Science Wars in India: Beyond Propaganda

The Method of Science Exhibition (MOSE), or how the Left used tax payer money during the Emergency to make Karl Marx more important in the history of science than Charles Darwin

Use of popular science programmes as a vehicle for unabashed Marxist propaganda, even using the tax payer’s money, has been a hallmark of the Left. A good case in point is the Method of Science Exhibition (MOSE) conceived by physicist-educationist Rais Ahmed, given shape by eminent molecular biologist P.M.Bhargava, financed by NCERT and blessed by Prof Nurul Hasan who was Education Minister in Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet (1971-77).

The project came into being in 1975 during the nearest approximation of Fascist rule India has ever experienced—the Emergency declared by the socialist Congress regime. The exhibition was a liberal mix of creatively designed panels, clever propaganda and Indira sycophancy. MOSE ends with quotes from no scientist or philosopher of science but from Indira Gandhi the then budding dictator: “We want scientific thinking to destroy superstition which has darkened our lives.”

Later, Prof Bhargava, writing about the exhibition designers losing favour with the Janata government, accused the new government of “having a hidden Hindutva agenda”. Interestingly it was Indira regime that was totalitarian and the Janata government was a victory for the forces of democracy. But when Morarji Desai, the then Janata Prime Minister, was found not favourably disposed towards MOSE, articles attacking him very strongly started appearing even in international scientific magazines. For example, Science published an article in which ‘an Indian scientist in this country (USA)’ told the magazine: ‘You know that our prime minister drinks urine,’ and the Science reporter commented that the practice was ‘in line with homeopathic and naturopathic remedies’. (Science, 27 April, 1979)

However, a glance at the choice and depiction of the MOSE panels indicate not only blatant Marxist propaganda but disregard for genuine milestones in the method of science. MOSE has a section titled ’21 Landmarks in the History of the Method of Science and its Applications’. These 21 panels are presented with a very clever caveat: ‘What is presented here is not a display of landmarks in the history of science but landmarks in the history of the method of science.’

The exhibition, as mentioned earlier, was conceived in 1975, but Thomas Kuhn had published his landmark Structure of the Scientific Revolution in 1962. Karl Popper’s Logic of Scientific Discovery had appeared in English in 1959. Yet one finds no mention of these milestones in this exhibition on the ‘history of the method of science’. Instead, it has panels on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and Lenin (see visuals).

In 1980, MOSE was serialized in the now defunct popular science magazine Science Today. The issue dated May 1980 carried all the illustrations related to the ’21 Landmarks’. A look at the way Charles Darwin and Marx are depicted in this section provide a treatment in contrast that in turn shows how the exhibition was designed more to promote biased political ideology than the spirit of science.

The Marx panel has the cover of Das Kapital as well as a portrait of Karl Marx. There is an adoring associated text that speaks of ‘first application of method of science to an integrated analysis of social, political and economic problems’ leading to the ‘formulation of the first science based socio-politico-economic theory’.

In contrast, neither Darwin’s face nor the cover of The Origin of Species get any space from the organisers and in the associated text, even his discovery of natural selection—the crucial scientific input to the theory of evolution, which transformed the speculative theory into a unifying scientific principle for the whole spectrum of biological sciences by providing a viable mechanism for evolution—is not mentioned.

In this exhibition on science, Comrades Marx and Lenin are considered to have contributed more to science—and thus get a better display—than Darwin!

But the unkindest cut of all comes is the depiction of John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971). He was undoubtedly a brilliant physicist. Like an influential section of British scientists of that time, which includes Julian Huxley and J.B.S. Haldane, Bernal was impressed by a Soviet tour so much that he wrote in his work The Social Function of Science (1939):

“It is to Marxism that we owe the consciousness of the hitherto analyzed driving force of scientific advance and it will be through the practical achievements of Marxism that this consciousness can become embodied in the organization of science for the benefit of mankind.”

But what distinguishes Bernal from other initial admirers of Marxism in the scientific community was his unflinching support to the Soviet charlatan Trofim Lysenko who rejected Mendelian genetics and spread pseudo-scientific theories with the political backing of Stalin. (Today, the term ‘Lysenkoism’ is used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, and to serve political objectives) In the face of all evidence, Bernal maintained his stand on the ground that Lysenko under Stalin was pursuing a proletarian science and that he was purging bourgeois science:

“In the past there has been one science. Because modern science was part of the origin and development of capitalism, it was necessarily the production of bourgeois thinkers and steeped in bourgeois ideology. It is only now in the Soviet Union with the new generation of scientific workers that it is possible to build a socialist science.”

Contrast this with the attitude of J.B.S. Haldane who too was a Marxist. Yet he stood by science and not his political ideology when thr Marxist state unleashed an inquisition against the geneticists in Soviet Union. He even allowed his party membership to lapse and then moved to India.

Haldane is also important to the method of science in another way. When Mendelian genetics emerged, Darwinian evolution needed an open-ended synthesis with the new science. This marriage of modern genetics with Darwinian evolution is a remarkable feat that shows that science is open to changing and evolving as a body of knowledge (In fact, this is a defining characteristic of honest science). This marriage was achieved by a brilliant team of scientists which included, along with R.A. Fisher and S G. Wright, the polymath Haldane.

In fact the Bernal-Haldane approach to the Lysenko scandal in science is a classic example that could have conveyed to all watchers how one should not allow personal political and ideological beliefs to interfere with the method of science.

Even the adulation given to Bernal in MOSE that he made ‘first statement of the intimate relationship between science and society’ is incorrect. Five years before Bernal, in 1934, Julian Huxley had written Scientific Research and Social Needs, where he saw science as a social activity which itself demands scientific study. In later years following the Lysenko episode, Huxley too became critical of Marxism. So for the designers of MOSE, it was Bernal, the winner of 1953 Stalin Peace Prize, who better represented a milestone in the history of the method of science than Haldane or Huxley.

The Method of Science Exhibition is thus another instance of Marxist propaganda creatively misusing State resources to appropriate science popularization in India. It’s 2014 now. Almost four decades have passed since the conception of this experiment. A new government is in place. Can this government, the related ministry and associated intellectuals come up with an exhibition for the popularization of science, its spirit and methodology, the achievements, challenges and mysteries in a way that is holistic, scientific, rational, unbiased, inspiring and relevant to the Indic social as well as cultural milieu?

Can the Right in India stand up to this creative challenge?