There is no need for either panic or high voltage celebrations on the Chandrayaan issue. Science and scientific inventions are a continuous process which give a lot of learning after every incident. India’s space mission was formed under the incredible leadership of Dr Vikram Sarabhai and later Prof Satish Dhavan took it forward. Today, we have reached at the stage when our scientists are achieving great heights and we must be proud of them.
But the way the government, the media made it an event management as if nothing had happened before, actually show how public life has fallen down. While you celebrate the achievement of science and scientific inventions, you still want to discourage scientific minds among our youth. You hate debate, discussions, questioning and love those who keep quiet and accept whatever you are offering to them as ‘explanation’.
It is here the things are more tragic when the chief our science mission go to Tirupati and offer coconut to the Gods. It reflect poor on those and compel us to think whether our scientists are engineers or really scientists because without a scientific mind we can not build a healthy India based on reasoning and questioning variety.
One day we will be able to land on moon. Our scientists will also go to Mars and investigate solar system further. But my worry is whether the science community is propagating the scientific ideas and critical mind. Is this the community whose head was Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the genius or the community lead by Dr Homi Jahangir Bhabha ? Or we are in an age when scientists will also have the coconut broken at Tirupati and women scientists might have their Karwachowth after landing on moon. What a ‘great’ day would it be when a woman scientist land on moon and celebrate Karwachowth there. Perhaps, the troll will make it so. Indians whether they reach any where, will never leave calling moon as Chanda Mama, ‘He’ remain eternal mama for all.
The other day when I was to be operated, the night before the operation, the assistant to the doctor called me and gave some guidelines. Sir, get up early, take a good bath and eat your breakfast before 730 am as after that you cant take anything including water. He added, and dont forget to sleep remembering the God and doing all your puja. I had a hearty laugh. At the operation theatre when the doctor prepare for you and try to make things comfortable before the full anesthesia wait for you. They were talking to me and I told them, Doctor, I believe in you so please dont tell me to remember God. I trust you more and I dont know anything about God. We are surviving not because of God but because of the critical human minds and their had work in the greater interest of humanity. All of them laughed and nodded their heads in appreciation.
What I am saying here is that it is time for the scientific community to promote scientific values which mean to make our young more interested in questioning things with critical mind. Only a critical mind can appreciate human spirit and dedicate his life for the welfare of human being. The God’s chelas only dedicate their lives to appease him and dont care about human being. At the time when there is conflict on whose God is more powerful or which got is more powerful knowing fully well that all our gods are nothing but human creations and cant help people as it is our money and funds, which are being used to ‘protect’ Gods and not the vice versa.
India will gain tremendously if we develop humanist values and discard superstition from our value system. All our scientific achievements will not be able to make us a great society if we do not develop scientific thinking by doing critical analysis of thing and humanist attitude of life. Science in the service of Gods will be lethal human lives and will only destroy us.
