The first reason for the choice to promote science as an aspirational narrative for the future is, I argue, the lack of consensus on what is the Indian history of science and its role in the
social life of people. The Council itself admits that a large section of the Indian population is superstitious, and the vastly diverse demographic groups that they will have to cater to leads to major challenges in communicating science. This is also an interesting dichotomy of a modern nation-state with a very long and chequered history of conquests and their role in shaping local cultures. There is, as mentioned earlier, a whole gamut of varied opinion regarding what is Indian science. On the one hand, there are scholarly works on early calculus in fourteenth-century India (including Almeida and Joseph, 2004; and Raju, 2007) which are hardly known to most Indians and receive solely academic attention from historians of science. And on the other there are nationalistic political parties which seek to appropriate Hindu mythologies and religious texts to claim major scientific
achievements like the creation of the aeroplane or that the first plastic surgery56took place
in ancient India. In schools, the science taught is predominantly of western origin and is acknowledged as such with very little attention given to how the knowledge was transferred and what was the Indian contribution to the growth of western science. In this milieu, where the timeline of Indian heritage of science is either partial with stories from a mythical past or has an uneasy relationship with colonial heritage, the question of placing Indian history of science in a narrative of national scientific heritage becomes a difficult one to address especially in science popularization movements.
It is also important to mention here, if only as an aside, that the NCSM has not given up on history entirely. Robert Friedel, who has also been an instructor of the history of technology for the MSc course on Science Communication, that the NCSM runs says that: “I’ve been very impressed by the centers’ use of local heritage and traditions. A couple of examples that spring to mind are the centers in Bhubaneswar and Kurukshetra, where local traditions (typically with religious elements) are recruited for science center purposes. In
56The attempt to appropriate stories from Hindu mythology as proofs of scientific invention in ancient
India has been on the rise in the recent past, with the activities of certain political ideologues. This discussion merits an dissertation of its own. See for example
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/indian-prime-minister-genetic-science-existed-ancient- times (last accessed December 2016)
Bhubaneswar, for example, special attention is given to the sun and solar astronomy, due to long traditions of sun oriented worship (as I understood it).” However, he points out that “the belief that modern science and technology are key to India’s future and that the country is behind in making use of it and needs to catch up”is crucial to understanding the activities of the NCSM.
If we look at the BITM, it is actually one of the two museums (the other is VITM in Bangalore) which retains the characteristic of both a science museum and a science centre. The BITM has a good collection of historical objects, some originals, some loaned and others replicas. In my interview with Dr Ghose, he recounted how in the initial stages of the setting up of the museum, as a young professional freshly returned from the Smithsonian, he had to coax collectors to part with their objects for the sake of the new museum that was coming up. Emdadul Islam, the Director of the BITM stated that while they are always keen on adding to the collection, it was not always possible to get hold of original objects, and hence they made use of excellent local craftsmen to create replicas of those objects from Science Museum, London and the Deutsches Museum. Islam was also quick to stress that in fact replicas were better for their purpose because they could create mobile objects, more suitable to the kind of demonstrations that they intended. However, as the education officer Mr Dileep Ghosh pointed out in another interview, the focus has increasingly shifted from science appreciation to science learning and some of the newer galleries like Mathematics and Biotechnology are created specifically for school learners to supplement their classroom work.
2.1.2 “Demographic dividends”
The idea of reaping demographic dividends which finds mention in many activity reports of the Council is crucial to understanding its activities; and as I argue, the second reason why the Council’s activities indicate their strong focus on the future. In interviews with the Council’s top management, almost every official mentioned the need for promotion of science and technology, from basic principles of natural sciences to knowledge of cutting-- edge research in fields like robotics and nanotechnology, as they are the building blocks
for the billion plus population of India, a vast majority of whom is under 30. As Dr Emdadul Islam, Director of the BITM mentions in a personal interview, the need to sustain the drive for development was felt strongly as early as in the first decade after the independence, and this could only happen if the population was stimulated to take up science not only as a career, but also as a hobby.
In critical heritage studies discourses, it has been discussed that a young country interacts with its history differently as its interest lies more in the future than in the past (Winter, 2013). Saroj Ghose corroborates this point of view when he recollects in a personal interview that it was the government’s decision to support the replication of the science centre model of popularization with its strong focus on education, and not the science museum model, which has its priorities in preserving artifacts and showcasing the historical achievements of the nation. It is also understandable that for a young independent nation, with a number of disputed claims of scientific achievements, it would be better to focus on a vision of science which could be co-created organically from within and democratically by its young population. In fact, it is also a telling feature of the Indian Constitution that the ‘promotion of scientific temper’ (or scientific attitude) is included as one of the fundamental duties of the Indian population to achieve the vision of a truly democratic state, based on the foundations of scientific/rational thinking.