‘Babri demolition and Clean Ganga mission share an ideological thread’

‘Science too has become a target now’

Demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Clean Ganga Mission share a common ideological thread, even though the latter is subtle and therefore easily accepted by people, argued S. Settar, eminent historian and the former chairperson of the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR).

Speaking at a national seminar here on Saturday organised by the All India Save Education Committee, he said: “All animals, all books and all rivers are sacred. Why make any distinction?” The subtle ideological campaign of cleaning Ganga, he said, is more dangerous than the blatant bringing down of a monument.

He regretted that cow today has become “more important than a human being” and

yajna is being projected as an environment-cleansing act. Such “absurdities”, he said, were being propagated by people worried about knowledge becoming accessible to all and the power over it slipping out of their hands. The Indian way has always been “to possess and protect knowledge, but not to part with it,” said Prof. Settar.

With a “committed rightist” at the helm of ICHR now, whose area of study was the

Mahabharata , one can expect “Kurukshetra for the next few years,” said Prof. Settar.

He said that while history has always been the target, science too had become a target now, with highly regarded scientific platforms making space for “absurd arguments”.

Satyajit Mayor, Director at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, said that making claims about scientific advances in ancient India is easy and leads to an “ignorant happiness” that we had everything in the past. However, “such chauvinism is completely irrelevant” in the realm of scientific reasoning, he added.