Indians should stop squabbling over who eats “what kind of meat” and instead focus on good education, especially in science and technology, said Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. Ramakrishnan believes unless India decides to invest in innovation and technology, “it is going to lose the race”.

Ramakrishnan won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 with two others. He is currently the president of Royal Society in London, a prestigious group of the top scientists of the world.

“All this sectarian squabble about who eats what kind of meat and all this religious antagonism between different groups is harmful to the country,” Ramakrishnan told The Telegraph. “People who do it, maybe they think they are being very patriotic, but actually they are hurting the country.”

Ramakrishnan said India was far behind China in terms of modernisation and industrialisation. “They have made artificial intelligence and machine-learning a huge priority,” he said. “They are investing in robotics, they are investing in renewable energy – all of the things that are going to make a big difference. And if India is not careful, it is going to simply get left considerably behind.”