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 goes to Tirupati
and offer coconut to the Gods. It reflects poor on those and compel us to think
whether our scientists are engineers or really scientists because without a
scientific mind we cannot 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 anywhere, will never leave
calling moon as Chanda Mama, ‘He’ remains 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 can’t take anything including water. He added, and don’t forget
to sleep remembering the God and doing all your puja.

I had a
hearty laugh. At the operation theatre when the doctor prepares 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 don’t tell me
to remember God. I trust you more and I don’t know anything about God. We are
surviving not because of God but because of the critical human minds and their hard
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 don’t 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 can’t 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.

Vidya
Bhushan Rawat

September 8th, 2019