Science and Religion in India

This book provides an in-depth ethnographic study of science and religion

in the context of South Asia, giving voice to Indian scientists and shedding
valuable light on their engagement with religion. Drawing on biographical,
autobiographical, historical, and ethnographic material, the volume focuses
on scientists’ religious life and practices, and the variety of ways in which
they express them. Renny Thomas challenges the idea that science and
religion in India are naturally connected and argues that the discussion
has to go beyond binary models of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity’. By
complicating the understanding of science and religion in India, the book
engages with new ways of looking at these categories.

Renny Thomas is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology

at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of
Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India.
Routledge Science and Religion Series
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The Multiverse and Participatory Metaphysics

A Theological Exploration
Jamie Boulding

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency

Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action
Ignacio Silva

Science and Religion in India

Beyond Disenchantment
Renny Thomas

New Directions in Theology and Science

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Science and Religion in India
Beyond Disenchantment

Renny Thomas
First published 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 Renny Thomas
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asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
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trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 9781032073194 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032100616 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003213475 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003213475
Typeset in Sabon
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents

List of figures vi
Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

1 Science, rationality, and scientific temper in

postcolonial India 17

2 Beyond disenchantment: Scientists, laboratories,

and religion 45

3 The making of scientist-believers 84

4 Being atheistic, being scientific: Scientists as atheists 109

5 Caste, religion, and the laboratory life 138

Conclusion 172

Bibliography 181
Index 197
Figures

1.1 A marble stone carrying Nehru’s statement, JNCASR,

Bangalore. Photo by the author. 18
3.1 Science and Religion mobile library, during the AISSQ
conference at the Institute. Photo by the author. 96
3.2 Diwali celebration in the lab. Photo by the author. 97
3.3 Brahmin priests in a Physics Workshop during Ayudha
Puja. Photo by the author. 100
3.4 Ayudha Puja celebration at the Institute Cafe. Photo by the
author. 101
3.5 A decorated Life Science Laboratory during Ayudha Puja.
Photo by the author. 102
3.6 A decorated Chemistry Workshop during Ayudha Puja.
Photo by the author. 102
Acknowledgements

I took a while to finish writing this book, and precisely for that reason
writing acknowledgements is not an easy task. I have numerous scholars,
mentors, friends, and well-wishers to thank. This book would not have been
a reality without their help, friendship, support, and generosity. My engage-
ment with ‘science and religion’ began as a PhD researcher at the Centre for
the Study of Social Systems (CSSS), School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU). Susan Visvanathan, my PhD supervisor, gave me
all the support to pursue this research that led me to conduct ethnographic
fieldwork among scientists in Bangalore. It is her intellectual support and
meticulous reading of my writing in different versions that eventually led me
to reach this stage.
I thank the scientists in Bangalore who spoke to me and spent time with
me whenever I visited them. First and foremost I thank Boss for accommo-
dating me in his lab, without which this study would not have been possible.
It is not easy for an anthropologist to enter a lab without the support of gen-
erous and engaging scientists like Boss. The camaraderie that I shared with
my lab mates, their thought provoking enquiries and interest in my work,
has enriched this study in many ways. Their continued correspondence also
kept alive the field even when I was away. I wish I could write their names,
and thank them from my heart, but I am ethically bound to protect their
privacy.
This book has undergone many phases of writing and rewriting. I
have benefitted from engaging and interacting with many scholars. Banu
Subramaniam read the manuscript with deep interest and made insight-
ful and crucial comments. Her reading of the manuscript and important
suggestions helped much in shaping it in its current format. Robert Geraci
gave detailed comments, and the friend in Robert always made sure that
I was on track by asking about the progress of my book. Peter Harrison
read an earlier version of the manuscript with much interest and made sure
that I reached this final stage of completion. Simon Schaffer was generous
enough to share a correspondence between Haldane and Needham when
we met in Cambridge in 2018. I am thankful for his generous support and
viii Acknowledgements
encouragement. Sasanka Perera gave useful comments in an earlier version
of the manuscript, which helped me immensely while rewriting the chapters.
Many scholars and well-wishers have engaged with my work: they asked
important questions; commented on my work; sent their new books and
articles; suggested many important works to read; invited me to present my
work in various platforms. I would especially like to thank the following
people for their support and intervention in different phases of writing this
book: Late M.S.S. Pandian, Vidhya Raveendranathan, Sundar Sarukkai,
Meera Nanda, Harish Naraindas, Abha Sur, Projit Mukharji, Amrita
Mishra, Avijit Pathak, Late Edward Rodrigues, Dhruv Raina, Mahesh
Rangarajan, Shiv Visvanathan, Ashis Nandy, Robert S. Anderson, S. Irfan
Habib, Yiftach Fehige, Smriti Srinivas, Peter Gottschalk, Kapil Raj, Gopal
Guru, Steve Fuller, V. V. Krishna, V. Sujatha, Kaushik Sunder Rajan,
Amrita Shah, John Bosco Lourdusamy, Dick Houtman, Nathan Loewen,
Saurabh Dube, Ari Sitas, Graham M. Jones, Stefan Helmreich, Jason A.
Josephson-Storm, Robert Hefner, Tim Ingold, Martin Mills, Caroline Osella,
Ramah McKay, Richard Staley, Ahmed Ragab, Brandon Vaidyanathan,
Kocku von Stuckrad, Fern Elsdon-Baker, Stephen Jones, Martin Bauer,
Matthew Stanley, Kenneth M. George, Kirin Narayan, Michael Ruse, Miho
Ishii, Pankaj Sekhsaria, Sanjay Srivastava, Yasmeen Arif, Sarah Qidwai, and
Joseph Satish.
As the Charles Wallace Fellow in Queen’s University Belfast (2017–
2018), I benefitted by presenting my work at the anthropology colloquium
and interacting with colleagues from different schools. I especially thank
David N. Livingstone, Maruska Svasek, Peter J. Bowler, Ashok Malhotra,
Joseph Webster, and Jonathan Lanman for many conversations, coffees,
and beers.
I am indebted to audiences at a variety of colloquiums and seminars
where I presented my work: The London Public Understanding of Science
Seminar, London School of Economics; Department of Anthropology,
University of Aberdeen; Department of History and Philosophy of Science,
University of Cambridge; India Public Lecture, Queens’ University Belfast;
Departments of Religious Studies and Sociology, Manhattan College,
New York; Department of History and Sociology of Science, University
of Pennsylvania; Centre for Sociological Research, University of Leuven;
Department of Sociology, The Catholic University of America; New
Perspectives on Science and Religion in Society Conference, Manchester;
UCSIA Summer School, University of Antwerp; Dept. of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali;
National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore; Zakir Husain Centre for
Educational Studies, JNU; Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU; Centre
for the Study of Social Systems, JNU; and Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library, New Delhi.
 Acknowledgements  ix
Michael Burdett and Mark Harris, the brilliant series editors, provided all
the timely support and encouragement throughout the journey. The anony-
mous reviewers gave important and useful suggestions that helped in reshap-
ing many chapters. Katherine Ong, the commissioning editor, provided all
the help needed and made the publishing process smooth. The editorial and
production team at Routledge did fantastic work, and I especially thank
Yuga Harini and Sarah Millward for carefully reading the manuscript.
I want to thank all the librarians who have helped me in this journey. I
thank John Moffett of the East Asian History of Science Library, Needham
Research Institute, Cambridge, for giving permission to use the correspond-
ence between Haldane and Needham. I would also like to thank the staff
of the personal papers section at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
(NMML), and the staff at the National Archives, Delhi, for their timely
help and cooperation. I also extend my gratitude to the library staff of the
Jawaharlal Nehru University and Queen’s University Belfast.
I owe much to my students at the Department of Sociology, Jesus and
Mary College, University of Delhi, and IISER Bhopal for many fulfilling
class room discussions and debates.
I thank my friends for their collegiality and support: Taisha Abraham
for her friendship and intellectual encouragement. Mythri Prasad, Sandhya
Devesan Nambiar, Amya Agarwal, Roshan Xalxo, Jessy Philip, Kiran
Keshavamurthy, Richa Raj, Abid Saittu, Anasua Chatterjee, Ramesh Babu,
David Farris, Dries van Betten, Wing-Kwong Wong, and Hsing-Wen Chang
for being there.
To my parents, Gracy and Thomas; to my siblings; to my nephew and
nieces: thank you for everything.
Material in this book has appeared in earlier publications, includ-
ing “Being Religious, Being Scientific: Science, Religion and Atheism in
Contemporary India.” In Science and Religion: East and West, edited by
Yiftach Fehige, New York: Routledge, 140–157 (2016); “Atheism and
Unbelief among Indian Scientists: Towards an Anthropology of Atheism(s).”
Society and Culture in South Asia 3 (1): 45–67 (2017); “Beyond Conflict
and Complementarity: Science and Religion in Contemporary India.”
Science, Technology and Society 23 (1): 47–64 (2018); “Rational Believers:
Religion, Spirituality and Tradition among Indian Scientists.” In Science,
Belief and Society: International Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion
and the Public Understanding of Science, edited by Stephen Jones, Tom
Kaden and Rebecca Catto, Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press, 127–146,
(2019); “Brahmins as Scientists and Science as Brahmins’ Calling: Caste in
an Indian Scientific Research Institute.” Public Understanding of Science 29
(3): 306–318 (2020). I thank the publishers for granting permission to use
the material that I have extensively revised and re-worked for the present
book.

Renny Thomas

Introduction

Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment is an ethnographic

study of ‘science and religion’ in India. The intention of the book is not to
present India as a special case, rather it intends to present a case study of
universal science – a case of science and religion that has local inflections in
India. The book is not an ‘Indian’ case study of science, but a case study of
‘Science’ in an Indian context.
The study of ‘science and religion’ in different contexts carry different
meanings. The dominant historiography of science and religion is focused
mainly on two major themes: the conflict between science and religion,
and the compatibility of science and religion. This binary understanding
of science and religion gets questioned when anthropologists enter the field
and discover new meanings. This binary of a conflictual or complemen-
tary relationship between science and religion also constituted the history
of European modernity, the way it unfolded and became the master nar-
rative for all societies. Societies were expected to mimic already scripted
trajectories of growth and become the arena for similar debates on science
and religion. Following the recent interventions in the knowledge network
theory, the idea of each location becoming a nodal point for knowledge
transmission and having its own cultural specificity has revealed complex
engagements between science and religion, not necessarily limited to these
binaries.1

Anthropology, science, and religion

The dominant disciplinary focus of anthropology has been tilted towards
the study of the Other. As Bruno Latour argued,

since the time of Levi-Bruhl, anthropology has always been interested in

sciences, but in the sciences of the Others: how come that for Them the
cassowary is not classified as a bird, this was a legitimate question; how
come that modern taxonomists do classify the cassowary as a bird was
not in the purview of anthropologists. Either they took it for granted or
they left this question to historians of science.2

DOI: 10.4324/9781003213475-1
2 Introduction
It took many years for anthropologists to start engage with Western sciences
and laboratories. Though lab ethnography as a genre and method matured
over the years, it is pertinent to note that lab ethnographers didn’t study
religion in the lab. This is also because in many ways religion was seen as
outside of the lab. However, in India, when one enters the lab, one observes
the religious practices within the lab, and the various images of gods and
deities that welcome you in the lab invite ethnographers to take the question
of science and religion seriously and see how labs are not free from the reli-
gious and spiritual worlds. Though there have been lab ethnographies that
talk about the way in which scientists deal with the everyday questions of
morality and ethics, very rarely do we see anthropologists studying religion
among scientists in the labs.3
American sociologists have been studying the religious lives of scientists,
but these have been largely dependent upon surveys and interviews.4 It is
significant to note that the futile divide between sociology and social anthro-
pology, has resulted in a bifurcation between the knowledge of ‘their own
societies’ and ‘other’ cultures. Because of this divide, there has been a lim-
ited engagement by anthropologists with Western science and religion.5
It is significant to also note that ‘science and religion’ as a field, in par-
ticular, was never a preferred field of interest among Indian sociologists and
social anthropologists. Like in the West, the sociological studies on science
and religion in India were done mainly through surveys and short inter-
views (Sinha 1970; Gosling 2007; Keysar and Kosmin 2008; Brown 2012;
Ecklund et al. 2019). Much of the existing historiography focused on the
colonial era has tried to document the ways in which science and religion
co-existed in India without a sense of conflict (Nandy 1995; Dasgupta 1999;
Lourdusamy 2004, 2009; Kumar 2010; Gottschalk 2013; Brown 2016).
On the other hand, postcolonial historians have demonstrated the ways in
which religion itself was scienticised, a prominent instance being the redefi-
nition and modification of theories such as Darwinism (Raj 1991; Prakash
1999; Raina and Habib 2004; Brown 2012; Subramaniam 2019).
The biographies and autobiographies of scientists are focused mainly on
the achievements of scientists in their academic fields. The biographies of
C. V. Raman and S. Chandrasekhar mention the role of culture in their
scientific life (Venkataraman 1986; Wali 1992; Parameshwaran 2011).
However, many contemporary scientists chose to write about religious life
in their autobiographies (Ramanna 1991; Padmanaban 2008; Rao 2010).
Though rare, studies on contemporary Indian scientists and their religi-
osity can be found in the writings of Indian social scientists (Nandy 1995;
Visvanathan 2003, 2016; Raina 2005, 2011). Ashis Nandy’s psychoanalyti-
cal reading of two scientists in his classic work Alternative Sciences discusses
in detail the question of science and religion in the lives of two prominent
scientists; Ramanujan and J. C. Bose (Nandy 1995). On the other hand,
rationalist scientists and rationalist thinkers write about the importance of
scientific temper, critiquing scientists for being superstitious and not being
 Introduction 3
adequately scientific (Bhargava and Chakrabarti 1989; Nanda 2009). They
argued for the promotion of the Nehruvian notion of scientific temper
and discussed its connection with secularism (Subramaniam 2000; Nanda
2004). Recently there had been serious social historical and anthropological
scholarship to explore the question of caste, religion, and gender in Indian
science, which was neglected in the history of science and autobiographies
of scientists (Sur 2011; Damodaran 2013; Subramanian 2019).
The prominent scientific research institutions in India have their own
distinct institutional cultures. It is significant to note that the dominant sci-
entific community (here it is Brahmins) defines it and normalises their cul-
ture as the institutional culture. Any study of science and religion in India
is inadequate if it does not take into account the persistence of caste in
the everyday life of scientists and scientific institutions, and the connection
between caste and the dominant religion in shaping scientific life. In order
to understand these complex issues anthropologists have to devise new ways
and sources of information. Surveys and quantitative methods are perhaps
useful in order to get a glimpse, but they will not help to grasp the complex-
ity of the issue. Engagement with the everyday life of scientists is neces-
sary to grasp the issue at hand. Anthropologists have to employ varieties of
sources such as archives, interviews, autobiographies, and biographies. As
Michael Fischer argues,

among the variety of sources for anthropologists to draw upon in engag-

ing science and technology issues are first person accounts by scientists
about their own fields, as ways of linking narratives of science to lives
of scientists, as ways of locating the scientific imaginary in social com-
munities, cultural anxiety structures, and moral tradition-reworking
speculations.6

In order to understand the question of religion, caste, gender, and cultural

dominance in scientific labs and institutions, it is imperative to look at sci-
entists’ own writings: memoirs, reflections, and speeches. I have used the
personal writings of scientists along with fieldwork data to unravel the ques-
tion of religion among scientists and the interplay of caste and religious
hierarchies in a largely upper caste–dominated scientific research institute.
This book looks at how scientists live their ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’
life beyond a disenchanted world of rationality and scientific modernity.
In many ways, this book shows how the idea of disenchantment is a myth
in India, like it is a myth in the modern West.7 Studies on science and reli-
gion in India exoticise the religiosity of scientists. They are an extension of
the orientalist construction of India as spiritual and metaphysical. Many
leading Indian scientists were openly religious, but their religiosity did not
affect their scientific work. Rather they lived their religious and scientific
life as two important parts of their life as we will discuss in detail in the fol-
lowing chapters. Just to give an example, the renowned Indian theoretical
4 Introduction
physicist, E. C. G. Sudarshan, “did not see science and spirituality as dis-
tinct operations needing unification; they were already united” (Sreenivasan
2019:224).
Similarly, studies of science and religion in India tend to focus on religi-
osity and spirituality among Indian scientists and in that process ignores
the life of non-believers and atheist scientists. Any attempt to study science
and religion should also engage with unbelief and atheism among scientists
as well, as it helps us to understand the specific ways in which they live an
atheistic life. That will also help us to understand the specificities of these
ways of life and in what ways unbelief is different from belief in the Indian
context. Understanding their lifeworld perhaps help us to question the uni-
versality of atheism and will shed light upon the varieties of atheism.
During my fieldwork I met many scientists who described their identi-
ties as ‘atheists’. Their understanding and practice of atheism differed sig-
nificantly from western scientific atheists and liberal rationalists. The study
of science and religion is incomplete if one doesn’t take into account the
plurality of voices. Along with the voices of religious scientists or scientists
who describe themselves as believers, one should also give equal importance
to the views of atheist scientists or scientists who describe themselves as
nonbelievers.

Fieldwork
Fieldwork was conducted for 11 months from February to December
2012 at a leading scientific research Institute in Bangalore, Karnataka (here-
after the Institute). However, prior to that I had made my first visit to the
Institute in November 2011. When I faced difficulties getting entry into a
lab, I decided to take a break and spent a month in Trivandrum, Kerala,
talking to scientists at two leading research institutes; one a leading centre
for biotechnology, and the other a leading centre for space physics. I did a
few interviews in these two places. Eventually, I wrote to scientists at the
Institute in Bangalore asking if I could meet them. Fortunately, many of
them replied saying that they would like to meet me. I spent two weeks at
the Institute during that visit. During that period, I conducted a few inter-
views and realised that this method was inadequate in capturing the every-
day lives and practices of scientists.
Subsequently, I wrote to some scientists whom I had interviewed in my
second visit asking if I could join their group/lab as an observer/appren-
tice/visitor. Two scientists replied positively. I decided to join the lab of
Srinivasan, a distinguished scientist, and the head of one of the largest
research groups in the Institute. He is referred to by the lab members as
‘Boss’. Hereafter I use ‘Boss’ to refer to him throughout the book. He asked
me to join his lab. Initially, I joined for six months. After six months I asked
him if I could spend six more months. He agreed happily. The continuous
fieldwork took place from February to December 2012. My designation was
 Introduction 5
that of a ‘Visitor’. I stayed in one of the hostels in the Institute called ‘OP
Block’ (meant for postdoctoral researchers of the Institute). I joined in one
of the student messes. The Institute has three messes: D, E, and F. I was in
the F mess (they serve south Indian vegetarian and non-vegetarian food in F
mess). I shall discuss the dietary practices in detail later.
Boss welcomed me back to the lab again in 2016 when I was in the
Institute to do fieldwork on a different theme. We met again in December
2019 and had a meaningful conversation on life and the future of science
in India.8
As a member of Boss’s lab, I observed the lab, the scientists’ everyday life,
religious views, and practices. I studied not only the lab, but participated in
various other activities in the Institute. I was part of a few of the informal
discussion groups, which allowed me to interact with scientists and research-
ers from various ideologies and backgrounds. I developed friendships with
scientists and research scholars from various departments. It was possible
only due to my identity as a ‘lab member’. This identity helped me to con-
duct in-depth interviews and have conversations with scientists from other
departments of the Institute. I have also interviewed scientists from two
other scientific research institutions; 1) a premier research centre for biologi-
cal sciences, and 2) a leading research centre for chemistry. I was fortunate
enough to interview some of the leading contemporary Indian scientists in
different fields of research, including many emeritus professors.9 Apart from
the interviews and participant observation in the lab, I interviewed senior
scientists, postdoctoral researchers, doctoral researchers, project assistants,
and short-term visitors from various departments of the Institute.

Anonymity
The scientists I have interviewed came from diverse religious, regional, gen-
der, caste, and disciplinary backgrounds. In order to keep anonymity, the
names of all scientists and researchers have been changed.
The identity of the Institute, labs, cafes, messes, groups, disciplines, and
specialisations has also been changed.

Laboratory ethnography
Laboratory ethnography emerged as a distinct methodology to follow sci-
ence and scientists closely. Laboratory ethnographers took the content of
science as an object of enquiry (Latour and Woolgar 1979; Latour 1983;
Knorr-Cetina 1983). The current book does not deal with the content of
science. Instead, the lab is used as a site to understand the religious life of
scientists. Studying religion in the lab is following the tradition of Science
and Technology Studies, by arguing that religion and religious life is not
part of the outside of the lab, but very much part of scientific labs. The lab
is very much a religious place, as much as it is a political10 and scientific site.
6 Introduction
Studying aspects that we generally don’t associate with a scientific lab is
very much part of the tradition of STS and it gives an insightful idea about
the working of a lab. For instance, Pankaj Sekhsaria in his ethnography of
an STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy) lab in Pune studied how jugaad
works among scientists in the lab. Jugaad11 is not an image that comes to
one’s mind when we think of a modern scientific lab, yet Sekhsaria shows
how jugaad is the soul of the lab that he studied (Sekhsaria 2019). Similarly,
by studying religion among the lab members, and using my identity as lab
member to study scientists from other departments, I argue that we need to
study not only science and the scientific workings of a lab, but that we also
need to study religion and the politics of science within the lab for a larger
understanding of science. As part of a spectroscopy lab, I benefitted from
talking about religion and observing the religious life of my lab members. It
also helped me in getting to know about other labs and their members, and
how religion works among scientists in these labs.

The laboratory
Srinivasan (Boss) is the recipient of various international and national
awards, and he is the only Indian member on the editorial board of a pres-
tigious international journal in his field. His research group is quite large
compared to other labs in the Institute. When I was doing fieldwork, the
lab had a total of 35 members, which included postdoctoral fellows, PhD
scholars, project assistants, short-term visitors, a scientific officer, and an
assistant. Boss believes in group work, and whenever he talks to the research
group he stresses the importance of cooperation and mutual help among
the lab members. The lab work requires group work/team work. As Gerald
Swatez discusses, “Team implies a common purpose, a division of labour
towards that purpose, and a form of coordination, which is not simply hier-
archical.”12 When I joined the group it had nine regular PhD students, eight
postdoctoral fellows, six project assistants, and around seven short-term
visitors among others. Many project assistants had already left the lab by
the time I was about to finish my fieldwork. For instance, when I joined the
lab, Prakash was a project assistant, and later he left for Paris to pursue his
PhD. Many project assistants in the Institute informed me that they join
as project assistants to get a PhD position either at the Institute or abroad.
Many project assistants work for a year or two in the lab and then apply for
a PhD in universities abroad.
In order to foster a sense of collectiveness in the lab, the lab members
celebrate the birthdays of all the members, including Boss. They organise
birthday parties for Boss every year. Boss takes the group for a trip occa-
sionally which he thinks is very important to maintain a sense of cohesion
among the group. In 2012, the group had two trips. The first trip was to
Coorg, a hill station in Karnataka, and the second trip was to Munnar, a
hill station in Kerala. As a lab member, I was also part of these two trips.
 Introduction 7
These trips helped me greatly to communicate with the group members in
an informal setting, and understand them closely, and above all to develop
great camaraderie with the group.
Every lab has its own work culture. Boss’s lab has meetings every
Saturday. Two or three members of the lab present their work, and Boss
responds to their arguments. Lab meeting is a special occasion. This is the
day when all the lab members meet, and after the meeting the entire lab
goes for a coffee at the Institute Cafe. Boss is very strict about having lab
meetings regularly. Even if Boss is not around, the lab members meet on
Saturdays and discuss a scientific problem or a recent scientific paper they
have read. The group meeting is another major occasion, which happens
once a month. All lab members need to present their work-in-progress in
this meeting. As a lab member, I had to give a talk as well.

Social life
The Institute has many platforms for researchers and faculty members to
meet and discuss ideas. One such place is the Institute Cafe. One finds
scientists talking about their work at this cafe with colleagues from other
departments. It is also a place for scientists to talk about issues not necessar-
ily related to their work. Every day scientists with their respective research
groups come here for coffee. The Institute Cafe provides good quality filter
coffee, that everyone enjoys having while discussing ideas. One hears sci-
entists discussing with their colleagues from other departments every day,
“That is impossible, one can’t prove that”, “Did you get the correct spec-
tra”. They discuss not only science, but politics, art, religion, and occasion-
ally patents, and family matters. For many, this is one of the few places to
relax after spending long hours in the lab. I used to go with my lab mates
and Boss to the cafe many times in a week. I had numerous conversations
with the lab mates and Boss in this cafe. Philip, a young physicist at the
Institute, met me almost every day at the cafe. We discussed issues rang-
ing from scientific publications, politics of knowledge production, and our
personal lives.
Besides the cafe, the Institute also has other places to meet for a coffee
or lunch/dinner such as the Faculty Cafe, Manasa Restaurant, and Kaveri
Cafe. The Institute Cafe serves only vegetarian dishes. Non-vegetarian food
is available only at Manasa Restaurant.
The Institute celebrates many festivals. Some of the more important
celebrations in the Institute are Diwali, Ayudha Puja, Ganesha Chaturthi,
Rajyotsava,13 and Independence Day. The Institute has various groups and
associations for students and researchers such as the Students Association:
representative body of the student community; Discussion: a left-wing
student group which organises talks and programmes on matters related
to social inequality; and Parampara: a student group that organises talks
mostly on Hindu spirituality, tradition, nationalism, and culture. Sanskriti
8 Introduction
is the ‘cultural’ wing of Parampara. They organise various events on Indian
classical dance and music, yoga workshops, and organise talks on Indian
spirituality by Hindu religious leaders. Institute also has various regional
associations. These associations celebrate important festivals of the con-
cerned regions.

Entering the lab

Anthropologist and social historian of science, Robert S. Anderson talks
about the necessity of field methods in the social studies of sciences. He
writes, “The daily life of scientists and technologists is centered in research
institutions. It is there that they experience the boredom and occasional
excitement of the production process of ‘formal science.’”14 In order to
understand the everyday life of scientists it is important that ethnographers
be part of the scientific institutions. This insider status helped me to talk to
scientists both in formal and informal settings and helped me to participate
in various festivals with them.
Latour and Woolgar in their monumental work Laboratory Life dis-
cussed that scientists are very sceptical and critical of the presence of a non-
scientist in their scientific activity (Latour and Woolgar 1979:19). Robert
Anderson also talked about the problematic relationship between ‘Them’
and ‘Us’ (Anderson 1981:237). Max Charlesworth et al. in their book Life
among Scientists (Oxford University Press, 1989) discussed similar kinds of
experiences in an Australian research institute. Similarly, Amrita Mishra in
her ethnographic study of a lab in Bangalore argued,

The relatively low number of ethnographic studies of the laboratory

is in part a result of suspicion and determined disengagement between
sociologists and scientists. The will to ‘exoticise’ the ethnographic
‘object’ is an ‘alter’, not the antonym of the suspicion of the sociologists
to the scientific laboratory. The frequent refusal of laboratory directors
to admit the sociological observer is the effect of the scientist’s reluc-
tance to tolerate the danger of objectivity turned inwards, to endure the
stranger, the hostile gaze of the non-scientist.15

It was the same in my case as well. In the initial days of my fieldwork, I

used to wait for my lab mates to get free. It took me almost three months to
develop a good rapport and friendship with them. Meeting them in informal
settings such as the Institute Cafe allowed me to start discussing my work
with them. They started taking interest in my work and accepted me as a ‘lab
member’ and a friend. However, I don’t regard my identity as an insider, nor
a total outsider. Though the lab members accepted me and considered me as
part of their lab, they were conscious of my non-scientist identity.16
It is difficult to ‘get into’ a lab and convince the scientists about anthropo-
logical work. I was fortunate that I met Boss who was very much interested
 Introduction 9
in what I was doing. Though there had been various bureaucratic and tech-
nical procedures before getting in to the lab, Boss made it easy for me to
‘enter’ into the lab. For ethnographers, getting accepted and admitted into
a lab is a solace. Often scientists look at sociologists and social anthropolo-
gists with suspicion as already discussed. This suspicion leads to the denial
of ethnographic work in labs. If the ethnographers cannot convince the sci-
entists about their objectives of study it leads to serious misunderstandings.
After finishing the official procedures I joined the lab as a Visitor in
February 2012. When Boss introduced me to the lab, I noticed the chang-
ing facial expressions of my lab mates when he stated: “He is our new lab
member. He is not a scientist; he is a sociologist and he will be observing all
of you.” Later, when I was wrapping up my work in December 2012 I asked
them what they felt about my presence in the lab. They said that they were
very careful about what they discussed in the lab in my presence, as they
feared that I would inform Boss about the everyday communication and
conversation in the lab. They also told me that after few months they got
used to my presence and had no fear of my presence. Though initially they
were very suspicious of my presence in the lab, later, they became friendly
and became convinced about my work and research.
The identity of a person in a scientific institute is not known by his/her
name, but by the name of their lab. I had to say all the time that “I am from
Prof. Srinivasan’s lab” when I introduced myself to scientists and research-
ers from other departments. The eponymous identification of lab members
with the head of the lab is universal in the world of science, as Amrita
Mishra observes, “I observed that the laboratory associates are identified
not by their common area of research, but by ‘whose’ lab they are in.”17 Lab
mates told me that “they don’t do anything in the lab without Boss’s permis-
sion.” I often heard Boss say, “Use the machines and instruments with care.
These are very costly affairs.” Even the drug sellers when they come to the
lab ask, “Is it Srinivasan’s lab?” Boss is considered as the ‘owner’ of the lab.

Insiders/outsiders
Since its origin, the notion of insider-outsider is one of the predominant
debates within social anthropology. Classical anthropology was primarily
about the study of outsiders or ‘others’. Mariza Peirano argues that “for
a long time anthropology was defined by the exoticism of its subject mat-
ter and by the distance, conceived as both cultural and geographic, that
separated the researcher from the research group.”18 The field of anthro-
pology has witnessed several transitions from being a study of ‘others’ to a
phase of studying one’s own society, group, and culture, including science
and technology (Franklin 2002). In the 1980s it began to study phenomena
which had not been traditionally part of its spectrum. In their classic work,
Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1979) questioned the established tradi-
tions of anthropology by conducting ethnographic study of a lab. Though
10 Introduction
my study does not delve into how the discipline and object of anthropology
transformed, I am concerned with some of the fundamental questions the
discipline has endlessly debated. Firstly, what does it mean to be an outsider
in the field? Secondly, does an insider identity privilege the ethnographer
compared to an outsider identity?
I was an outsider when I started my fieldwork and after few months of
staying in the lab, they accepted me as part of the lab. I don’t claim that they
accepted me as an ‘insider’. Various scholars have critically engaged with
the ‘privileges’ an insider in the field enjoys over the outsider. M. N. Srinivas
in his Remembered Village shows that the Rampura villagers had been very
suspicious of his presence in the village despite being an insider and he had
to handle different groups differently to establish rapport. He also shows
that his identity as a “Brahmin-urban educated insider” became a matter of
concern in the village (Srinivas 1976).
The problem gets further complicated when it is about one epistemo-
logical group studying another epistemological group. The suspicion and
mutual distrust of different disciplines has been poignantly shown by
Bernard Cohn. Through his participant observation he shows that histori-
ans through their particular analytical and classificatory models try to create
a distinction from anthropologists. Cohn argues that the time he had spent
among historians did not make him a historian, but it made him a ‘sympa-
thetic outsider’ who usually recognised the fact that he was an outsider.19
The matter is again complicated when it comes to studying science and
its culture. Here, social scientists are considered to be ‘total outsiders’.
Sociologists and anthropologists of sciences are doubted and questioned by
scientists on the ground that they have no ‘understanding and experience’ of
science. Can a social scientist understand the lifeworld of a scientist? How
do they make sense of their ‘rules and rituals’ in the lab? As Jonas Salk wrote
in the Introduction to Latour and Woolgar’s Laboratory Life, “Scientists
often have an aversion to what non-scientists say about science. Scientific
criticism by nonscientists is not practiced in the same way as literary criti-
cism by those who are not novelists or poets.”20 The presence of an outsider
in the lab is always seen with suspicion. In the initial days of fieldwork my
lab mates viewed me with suspicion especially when I attended the lab meet-
ings. They were also curious to know if I understood the scientific problems
that they discussed in the weekly lab meetings. Latour and Woolgar write,

When an outside observer first expresses interest in the activities of

working scientists, he can expect one of a variety of different reac-
tions. If he is a fellow professional scientist working in a different field,
or if he is a student working towards final submission into the scien-
tific profession, the outsider will usually find that his interest is easily
accommodated. Barring any circumstances involving extreme secrecy
or competition between the parties, scientists can react to expressions
of interests by adopting a teaching role. Outsiders can thus be told the
 Introduction 11
basic principles of scientific work in a field which is relatively strange
to them. However, for outsiders who are completely ignorant of science
and do not aspire to join the ranks of professional scientists, the situ-
ation is rather different. The most naive (and perhaps least common)
reaction is that nonscientific outsiders simply have no business probing
the activities of science.21

Elsewhere Latour argues that,

Only when science is the object of study is the merit of the outsider’s
position denied. If I say to a group of physicists that a) I do not need to
be a physicist in order to study physics, b) I ought not to be a physicist
in order to study physics, c) I should not have to believe in the ration-
ality of the natural sciences in order to account for them in my own
terms, and d) I should not use any tool from any science even in my own
analysis of physics – no doubt I would immediately be thrown into an
asylum. This is curious, in contrast to what is expected of a sociologist
of religion, for example. No one denies that the sociologist of religion
can be both an agnostic and a good sociologist, but a sociologist of sci-
ence is not permitted to be an agnostic.22

Fieldworkers employ various methods during fieldwork to be accepted in

the field. Initially it was hard for me to convince my lab mates about my
work. They didn’t have much idea about ethnographic research. After a few
months of my stay in the lab, Boss asked me to give a talk on my work in one
of the lab meetings. I gave a talk titled ‘Doing Sociology’ that was attended
by all the lab members including Boss. It helped me to communicate with
the lab members, and many of them asked questions about the methodology
of my work. They were interested to find out if sociologists could be ‘objec-
tive’ in their research. When I discussed social studies of science, and Bruno
Latour’s contribution, they were surprised and commented: ‘what, how can
you say that science is socially constructed?’ , ‘science is universal knowl-
edge,’ ‘science is objective’. However, this talk was an entry point for me to
begin my interviews in the lab. Some of them showed an interest to know
more about anthropology and the philosophy of science. Sangeetha, a sen-
ior PhD researcher in the lab, asked me to suggest readings by Karl Popper
and Thomas Kuhn. However, most lab members continued to be sceptical
about my work. And they often commented that, ‘Sociology is so easy, one
just needs to observe people’, ‘Sociology is an easy subject unlike Sciences.’
I knew that it was important for me to convince them about the depth
and seriousness of my research. The philosopher of science, Sundar Sarukkai
was in Bangalore at that time. When I asked him if he could give a talk on
philosophy of science for my lab members he happily agreed. I discussed this
with Boss. Boss was very keen to have this lecture and organised the talk at
the department conference hall. The fact that Sundar Sarukkai was initially
12 Introduction
trained as a scientist with a PhD in Theoretical Particle Physics attracted
much attention from my lab members. The lab mates accepted Sarukkai’s
criticism of science and scientists because of his training in science. Sundar
Sarukkai in his talk criticised the alleged objectivity of science, and talked
about different forms of knowledge. His talk was attended by more than
150 people, including my lab mates, leading scientists from other research
groups, and researchers from other departments. After this talk, my lab
mates started taking my research seriously, and were curious to know more
about sociology, history, and philosophy of science. I realised that organis-
ing talks and lectures of this kind was a useful technique in social anthropol-
ogy to convince the field about one’s work, especially when doing fieldwork
in scientific institutions and labs.
Another occasion was towards the end of my fieldwork on 17 December
2012. Historian of science, Meera Nanda was in Bangalore. I asked her if
she could give a talk at the Institute. She happily agreed. Discussion23 had
organised the talk. It was attended by more than 100 research scholars
and students from different disciplines. Whenever she criticised Hindutva
or cultural nationalism, students from cultural nationalist groups on the
campus asked questions and counter-questions. For instance, a PhD stu-
dent in Physics stood up and asked her, “Do you know Sanskrit”, when
she said “No” he said, “Then don’t speak on subjects that you don’t
know. You don’t have the right to criticise Vedic sciences if you have no
idea about the subject.”24 These two talks helped me to understand how
scientists engaged with the questions of objectivity, rationalism, religion,
and cultural nationalism. I could organise these talks at the Institute only
because of my insider identity as a lab member, and it helped me in getting
to know scientists and researchers from various departments and research
groups.

The structure of the book

The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 narrates the story of the
emergence of science as the paradigm for modernity in India. Nehru’s love
and admiration for science and his friendship with scientists is well known.
This state–science relationship gave science and scientists a superior sta-
tus in India. No discussion about science in postcolonial India would be
complete without discussing the Nehruvian project of scientific modernity
and rationality. Although the book is an ethnographic study of ‘science and
religion’, it is imperative to have a historical understanding of the debates
on science, scientific temper, and rationality that shaped the way we under-
stand and engage with ‘science and religion’ in contemporary India.
Chapters 2 and 3 look at the specific ways in which scientists lived their
religious life. The presence of scientists in religious places generates discus-
sion in the media and the public. Why is it that they are perceived as distinct
from others? Is it due to their relationship with the alleged objectivity of
 Introduction 13
science? Why is it that the grand narrative of the conflict between science
and religion dominates the popular imagination? Do the scientists really see
a conflict between their religious and scientific life? How do they interpret
their religious views and life? What does it mean to be a religious scientist?
The perception of science as objective knowledge and religion as subjective
phenomena played a major role in developing the image that scientists are
rational and cannot believe in things which are inexplicable. The alleged
conflict between science and religion has been refuted by historians of sci-
ence. Yet the image of scientists being antithetical to religion continues to
exist in the public imagination. These two chapters problematise the west-
ern grand narrative of science and religion by showing how Indian scientists
practised various rituals and festivals without any sense of conflict with
their profession as scientists. It also shows how the idea of a disenchanted
scientist is a myth. These chapters, with the help of ethnographic data and
memoirs, show in detail how the western discourse of religion-science has
its limitations in the Indian context. As Stanley Tambiah succinctly put it,
“the problem of commensurability and making transcultural judgments
faces its biggest obstacles when it attempts to compare and evaluate differ-
ent systems of morality.”25
However, it is not the case that all scientists are religious or even quasi-
religious or spiritual. Chapter 4 attempts to understand the life of non-
believers. I met many scientists who described their identity as ‘atheists’,
‘agnostics’, and ‘materialists’. However, I will show in this chapter that their
idea of atheism or non-belief is not similar to that of their western counter-
parts. For instance, the liberal atheism of scientists like Richard Dawkins is
not popular among them. Their atheism or non-belief is not free from their
cultural and caste upbringing. I will show that the western understanding of
atheism as a philosophy of godlessness and anti-religious sentiment does not
work in the Indian context. Having said that, it should be noted that these
Indian scientists do not necessarily represent India or atheism in India, as
there exist many varieties of atheism in India including the strong support-
ers of Dawkins.
The understanding of science and religion is meaningful and complete
only when we study the views of both believers and non-believers. The
orientalists imagined India in opposition to the West as metaphysical and
irrational, and the West as rational and scientific. The orientalist under-
standing of India has also contributed to an absence of serious anthro-
pological and sociological studies of the cultures of atheism in the Indian
context. The chapter aims to develop a critique of the western imagina-
tion of atheism by showing the existence of different practices of atheism
among scientists. It will show how culture, tradition, and religious values
were deeply enmeshed in their ‘atheistic’ life. This chapter leads us to the
next chapter where I look at how the cultural traditions of the domi-
nant group have been normalised as the culture of science and scientists
in India.
14 Introduction
When we study ‘science and religion’ in India, it is imperative to look at
the question of caste. For a long time scientific practice in India had been
dominated by the Brahmins as they were the early beneficiaries of English
education during the colonial times. This early domination of Brahmins and
other upper castes in science gave a Brahminical identity to the culture of
science in India. Brahmins were perceived as ‘natural’ inheritors of scientific
practice as they had been scholars of texts and men of learning according
to Hindu tradition. This natural knowledge of Brahmin scientists was rein-
forced directly or indirectly by many renowned scientists and researchers
in my field who claimed that they are ‘meritorious’ to pursue science and
research. It is not surprising that they are suspicious of affirmative action
as they believed that it would affect the ‘merit’ and ‘quality’ of science. It
is this idea of science as a meritorious and casteless field that I discuss in
Chapter 5. Even after the introduction of various inclusive policies such as
reservation for Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in educational
institutions, there is a stark absence of them in India’s leading scientific
and technological research institutions. Caste subordination is an everyday
affair in India’s leading institutions of science and technology. This chapter
attempts to show how studies of science and religion need to look at caste-
based inequalities as these inequalities are sanctioned by religious beliefs
and practices. It will be an incomplete picture of science and religion if we
don’t talk about caste as it has direct connection with religion and beliefs in
the Indian context.
Although the manuscript is an ethnographic study of scientists in an
Indian scientific research institute, this story can be used to make sense of
other locations and the doing of science in general as well. While I focus
on a particular Institution, I argue that this data can be used to make sense
of the doing of Indian science in general. Also, the book doesn’t intend to
present India as a special case, rather it intends to present a case study of
universal science – a case of science and religion that has local inflections in
India. In that sense this book is not an ‘Indian’ case study of science, but a
case study of ‘Science’ in an Indian context.

Notes
1 Sujit Sivasundaram, “A Global History of Science and Religion”, in Science
and Religion: New Historical Perspectives, edited by Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey
Cantor and Stephen Pumfrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010),
194.
2 Bruno Latour, “Postmodern? No, Simply Amodern! Steps towards an
Anthropology of Science”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 21, no.
1, 1990, 145.
3 For instance, anthropologist Lesley A. Sharp in her very engaging ethnography
of experimental lab sciences discusses in detail the everyday ethics and moral-
ity of scientists, yet she doesn’t discuss if religion plays a role in shaping their
ethics and morality, and the tensions they face because of religious beliefs. See
Lesley A. Sharp, Animal Ethos: The Morality of Human-Animal Encounters
 Introduction 15
in Experimental Lab Science (Oakland, CA: University of California Press,
2019).
4 There have been attempts by sociologists recently to think about the possibility
of studying science and religion using various methods including laboratory eth-
nography. For a discussion on the plurality of methods in studying science and
religion in sociology, see Stephen H. Jones, Tom Kaden and Rebecca Catto (eds),
Science, Belief and Society: International Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion
and the Public Understanding of Science (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2019).
5 Latour discusses in detail the failure of anthropology in studying western sci-
ence and laboratories. See Bruno Latour, “Postmodern? No, Simply Amodern!
Steps towards an Anthropology of Science”, Studies in History and Philosophy
of Science 21, no. 1, 1990, 145–171.
6 Michael M. J. Fischer, “Eye(i)ing the Sciences and Their Signifiers (Language,
Tropes, Autobiographies): Interviewing for a Cultural Studies of Science and
Technology”, in Technoscientific Imaginaries: Conversations, Profiles and
Memoirs, edited by George E. Marcus (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press, 1995), 44.
7 For a discussion on the myth of disenchantment in the West, see Jason A.
Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the
Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
Also see Egil Asprem, The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism
and Esoteric Discourse, 1900–1939 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2018); Robert A.
Yelle and Lorenz Trein (eds), Narratives of Disenchantment and Secularization:
Critiquing Max Weber’s Idea of Modernity (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
8 In 2013, I had co-organised two lectures by Boss at Jawaharlal Nehru University
(JNU). He delivered two lectures on the challenges in doing experimental scien-
tific research. It was an important ethnographic moment for me as I could spend
two days with Boss talking about my work and hear his response to what I was
writing about his lab.
9 I have conducted 80 interviews with scientists from different disciplines during
my stay as a lab member. I have done two rounds of interviews with the majority
of these 80 scientists, and three rounds with selected scientists during my stay
from February to December 2012. I interviewed selected scientists in 2016 when
I revisited the Institute to ask specific questions on the dominant culture of the
Institute, and also undertook participant observation of the Ayudha Puja cel-
ebration in different laboratories during that visit.
10 For a detailed historical discussion on the complex relationship of laboratory
and politics, see Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump:
Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1985). Also see Bruno Latour, “Joliot: History and Physics Mixed
Together”, in A History of Scientific Thought: Elements of a History of Science,
edited by Michel Serres (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995), 611–635. For a discus-
sion on how scientists from different parts of Europe dealt with the question
of politics, nationalism, and science during the First World War, see Matthew
Stanley, Einstein’s War: How Relativity Conquered Nationalism and Shook the
World (London: Viking, 2019).
11 The word Jugaad is used in many parts of north India to denote the creative
usage of available materails to find solutions to everyday problems; it is creative
improvisation (Sekhsaria 2019).
12 Gerald M. Swatez, “The Social Organization of a University Laboratory”,
Minerva 8, 1970, 36.
13 Karnataka formation day.
14 Robert S. Anderson, “The Necessity of Field Methods in the Study of Scientific
Research”, in Sciences and Cultures: Anthropological and Historical Studies
16 Introduction
of Sciences, edited by E. Mendelsohn and Y. Elkana (Dordrecht: D. Reidel
Publishing Company, 1981), 215.
15 Amrita Mishra, “Power, Authority and Capital in the Laboratory: A Study
of Elites and Modes of Association in Science” (PhD diss., Jawaharlal Nehru
University, 2007), 5.
16 Lab ethnography is rarely done in India as it is difficult to ‘enter’ the laboratory
without the support of scientists. However, there are cases where ethnographers
were welcomed in the laboratory without much suspicion. Pankaj Sekhsaria’s
insightful ethnographic study of an STM lab in Pune is an example of that
(Sekhsaria 2019). Pankaj was welcomed because he was documenting the life
of STM in India and the scientist behind STM, which is seen as less controver-
sial mainly because the lab he was studying also had some interest in his work.
Clearly the entry to a lab is based on what the ethnographer is going to study
and write about. Undoubtedly, documenting the life of instruments is important
as Sekhsaria demonstrates in his work and can be used to understand the history
and life of a laboratory. See Pankaj Sekhsaria, Instrumental Lives: An Intimate
Biography of an Indian Laboratory (London: Routledge, 2019). Social historians
of science and STS scholars have written on the life of scientific instruments. For
an anthropologically informed historical discussion on scientific instruments, see
Simon Schaffer, “Easily Cracked: Scientific Instruments in States of Disrepair”,
Isis 102, no. 4, 2011, 706–717.
17 Mishra, “Power, Authority and Capital in the Laboratory”, 34.
18 Mariza G. S. Peirano, “When Anthropology Is at Home: The Different Context
of a Single Discipline”, Annual Review of Anthropology 27, 1998, 105.
19 Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays
(Delhi: OUP, 1996), 2.
20 Jonas Salk, “Introduction”, in Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of
Scientific Facts, by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (London: Sage Publications,
1979), 11.
21 Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of
Scientific Facts (London: Sage Publications, 1979), 19.
22 Bruno Latour, “Insiders and Outsiders in the Sociology of Science; Or, How Can
We Foster Agnosticism?”, in Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology
of Culture Past and Present, edited by Robert Alun Jones and Henrika Kuklick
(Greenwich, CT: Jai Press Inc., 1981), 200–201.
23 Discussion is a left-leaning student group in the Institute. I was a member of
Discussion during my stay. I was interested to know how students responded to
Meera Nanda’s criticism of Vedic sciences and Hindutva cultural nationalism.
The title of her talk was “The Reception of Darwinism in India: What It Says
about Our Views of Science.”
24 It is important to note that Meera Nanda is not an outsider to science as she is
a trained life scientist herself (she did her first PhD in Biotechnology from the
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi; later she did a PhD in Science Studies at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York), yet the students and researchers
who questioned her knowledge of Sanskrit were not ready to engage with what
she was saying on Darwinism as a trained life scientist and historian of science.
It shows how cultural nationalists construct an exclusive community based on
Hindutva ideologies; and allow only this exclusive community to speak about
India’s past.
25 Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 137.