and seated with the shorter students in

front. Important holidays of the major religions were observed as national

holidays. There were optional holidays allocated that individuals could

take around other religious holidays important to their communities.

Every morning before the start of school, all the students assembled in our

uniforms in the school courtyard for morning assembly. This always

included prayer (often Christian prayer in Christian schools and Hinduprayer in Hindu schools). As a result, most Hindus in Christian schools

knew many Christian prayers, Christmas carols, and blessings. In Bom-

bay, where I did my elementary schooling in a Catholic girls school, once

a week, we split up along religious lines for an hour. Catholic students

were sent to a class on Catholic doctrine taught by a senior nun, other

Christian students were sent for catechism often taught by a teacher who

was Christian but not Catholic, and the rest of usHindus, Muslims,

Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and children from other religious groups

spent an hour learning moral science. This involved following a state-

sanctioned text filled with short stories and parables, each of which ended

with a moral. We were tested on our morals at the end of the year, and

a day before the exam we would all be hard at work on improving our

morals! This continued well into my undergraduate years in Madras,

where we had an hour called ethics.

Science was central to my image of modernity. Science, as it was

taught to me in school, as it was represented in the books I read and the

popular culture I watched, was Western science. Indigenous forms of

science and medicine have never been integrated under the rubric of sci-

ence. Religious orthodoxy was in my eyes associated with discrimination,

backward thinking, superstition, and blind faith in what seemed like

ridiculous custom. When my family would consult the astrological charts

to look for auspicious times for a move, or tell me that I should not sleep

with my head facing the north, I scoffed at them. When I saw families seg-

regating girls and women during their menstrual days, I was outraged. I

ridiculed silly superstition, laughed at irrational tradition, and became

enraged when I saw discriminatory or hateful practices against any man or

woman. I was outraged that Brahmin priests were exclusively men and

that women could not perform most ceremonies. I wanted no part of a

religion in which I could not participate as an equal. My feminism and

politics were very linked to modernity, and modernity was linked with

claims of reason, and reason was linked with the objectivity and rational-

ity of science.

Very early in life, the sciences became a passion of mine. I was drawn

to their call for logic, reason, rationality, and objectivity. I bought into the

mythology of a progressive teleology, that is, that science self-corrects

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when it is wrong and therefore we move closer to a more complete under-

standing of the world. To me, it shone as a meritocratic world where my

identity as a woman, Indian, Third-Worlder was irrelevant. The white men

(dead and alive!) who inhabited my textbooks were my role models, and I

was quite oblivious of my brown skin or my sex. A large poster of Charles

Darwin hung above my desk. It did not occur to me that, with the excep-

tion of C. V. Raman and J. C. Bose, there were no Indian men in my sci-ence textbooks and certainly no Indian women. The future of the world,

the eradication of blind superstition, discrimination, hunger, and poverty

lay in my young mind squarely in the world of science. It comes as no sur-

prise that after an undergraduate education in biology in India, I should

cross the oceans and come to the United States for a graduate degree in

evolutionary biology full of visions and dreams of being a model scientist.

Throughout postcolonial India, Western science was the science

that the Indian state supported; alternate forms of science and medicine

have remained in the periphery. As Susantha Goonatilake suggests in

Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World,13 modern sci-

ence in the Third World has always been defined by the center, that is, the

West, and any creativity that has emerged has come from indigenous and

peripheral practices. Western science had been transplanted into India

and subsequently embraced as a central force in Indian politics. It has

retained its Western roots and practices, further colonizing and marginal-

izing the very people who have embraced it as a central project of devel-

opment.

The Rise of Religious Nationalism in India

Before I am accused of using Hindu and India interchangeably, I must

state that when we speak of Indias ancient native genius, we mean its rich

Hindu heritage, and we cannot, and need not, shy away from this fact. Hindus

are the natural community of India, and by the fact of being the majority

community, they will determine its structure and ethos. This is the natural

order all over the world, and there is nothing intrinsically anti-minority about

it. Unfortunately, Jawaharlal Nehrus cruel and unfair hounding of the Hindu

ethos from the public square has de-legitimized it so thoroughly that even

today, intellectuals are unable to accept the fact that the Hindu spirit will no

longer be denied its rightful space.

Sandhya Jain, Free Press Journal, 13 September 1999

In 1998, the BJP, a Hindu nationalist party, came to power in India. The

political success of the BJP draws on two other Hindu nationalist move-




12/20

mentsthe Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), an organization of religious

leaders, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant youth

organization. The Hindu nationalist program stresses Hindutva, or Hin-

duness. In the 1998 elections, neither the BJP nor any other party won a

majority of seats in the lower house of the Indian Parliament. What

resulted was a coalition government led by the BJP. This is the first time in

Indias independent history that a Hindu nationalist party has been a sig-nificant part of a national government. Marked by disagreement and dis-

cord between the coalition partners, the government fell in April 1999 by

a margin of one vote during a no-confidence motion. The secular parties

that brought on this fall were not able to form an alternate government.

The BJP returned to power in September 1999 as part of the National

Democratic Alliance, a coalition party of twenty-six national and regional

parties.

While the future of the BJP and the recent turbulent Indian politics

will continue to unfold, some things are clear. Hindu nationalists have

tapped into the discontent of Indians and have transformed this discon-

tent into a problem about religion and the brand of secularism the Indian

founders envisioned. The rise of discontent within India and the resur-

gence of Hindu religious nationalism are complex phenomena with no

easy answers. India remains a poor country with high illiteracy, poverty,

unemployment, and a growing population. There has been no substantial

investment in education or health care, and while numbers for literacy and

infant and adult mortality have improved a little, the lives of the majority

of Indians are marked by abject poverty. After fifty years of independence

and the development of the third-largest technical workforce in the world,

the primary economic indicators do not look promising.

The political turmoil with the last five governments tumbling down

before the end of their term is not just a frustration with corrupt politi-

cians but has to do with profound political changes in Indias rural vil-

lages. A recent study suggests that the countrys most oppressed peo-

plethe lower castes, the poor, the illiterate, and womenhave been

voting and joining political parties in growing proportions.14 The presence

of lower castes and women is significant in their increased representa-

tion at the grassroots levels in local village governments (panchayats). The

Seventy-third Amendment Act of 1992 codified the reservation of 33 per-

cent of seats at the panchayat level for women and schedule castes and

schedule tribes. The emerging non-Brahmin, non-upper-caste regional

parties have become powerful in the increasingly fragmented coalition

national governments. The leaders of these parties are no longer willing

to accept crumbs from the tables of the two major national parties. They

want to be at the table themselves.15

Some argue that these voting trends

78 Banu Subramaniam



13/20

and the rise of regional parties of non-upper-castes are hopeful signs that

people are fed up with the empty promises of secular parties and are

increasingly suspicious of the upper-caste politics of the BJP.

The rise of religious nationalism is a more complicated story. Over

the last two decades of secular governments, religion has become a pow-

erful tool in Indian politics. Secular parties have unashamedly infused

religion into national politics. In the name of secularism and supportingminority communities, they have pitted religious communities against

each other, courting minority groups while failing them once in power.

Religious and secular parties have used casteism, sexism, and classism in

their efforts to secure power. This has led to a rise in caste- and religion-

based politics. These have resulted in a multitude of sectarian episodes

legal cases, constitutional amendments, sectarian violence and riots, des-

ecration and demolition of sacred places such as mosques and churches,

and the killing of members of minority groups. Religion has become a

powerful and central tool of Indian politics today. As Peter van der Veer

suggests, religious discourses and practice are not merely an ideological

smoke screen but indeed constitutive of changing social identities. 16

The rise of Hindu nationalism by the majority in a context where

minority groups are already disenfranchised economically and politically

is disturbing and dangerous. India has always been a country where osten-

tatious religious celebrations thrive and where local confrontations for the

use of public space for religious events continue. Hindu groups strategi-

cally take religious processions through majority Muslim locales or inter-

rupt Muslim celebrations and vice versa. There is a history of Muslims

being seen as foreign elements and not truly Indian17 partly through the

identification of all things Muslim with Pakistan, an archenemy with

whom India has fought three wars since 1947. Anti-Muslim sentiment

stirred up during the partition of India and Pakistan has never died. This

spills over into daily life, for example, into the world of cricket. Bal Thack-

eray, the infamous Shiv Sena head, threatened to disrupt the Pakistan

cricket tour to India, and members of the party attacked cricket pitches in

Mumbai and Delhi and the office of the Board of Control for Cricket in

India early this year. The isolated clash of religions in parts of India, the

rise of religious superstition, and the perennial hype surrounding India-

Pakistan cricket matches have always been a part of India. But the

increased violence aimed at religious minorities in the last few years has

been alarming. Beginning with the demolition of the mosque Babri Masjid

in 1992 by Hindu nationalists, there have been numerous attacks on

mosques, on churches, and on minority groups. The lack of any overt

action by the national government headed by the BJP and the continuing

rhetoric ofHindutva is frightening.




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Scientific Vedas, and Vedic Sciences

The reconstruction of the past implies a clash of stories deeply enmeshed in

the discursive construction of present identities. That is why history is so

important, because it is part of what we think we are; it is part of our culture.

Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India

While religion, tradition, and religious superstition have always been an

important part of the Indian psyche, I want to argue that science has

also been inscribed deeply within the same psyche. I want to further argue

that this merging of traditional and modern by religious nationalists is

uneven and often strategic.18 As the BJP has come to power, there have

developed moderate and extremist forces within the party. The image the

party has projected has varied and is often contradictory. Whether the

moderate face the party has projected in its election manifesto will remain

when it is in power is up for debate. Historically, the BJP has been closely

linked to the extremist groups, the VHP and the RSS. Some members in

power (notably the prime minister, Vajpayee) have taken on a moderate

stance and have tried to distance themselves from the rhetoric of the morereactionary members. So, for example, an important election issue during

the rise of the BJP two years ago was the building of a temple at the site of

the desecrated mosque, Babri Masjid (because some religious nationalists

claim it is the birthplace of the Hindu god, Ram). The election manifesto

of the BJP coalition in 1999 did not include the building of a temple, and

prominent members have explicitly stated that it is not part of the election

campaign. However, on the eve of the first round of voting in Uttar

Pradesh and Bihar, the RSS chief Rajendra Singh publicly stated that the

temple issue was not forgotten, encouraging the cadre to go all out and

vote for the BJP.19 The multiplicity of narratives coming from different

branches of the BJP, the VHP, and the RSS seems strategic, making one

suspicious of what the future will hold if the supposedly moderate BJPcontinues to rise to power.

With respect to science, one can similarly find a variety of narratives

within the rhetoric of the religious nationalists. On the one hand, the BJP

has embraced Western science and technology like all previous secular

governments. In fact, while secular governments resisted the testing of

nuclear weapons, the BJP has gone further in using the power of science

and technology to reawaken the pride of Indians by the nuclear tests in

Pokhran. The one-year anniversary of the nuclear tests in Pokhran was

declared Indias first Technology Day in honor of its nuclear and

defense scientists. The human resources and development minister, Murli

Manohar Joshiwhile laying the foundation for a technology forecasting

Is it possible by

uncovering the

complications of

the past to

imagine a

different future?

One in which

one doesnt have

to choose

between the

defense of

science and the

defense of India,

between two

different, but

perhaps equally

discriminatory

versions of

society?

80 Banu Subramaniam



15/20

centerstated that Pokhran and all our scientific endeavors have brought

glory to India.20 The section titled Our Policy on Science and Technol-

ogy in the BJPs 1999 election manifesto seems to be a seamless contin-

uation of previous governments policies. In these respects the BJPs

stance on science propels the modernist scientific and technological pro-

ject of development.

However, alongside this modern vision are glimpses of the archaic.For example, in late 1998, the VHP demanded the scrapping of the

Macaulian system of education in India and the introduction of the

Vedas, Upanishads, and Indian heritage in school curricula. The working

president of the VHP said that it is important to counter the de-Hindui-

sation programme of Christian schools and protect our own culture and

heritage.21 In October 1998, the BJP introduced a Hindutva plank for the

national education conference. This included the singing of the saraswati

vandana (a Hindu prayer) at the beginning of the meeting. The educa-

tion plank included making Sanskrit compulsory until Class XII (i.e.,

twelfth grade) and introducing patriarchal gender roles by making a

course on housekeeping mandatory for girls. The conference ended with

a walkout by education ministers of twelve states over the singing of the

religious prayer as well as the Hindutva plank of the BJP.22 The prime

minister lashed out at them for insulting the Hindu goddess of learning

by staging a walkout.23 Further, as mentioned earlier, the BJP-led state

government of Uttar Pradesh was responsible for the inclusion of Hindu

science and mathematics in school curricula.

While some of the rhetoric seeks to displace Western science with a

Hindu science, others reclaim the modernist project of science as really

nothing but an Indian science, anticipated in the ancient science and tech-

nological history of India.24 Two main strains of the continuation of a

Hindu vision are evident. The first strain of appropriation comes from

some that argue that the discoveries and findings of modern science were

already discovered or anticipated in ancient India25 and that they can be

found in the Vedas and Upanishads.26 They suggest that readings of the

ancient literary texts find the atom, the bomb, and the airplane, the sci-

ence of space and time, quantum theory, the theory of relativity, the miss-

ing link, the Pythagorean theorem, and various technologies.27 In this

sense, the Vedas were the Vedic sciences. In the second strain, religious

nationalists use the ancient scriptures as a source of pride in the ancient

development of literatures, philosophies, and scientific knowledge in

ancient India. In this sense, the Vedas were scientific, embedded within a

rich philosophy of knowledge. Thus, when religious nationalists invoke the

Vedas or other ancient scriptures in the name of Hindu pride, their vision

does not supplant Western science, but instead it melds with Western sci-




16/20

ence, appropriating Western science within the rubric of Vedic sciences.

Within these visions of Vedic sciences and the scientific Vedas is a reimag-

ination of contemporary India as ancient and modern.

Recent events in India are a strong reminder of the colonized Indian

psyche, and the primacy of colonialism within postcolonial, independent

India. The legacy of Western science lives on as the reason of the state.

The revival of the ancient scriptures, the Vedas of the rich history ofIndia, are attempts not to decolonize the Indian psyche but to reinstate

Hindu culture and history as the hub in which the scientific progress of

the future is anticipated. There is no epistemological critique of Western

science but indeed an embracing of itwhereby an exaltation of Western

science is simultaneously an exaltation of the scientific Vedas and the

Vedic sciences. It is frightening to see this Hindu science emerging from

nationalism. This science purports to be anticolonial, a culturally situated

science, decolonizing India by unearthing old cultural practices eroded by

colonialism.28 Yet in reality, the nationalists are creating an India that is a

Hindu nation. By finding Western scientific innovations anticipated in

the Vedic sciences, the nationalists give Indias past an aura of Hindu

supremacy. Therefore, in order to look to future progress, we must delve

into Indias glorious Hindu past.

Archaic modernity works in part through a disavowala disavowal

that history is messythat the embrace of a violently imposed science

cannot be redeemed simply by discovering its roots in an authentic past,

and a disavowal that this same science provides vantage points from which

to criticize the exclusionary boundaries of that archaic past. Strangely,

even as it supposedly focuses on recovery from the violence of colonialism

by recovering the past, archaic modernity disavows both the violence of

modernity and the science and technology that it embraces, and the vio-

lence of the archaic past in its nostalgic form. The pastthe ancient past,

the more recent past of colonialism, and the recent history of postinde-

pendent Indiaare all literally recoveredcovered over in a secular story.

Is it possible by uncovering the complications of the past to imagine a

different future? One in which one doesnt have to choose between the

defense of science and the defense of India, between two different, but

perhaps equally discriminatory versions of society? Or have to choose

between science and religion as incompatible opposites; between sci-

ence and the social sciences and humanities; and between feminism and

science? Neither science nor religion after all has much of a place to offer

women.

82 Banu Subramaniam



17/20

Surviving an Archaic Modernity

A major contradiction in our understanding of the entire Indian past is that

this understanding derives largely from interpretations of Indian history made

in the last two hundred years.

Romila Thapar, The Past and Prejudice

In his wonderfully evocative and insightful recent book, Another World:

Science and the Imagination of Modern India,29 Gyan Prakash suggests that

contemporary debates about the past and the present, tradition and

modernity, science and religion, Indian and Western, colonization and

decolonization are not new. In fact, these debates were important in the

Indian national struggle and Indias subsequent quest for modernity. Why

then, after fifty years of independence, have these debates returned center

stage? Why do the nationalists imagine Indias resources and past to be a

Hindu past? How have Hindu nationalists taken the problematic visions

of the archaic and the modern and yet brought them together for such a

powerful vision of an archaic modernity? Ultimately, this project of

archaic modernity proves quite facile and familiar in its resurgentvisions of the old and familiar terrain of patriarchy, hierarchies of caste

and class, and religion. Indias past is imagined not in its heterogeneity

and complexity but instead in the Orientalist visions of a grand Hindu

past.

I cannot say I have any answers. I feel I have come a long way from

my naive childhood dreams. I am used to living between the fissures of

academic disciplines as someone who works across the sciences, the

humanities, and the social sciences. But I am struck by reactions to my

recent interest in religion as I have watched with horror the rise of reli-

gious nationalism in India. I am a researcher in the sciences and the social

studies of science. While I may critique the institution of science and its

practices, I am committed to science and the possibility of a progressiveinstitution. My work seeks to develop and work toward such a vision. As

an atheist witnessing the rise of religious nationalism, my initial reaction

was to want to do away with religion. As always, leaving ones home

brings new insights about that very home. I realize now that Indian

dreams of the nation always take religion as one of the main aspects of

national identity.30 My adulation for science is now more tempered. I

have to ask, If I could recover a progressive agenda for science in all its

oppressive and imperialist history, surely I must do the same for religion?

And yet this has been so very difficult. As I attempt to begin to think

about the contentious fields of science and religion simultaneously, I find

myself in the middle of numerous minefields. How can I gingerly tip-toe




18/20

across the clearly demarcated zones? My scientist friends joke that Im

turning religious and ask whether I will be off to the temple to pray. Why

can an atheist not believe in the progressive possibilities for a social insti-

tution of religion? My religious friends and relatives heave a sigh of relief

and hope that I am finally seeing the light. Postcolonial critics of science

want to have no part of science and scientific rationalists want no part of

religion. Some are delighted at the attention to the idea of decoloniza-tion but immediately slide unproblematically into the glories of Indias

ancient heritage, ironically a discourse created by colonialism. When will

we acknowledge that the glorious Hindu past revered by upper-class reli-

gious nationalists was not glorious for everyone? Others want to leave the

cobwebs of the past behind and move into the light of scientific rationality.

Some secularists want to minimize the role of religion in civil society, rel-

egating religion to the personal, while others want to put religion center

stage of a new moral order. The ideological positions are dizzying. And

here perhaps is the power of an archaic modernity: it reduces the multi-

plicity of India into a seemingly coherent vision. But how do we work

against this vision? How do we empower the multiple pieces into a pro-

gressive vision of science and religion?

When I think back on my own education, I think it a pity that my only

dreams were those of a Western science, uncontexualized, unsituated,

unproblemetized within my own culture or reality. I was the intended

product of Macaulays famous pronouncement, Indian in blood and

colour but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect!31 I

dream of a world where the project of building a progressive, antiracist,

feminist politics within the social institutions of science and religion

becomes possible. The challenge to me is in creating a practice of science

that is informed by its history, sociology, and philosophy. It is the chal-

lenge of resisting the binaries of past and present, secular and religious,

progressive science and regressive religion, modern science and ancient

religion, oppressive West and free East. It is in taking the project of decol-

onization seriously, in attempting Lawrence Cohens vision of creating

an archaeology of the subjugated knowledges within European science

and not just in postcolonial contexts.32 My naive scientific visions of an

evolutionary biologist have now learned to take seriously these global cir-

culations of science. I must learn to take seriously indigenous practices

and systems of knowledge of the colonized worlds without the impulse to

extend the hegemony of Western science to call them sciences or alter-

nate sciences, but to understand them as legitimate knowledge systems

with their own philosophy, history, culture, and tradition. I must reconcile

Western sciences own origin within the Christian clerical tradition.33 I

have to practice science locating it as an institution embedded in a social,



19/20

cultural, and economic world of which religion is an important part. Why

has it been easier for religious nationalists to successfully develop an

archaic modernity, while those in the secular Left have failed to articulate

and create an alternate future? My journeys to the West have now taken

me back to the East. It is in these global scientific circulations that I have

begun to imagine new worlds, ones that are neither archaic nor modern.

Notes

This essay represents a new direction in my work. My interest and engagement

with religion was possible because of the encouragement and support of Janet

Jakobsen and with India because of S. Hariharan. Both have helped substantial ly

with the arguments and the development of this essay. I am also grateful for the

advice of Kamakshi Murti and Rosemary Kalapurakal.

1. The dreamscape was inspired by the title, Dreams of an Insomniac,

which in turn was inspired by a 1996 movie by Tiffanie DeBartolo, Dream for

an Insomniac. Recently, I also discovered Irena Klepfiszs book of the same title,

Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches, and Diatribes (Portland,

Ore.: Eighth Mountain, 1990).2. I. Wilmut, A. E. Schnieke, J. McWhir, A. J. Kind, and K. H. S. Campbell,

Viable Offspring Derived from Fetal and Adult Mammalian Cells, Nature, 27

February 1997, 81013.

3. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1986).

4. Meera Nanda, The Science Wars in India, Dissent44 (winter 1997): 81.

5. Gary Demar of the group American Vision on CNN Report, Kansas

School Boards Evolution Ruling Angers Science Community, 12 August 1999.

6. Bruce Norton, Presidential Candidates Weigh In on Evolution Debate,

CNN, 27 August 1999.

7. See Ashis Nandy, Science, Hegemony, and Violence: A Requiem for Moder-

nity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), 78.

8. See Nanda, Science Wars in India.

9. David Noble, A World without Women: The Chris tian Clerical Culture ofWestern Science (New York: Knopf, 1992).

10. George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: An Historical

Overview, in The Secularization of the Academy, ed. George M. Marsden and

Bradley J. Longfield (New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1992), 33.

11. Nandy, Science, Hegemony, and Violence, 78.

12. Achin Vinaik, The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity,

and Secularization (New York: Verso, 1997).

13. Susantha Goonatilake, Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the

Third World(London: Zed, 1984).

14. Celia W. Dugger, Indias Poorest Are Becoming Its Loudest, New York

Times, 25 April 1999. These conclusions were reached by the Center for the

Study of Developing Societies.

15. Ibid. Dugger is referring to the leaders Mayavati and Mulayam Singh

Yadav. Indeed, Mayawati, a Dalit woman and a leader of the Bahujan Samaj




20/20

Party, built on the votes of Dalits, was instrumental in bringing down the BJP, a

party predominantly run by the upper caste.

16. Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), ix.

17. Ibid., 10.

18. See ibid. for an argument for the merging of the discourses of modern

and traditional in the rise of religious nationalism in India today.

19. Saba Naqvi Bhaumik, By Raking the Temple Issue, the RSS ChiefReassures the Cadre That Nothing Is Forgotten, India Today, 27 September

1999.

20. A Year on, Indians Leaders Cheer Its Nuclear Tests, CNN, 11 May

1999.

21. VHP Demands Vedic Education to Save India from Christian Influ-

ence, Rediff on the Net, 23 October 1998, http://www.rediff.com.

22. Joshi Forced to Drop Saffron Agenda, Indian Express, 22 October

1998.

23. Vajpayee Kicks-Off BJP Poll Drive, Indiatimes, 27 October 1998.

24. Omar Kutty argues that Hindu nationalist discourse depends on the

modern notions of self and nation and hence is rooted in the same discourse

as Indian secular nationalism and Western culturetwo forces the party claims to

oppose. See Omar Kutty, Sources of Intolerance: The Modern Discourse of the

Bharatiya Janata Party, South Asia Graduate Research Journal (SAGAR) 4 (fall1997): 214.

25. Zaheer Baber argues that this position goes all the way back to colonial

times and was part of the argument by some Indian nationalists. Baber, The Sci-

ence of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization, and Colonial Rule in India

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).

26. Gyan Prakash in his recent book, Another Reason: Science and the Imagi-

nation of Modern India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), shows

that the project of identifying scientific knowledge in Indian texts and traditions

came into view in late-nineteenth-century British India to advance universal

claims for a people stigmatized as metaphysical and out of touch with moder-

nity.

27. Ishwarbhai Patel, ed., Science and the Vedas (Bombay: Somaiya Publica-

tions, 1984).

28. Nanda, Science Wars in India, 7883.29. Prakash,Another Reason.

30. Van der Veer, Religious Nationalism, 23.

31. Quoted in Gauri Viswanathan, Religious Conversion and the Politics of

Dissent, in Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Chr istianity, ed. Peter

van der Veer (New York: Routledge, 1996), 90.

32. Lawrence Cohen, Whodunit? Violence and the Myth of Fingerprints:

Comment on Harding, Configurations 2 (spring 1994): 347.

33. Noble,A World without Women.

86 Banu Subramaniam


Documents

Science Secularism and Religion in Modern India