Just like a room with closed doors and windows remains without ventilation, a closed mind remains devoid of scientific temper, sound reasoning and a sense of inquisitiveness. Such minds are exposed to questionable beliefs and half-truths that give birth to myths and superstitions, and are vulnerable to getting seeded with ideas that develop hatred and divisiveness. Lack of scientific temper makes one prone to developing herd mentality—a trait that helps any political establishment trying to create and capture vote banks.
Democracy thrives with an inherent scientific temper among the people who constitute it. Or it exists with large sections of people lacking scientific temper and reasoning, divided in flocks, but kept together as a whole by the checks and balances of constitutional, legal, social and political processes acting on them. The latter is where India belongs after seven-and-a-half-decades of craving to be a thriving democracy with a scientific temper among the people. But the increasing number of people falling for rumours disguised as ‘facts’ on social media without questioning and spewing hate is an indicator of our poor scientific temper.
India has the distinction of being the first in the world to officially adopt scientific temper as a fundamental duty. The 42nd Amendment added Article 51 A(h) to the Constitution in 1976. It laid down developing a “scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform” as a fundamental duty of every Indian citizen. Unfortunately, scientific temper is being viewed as being restricted to scientists and those linked with science streams. It is not. It goes beyond professional boundaries. It is relevant to every citizen—in fact, every human.
It has to do with developing a questioning and inquisitive mind, to reason, to apply logic rather than fall for hearsay, to broaden the mind, to empathise and sympathise, to understand, and to arrive at the whole truth rather than fragments of it that fuel assumptions. Scientific temper demolishes religious bigotry and superstitions. It flattens social barriers demarcating castes, creeds, religions, languages and cultures—all abounding in a vastly diverse India. As we pass the 37th National Science Day on February 28, we need to open our eyes to the fact that we are still far from realising Rabindranath Tagore’s 111-year-old vision of Indians having a “clear stream of reason that has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit”.