Indian exceptionalism is something we hear about day in and day out. In unexpected places and at events where one least expects it, there will be some speaker or the other from the ruling party or its cohorts singing paeans to the glory of India’s civilisational past. In simplest terms, India’s exceptionalism boils down to this: India is not merely a country but a civilisational continuum which was the crucible of wisdom and culture. The modern nation-states of the world may be progressive and technologically more advanced but ancient India, Hindu, of course, knew the foundational sciences aeons ago. Such hubris is the bedrock of the belief system of the ruling dispensation.
Just days ago (on April 17) a top functionary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the intellectual mother ship of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, was telling a science conclave at Stanford University that Indian traditions are rooted in both empirical and transcendental inquiry. India’s civilisational knowledge systems view science and spirituality as interconnected. These traditions, as enunciated by RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, “combine sensory and super sensory understanding, with culture, perception and reasoning extending beyond the limits of human knowledge”. One has no idea what the other members of the panel—Ben Olsen of Responsible AI at Microsoft and Meta and William Hurlbut, consulting professor at Stanford’s Neuroscience Institute—made of this.
The key takeaway from Hosabale’s presentation was that there is no separation between the spiritual and the secular within India’s traditional knowledge system. For instance, the practice of yoga is a systematic, scientific study encompassing human anatomy, mind sciences, action and inaction. In short, “everything is science”.
Hosable’s views should not be taken lightly because it is a philosophy that permeates India’s scientific establishment. The RSS view of science has become an integral part of the academic curriculum of schools and colleges and the research agenda of the institutions of higher learning, from universities to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). The obsession with past scientific glory, real or imagined, is bad news for India’s already faltering scientific endeavours. It comes at a time when research and development (R&D) is lagging way behind in everything from 5G technology to medical breakthroughs and artificial intelligence (AI).
This fixation with the past has led to a lethal insertion in the curriculum as part of the National Education Policy 2021—the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) initiative. It is an exercise aimed at bringing ancient wisdom into modern technology, with dedicated centres at four IITs in Delhi, Mandi, Roorkee and Kharagpur. Modern knowledge has its roots in ancient cultures, but the champions of Hindutva ideology have built a hyper-nationalist narrative by blurring the lines between myth and science.
So we have an IKS based on exaggerated claims and falsifications. With little understanding of the subject, those who have been tasked with preparing the courses are fumbling. Absurdities abound as ill-qualified and opportunistic people are allowed a free hand to promote projects that have nothing to do with science. IKS has turned into free-for-all as political patronage allows favoured academics and individuals to run egregiously unscientific courses on reincarnation and out-of-body experiences. Despite the outrage over such forays, no department or ministry dealing with education or science has taken corrective measures. If “everything is science” then the assumption is that nothing can be barred. The issue is not just about the regressive nature of the science that is hawked but that such premium institutions of higher learning are being reduced to caricatures of what they should be doing. Here is a random sample of the research such being undertaken in fields ranging from architecture, music (studying the impact of classical ragas on cognitive function), psychology (Vedic solutions for mental health), mathematics and agriculture:
Mindset evolution through Raja Yoga-IIT, Bombay;
Study of centuries old Bahi-Khata accounting system developed and practiced by Marwaris-IIT, Jodhpur;
Investigating the manufacture of iron beam used in Konark Sun Temple and analysing their socio-economic impact-IIT, Bhubaneswar;
Development and characterization of URUMI sword: A forgotten steel technology-IIT, Indore;
Carnatic rhythm and mantra-based intervention approach for cognitive training in dyslexia-National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.
IIT Delhi takes pride in its research on Yoga Nidra, described as a guided meditation technique that induces deep, conscious relaxation while hovering between wakefulness and sleep, to map brain activity and assess its impact on both novices and experts. Why would an IIT do such research when a clutch of universities and researchers here and abroad have already published detailed studies that also included clinical trials?
Clearly, there is plenty of funding for frivolous and fraudulent science by academics who are merely reinventing the wheel. Many of the IKS projects fall in the domain of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research while a vast number are the kind undertaken by non-profits working in rural areas and have been running projects successfully for many decades. Some are the kind undertaken at high school level. The result? As IKS grows in strength, science regresses.
The constant effort to create a false equivalence between an old system and the new is unlikely to help students who need to make a critical evaluation of the validity of ancient wisdom against modern needs. At no time has India needed a sharpening of the scientific temper as now, when very day comes with breakthroughs that push the boundaries of science. India is decades behind in critical areas of development. Science, said Carl Sagan, is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. That was what Jawaharlal Nehru, who set up IITs in different parts of the country, starting with Kharagpur in 1950, tried to make Indians do by inculcating the scientific temper in a people caught in the thrall of myth and religious superstition: “The scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper of science, the search for truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial, the capacity to change previous conclusions in the face of new evidence, the reliance on observed fact and not on pre-conceived theory, the hard discipline of the mind, all this is necessary, not merely for the application of science but for life itself and the solution of its many problems.”
Today, the government and its supporters denigrate Nehru and science. IIT Kharagpur is a centre of excellence for IKS.
This article was originally published in the May 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth