In India, the assault is ideological and motivated by religious zealotry. Since the current political regime assumed power, India’s ranking on the Academic Freedom Index, developed by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, has sharply declined. In its 2024 update, the report categorises India among countries where academic freedom is deemed ‘completely restricted’. The report suggested that ‘it is primarily anti-pluralist parties in the government that contribute to the decline in academic freedom’.
While the incumbent regime primarily targets social sciences and humanities to reduce them to inconsequential subjects, research in the sciences and medicine could not escape State scrutiny. They have been particularly effective in peddling pseudoscience and bringing its status on par with evidence-based modern science. They have also been successful in branding Hindu scriptural epistemology as ‘Indian Knowledge System’, and making it a part of the educational syllabus, legitimising Hindu metaphysics and mythology as science and history. At the same time, criticism from educators regarding the National Council of Educational Research and Training’s (NCERT) decision to remove Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution from the 10th-grade science textbook was dismissed, with the move being justified as part of a ‘curriculum rationalisation exercise.’
Why would the government advance bovine dung and urine as a panacea for ailments, including cancer? Why would ministries broadcast the misguided views of self-styled experts as scientific fact and confuse the public? The Ministry of AYUSH has been vigorously campaigning for research on cow products, which it believes have medicinal properties. Aside from some antiquated beliefs, these claims had nothing else by way of support, especially no peer-reviewed research or clinical tests. Researchers from major institutes recently gathered at a temple in Madhya Pradesh with their equipment to determine the efficacy of fire rituals in bringing rain. This tells a lot about the abandonment of scientific rationality in contemporary India to suit the whims of the establishment. Such instances reflect the diminishing quality of scientific research in India and draw our attention to how the state instrumentalises knowledge to serve political ends.
by Swarati Sabhapandit and C.P. Rajendran