Indian science mustn't go the Pakistan way of djinns and kala jadoo, warns a Pakistani scientist
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy points to the worrying tendency in both countries to present baseless claims as scientific fact.
At the Indian Science Congress the god Shiva was presented as one of the greatest environmentalists. A scientist blew a conch, saying that listening to it would open people's minds.
In this video Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, a nuclear physicist and essayist from Pakistan draws similarities between India and Pakistan, with religious fundamentalism seeping into scientific, educational and cultural narratives. While Islamisation thrived under General Zia-Ul-Haq's regime in the 1980s, India, Hoodbhoy says, is following Pakistan in this regard, and at the current pace may catch up with it soon.
Citing examples from Pakistan of scientists who swear by suras from the Koran, he points at how alarming such a trend is for the growth of science and technology. The effect may not be direct, but it affects the teaching and propagation of science if baseless claims about religion and science are presented as facts.
Not all Indian scientists are following the trend of reading deep scientific truths into Indian myth and rituals, but the growing number of those who are probably justifies Hoodbhoy's anxiety.