Monday, 23 July 2018

Ashis Nandy on 'Science as a Hegemonic Enterprise of the State!'

Title of the Book: Science, Hegemony & Violence: A Requiem For Modernity

By Ashis Nandy

Much similar to Vandana Shiva’s thought-provoking take on Biopiracy, Ashis Nandy’s profound, impactful and insightful read is a glorious take on yet another aspect of Science which is quite unknown to the lay – Science as a Hegemonic Enterprise of the State!

This is quite alarming, by all means, and hence it becomes all the more imperative to focus on this hegemonic strategy of the State, the world over, especially in the US, as an interesting subject for study in Cultural Studies too, as the ramifications of Science as a Reason of State are quite disturbing and requires an intense proby study of sorts!

Although I ain’t gonna sound political here, still, this introductory essay by Nandy, titled, Science as a reason of State, in quite many ways, reminds me of the welfare/development policies adopted by States - world over, where farmlands, people’s habitations, dwelling places are mercilessly grabbed, and a pittance of a compensation given to the owners!

And in the name of Science as a Reason of State, or a Hegemonic Enterprise of the State, violence is unleashed on the people when they resist such violent takeovers! Good examples of these we find in Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Jacinta Kerkatta, G. N. Devy, Gayatri Spivak, Mahasweta Devi, Thomas King, Judith Wright, et al! Just to name a few!

Well, Ashis Nandy, social theorist, is known for his critique of the ‘development’ politics in general, and European colonialism in particular!

He’s traced the politics behind ‘development’ as a strategically ‘scientific’ one, and the scientific has always been the domain of the state, for reasons well-known!

Ashis Nandy’s points are highly thought-provoking, in that, they draw the line between the academic and the professional!

Here goes this thought-provoking essay for y’all –

The thinking person cannot but notice that since the Second World War, two new reasons of state have been added to the traditional one of national security.

These are science and development. In the name of science and development one can today demand enormous sacrifices from, and inflict immense sufferings on, the ordinary citizen.

That these are often willingly borne by the citizen is itself a part of the syndrome; for this willingness is an extension of the problem which national security has posed over the centuries.

Defying protests by (and to the mortification of) pacifists and anti-militarists, a significant proportion of ordinary citizens in virtually every country have consistently and willingly died for king and country.

There are already signs that at least as large a proportion of citizens is equally willing to lay down their lives heroically for the sake of science and development.

In 1985, one Japanese doctor praised the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the indirect benefits they have brought to Japan.

In an election held soon after the gas tragedy in 1984, the affected citizenry of Bhopal returned the same regime to power that shared the responsibility for the disaster.

Likewise, demands for new steel mills and large dams often come from the very regions and sectors in the third world which are most likely to be the first victims of industrialization.

From the halcyon days of Archimedes to the heady days of early colonialism, science was primarily an instrument, not an end; certainly not the end of any nation or state.

Even the states which drew the most handsome economic dividends from the discoveries of modern science and technology, or justified global dominance by referring to their scientific and technological power - I have in mind the nineteenth century colonial powers - did not see science as a reason of state.

The reader may remember popular anecdotes about colonial adventurers, or scientifically-minded explorers who sometimes scared off or impressed the natives of Asia and Africa with new forms of black magic based on the discoveries of modern science.

The civilizing mission of colonialism thrived on this folklore of encounter between western science and savage superstitions. But in each such instance, it was science that was put to the use of the colonial state; the state was not put to the use of science.

The nature of science has since then changed, and so has the nature of human violence.

Ivan Illich has traced the contemporary idea of development to a speech President Harry S. Truman made in 1945. Till then, the word 'development' had had other associations which had very little connection with what we understand by development today.

But such was the latent social need for a concept akin to development that, once Truman gave it a new meaning, not only did it quickly acquire wide currency, it was also retrospectively applied to the history of social change in Europe during the previous three hundred odd years.

In a similar way, we can trace the idea of science as a reason of state to a speech made by President John F. Kennedy in 1962.

The speech declared one of America's major national goals to be the scientific feat of putting a man on the moon.

Though mega-science had already become an important concern of the state during the Second World War, science was, for the first time, projected in Kennedy's speech as a goal of a state and, one might add, as a substitute for conventional politics.

A state for the first time on that occasion sought to out-rival another state not in the political or military arena, nor in sports, BUT in science redefined as dramatic technology.

For the first time Kennedy's speech showed that a wide enough political base had been built in a major developed society for the successful use of science as a goal of state and, perhaps, as a means of populist political mobilization.

Spectacular science could be now used as a political plank within the United States in the ideological battle against ungodly communism.

India has been a remarkable example of an open society in which, since the early years of independence, the political élites have deliberately chosen to see science as the responsibility of the state and have, at the same time, treated it as a sphere of knowledge which should be free from the constraints of day-today politics.

Every society decides what content to give to its politics and what to keep out of politics. The Indian state, representing the wishes of a powerful section of the nationalist movement and being led in the early years of independence by Jawaharlal Nehru, a gentleman Fabian steeped in the nineteenth-century vision of human liberation through science, decided to keep the practice of science outside politics but ensured that the scientific estate had a direct, privileged access to the state.

It was as a part of this 'double vision' that Nehru, the modern élites which gathered around him, and the Indian state began to build science as a major source of justification for the Indian state as well as for their political dominance.

That the formula did not keep science out of politics but only introduced another kind of politics into science is one of those paradoxes which lie at the heart of the distinctive relationship between science and society in contemporary India.

Secondly, nuclear scientists were given enormous scope for research if they moved out of the universities into special research institutions.

While universities were starved of funds and allowed to decay, research institutions were richly funded.

This might not have been a matter of deliberate policy but it certainly set a context to India's nuclear policy, because what scientists gained in research opportunities in the new institutions, they lost in personal political freedom.

As I have already said, the specialized institutions set up by the state were strictly guided by the requirements of secrecy and political 'clearance'; they were expected to be professional, not academic.

In other words, a systematic split between political and intellectual freedoms was institutionalized in this area right from the beginning and every young nuclear scientist was forced to choose between the two kinds of freedom.

Science, I have said, has become a new reason of state.

The state and its various arms can kill, maim or exploit in the name of science.

Science in turn, as a raison d'état, can inflict violence in the name of national security or development and - this is the change - increasingly under its own flag and for its own sake. There are now scientists, political leaders and intellectuals in India - as in other similarly placed societies - who are perfectly willing to close the polity if that ensures faster scientific growth.

And there are now scientifically-minded Indian citizens who are as willing to sacrifice millions of ordinary Indians to advance the cause of science and science-based development.

In India, traditional systems of knowledge may not have provided ready-made solutions to the present crisis of knowledge and power, but they have certainly become a part of the repertoire of the dissenting movements of science.

Seen thus, the crisis of science in India becomes, for all practical purposes, coterminous with the crisis of science globally.

 And the crisis of global science, in turn, becomes an extension of the Indian experience with modern science over the last 150 years.

Just excerpts they are! For more, do read the book by Nandy!

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