In academia, critics have expressed different opinions about Gandhi’s views on science. One of the reasons may be that Gandhi himself had contemplated the concept of machinery, the machine age and modern civilization differently at different times. Literary reviews of Gandhi also reveal that his views on science rarely find mention. While Nehru’s views on science have been quoted extensively, Gandhi’s have not received any scholarly attention.

Analyses of direct references to science in Gandhi’s discussions with co-workers or talks with fellow countrymen strengthens the existing critique of modern science and corrects the situation of indifference, if not negation, of Gandhi’s views on science. In this paper, an attempt has been made to answer some of Gandhi’s critics who saw his views as retrograde, equalising the focus in Gandhian studies from an overemphasis on his political philosophy. The person who branded Gandhi and his khadi movement as anti-science was Aldous Huxley. Huxley’s criticism of Gandhi was representative of contemporary understanding of Gandhi on science. Even Nehru, one of Gandhi’s closest followers, while seeking to explain Gandhi’s attitude to science in response to Huxley’s views, ends up furthering the divide between the so-called personal view of Gandhi and the public view of the Congress.

Nehru’s views acknowledged Gandhi’s ability to mobilize people and rally them around the call for freedom. Introduction of the charkha, according to Nehru, was consequently important for its immediate economic and instrumental value in achieving freedom. Nehru made a clear divide between Gandhi as a science person and Gandhi as a religious man. Nirmal Kumar Bose, as part of Gandhi’s Noakhali effort 1946, had confronted his own serious disagreements with some of Gandhi’s experiments which led to his departure from Gandhi’s camp. Bose unwittingly cast Gandhi as a political and religious person alone instead of a scientist.

This image of Gandhi portrayed by Bose was similar to Einstein’s views that Gandhi was a saint and politician who was well versed with the art, not the science of peace. Many other scholars’ opinions about Gandhi’s views on science were similar to those of Huxley. They charged Gandhi with an attitude that was revivalist and hostile to modern science. Some scholars believe the Gandhian view, unlike that of Vivekananda, is primarily spiritual and ignores the material foundations of Indian civilisation. Their presentation conforms to the spiritual Gandhi ignoring the fact that the spirit and practice of the khadi movement was primarily grounded in the material culture of Indian civilisation. Others try to fit Gandhi into standard models of science and find him lacking in modern experimental methods.

The response by Indian scientists to Gandhi, on the other hand, shares none of this discomfort. Meghnad Saha, for instance, saw Gandhian science as entirely different. Saha believed that the primary task of science in India was in ‘weeding out medieval passion’ and training the populace for ‘a proper grip and sufficient operation of the beauty and power of science’. According to Saha, though scientists had as little regard for Gandhi’s economic and social theories as the Russians have for Tolstoy, Gandhi’s views on science were important historically for the role he played in formulating the ideology of science policy in free India. Opposing Huxley’s views, many scientists argue that studies on Gandhi have largely focused on his political philosophy with little reference to his views on science, and that Gandhi had a distinct theory and practice of the scientific experiment as well as a scientific explanation that pre-supposed the equality of man and nature.

One scholar argues that Gandhi was not opposed to technology per se but to technologism, which was a condition that created a hierarchical relationship between man (those who possess technology) and man (those who do not), and man and nature. Sahasrabuddhe whose work exclusively focuses on what he terms the ‘science question’ argues that there is little work from the Gandhian angle on science though a lot has been written on his opposition to machinery. He sees Gandhi’s ‘life-work’ as paving the way for a new dynamic theory of man-man and man-nature relations that do not separate fact from value. Visvanathan says that Gandhi, who was one of the most inventive scientists of the swadeshi era, had to subvert or transform science, playfully and politically.

According to him, Gandhi’s view was a fluid science of resistance in order to escape the modern West. There is enough evidence of Gandhi expressing himself directly on the subject in many of his other writings, namely, his Collected Works and his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth. “The modern civilisation, instead of doing good to humanity, has encouraged mass destruction and frightful disputes between capital and labour” (CW I: 189-91). “The wonderful discoveries and the marvelous inventions of science are, after all, an empty boast” (CW 3: 414). These statements indicate Gandhi’s strong views on science very early in his public life. Gandhi felt that the prevailing practice of science had defects but this was not necessarily intrinsic to the scientific quest, nor was such a condition irremediable warranting a total rejection. Gandhi believed that the scientific enterprise should undergo a course correction.

This qualified criticism becomes clearer in his response to members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science who visited South Africa in 1904. Gandhi suggested that the Association should meet in India and be renamed as the ‘British Empire Association for the Advancement of Science.’ According to Gandhi, it would be greatly to the advantage not only to India, but the Association as well (CW 5: 46). The scientist, Gandhi believed, was to benefit equally from interaction with the colonies and its subjects. Gandhi emphasized that progress of science must lead to progress in morality.

He often quoted the scientist Alfred Wallace to argue that people’s moral sense had in no way improved as a result of scientific discoveries, nor had it reduced hatred and injustice (CW 12: 146; 16: 106-08 and 18: 235-36). During the Non-Cooperation movement of 1919-20 and the popularization of khadi, Gandhi clarified that he had no design on machinery and had no intention to put back the hand of clock of progress (CW 19: 241; 21: 114). In his letter to Daniel Hamilton in respect of the khadi movement, Gandhi said that “India need not to be industrialized in the modern sense of the terms, but India’s need is to introduce the human spirit among the man behind the machinery” (CW 28: 188).

“Vivisection in my opinion is the blackest of all the blackest crimes that man is at present committing against God and his fair creation. We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings” (CW 19: 357-58). For Gandhi, the real challenge of science lay in carrying out experiments not on the ‘other’ – the colonised, the excommunicated brothers, or the dumb creatures – but on the self. Gandhi exhorted science students to work with their hands, as science was one of the few things that involved accuracy of thought and accuracy of handling (CW 29: 326-7). Gandhi’s position on science was not for empty revivalism.

For example, Gandhi supported the Ayurvedic system and medicine. But he was not happy with the Ayurvedic physician because there were not many discoveries and inventions as against Western physicians and surgeons. He advocated the need to revitalise and reform the self-reflective tradition from the inside and not by a more competitive and organised system from the outside. An in-depth analysis of the detailed correspondence he had with individual practitioners, would reveal that he wanted them to undertake research taking a few satyagrahi scientists amongst them. He even offered himself and his own institutions as sites for experimentation.

(The writer is Director & CEO, Sayantan Consultants Pvt. Ltd.)

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