![]() "We are a race which is not inferior to any other race in the world," he says. Saraswat-who says he firmly believes in the power of gemstones to influence wellbeing and destiny-is proud of the achievements of ancient Hindu science: "We should rediscover Indian systems which existed thousands of years back," he says. The former chairs of India's Space Commission and its Atomic Energy Commission are VIBHA "patrons." Structural biologist Shekhar Mande, director-general of CSIR, is VIBHA's vice president. VIBHA's advisory board includes Vijay Kumar Saraswat, former head of Indian defense research and now chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University here. VIBHA receives generous government funding and is active in 23 of India's 29 states, organizing huge science fairs and other events it has 20,000 so-called "team members" to spread its ideas and 100,000 volunteers-including many in the highest echelons of Indian science. VIBHA aims to educate the masses about science and technology and harness research to stimulate India's development, but it also promotes "Swadeshi" (indigenous) science and tries to connect modern science to traditional knowledge and Hindu spirituality. Some blame the rapid rise at least in part on Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA), the science wing of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), a massive conservative movement that aims to turn India into a Hindu nation and is the ideological parent of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. "A religio-mythical culture is being propagated in the country's scientific institutions aggressively." "Modi has initiated what may be called ‘Project Assault on Scientific Rationality,'" says Gauhar Raza, former chief scientist at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) here, a conglomerate of almost 40 national labs. They're not just an embarrassment, some researchers say, but a threat to science and education that stifles critical thinking and could hamper India's development. ![]() Such claims and other forms of pseudoscience rooted in Hindu nationalism have been on the rise since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. ![]() In recent years, "experts" have said ancient Indians had spacecraft, the internet, and nuclear weapons-long before Western science came on the scene. But Rao is hardly the only Indian scientist to make such claims. "Stem cell research was done in this country thousands of years ago," Rao said. Nageshwar Rao, vice-chancellor of Andhra University in Visakhapatnam. Just as surprising as the claim was the distinguished pedigree of the scientist who made it: chemist G. Instead, the talk celebrated a story in the Hindu epic Mahabharata about a woman who gave birth to 100 children, citing it as evidence that India's ancient Hindu civilization had developed advanced reproductive technologies. The formation of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) body and the emerging New Space ecosystem in India are discussed, as they offer unique opportunities to bring down the cost, time, and programmatic challenges traditionally faced by Astrobiology missions.New Delhi-The most widely discussed talk at the Indian Science Congress, a government-funded annual jamboree held in Jalandhar in January, wasn't about space exploration or information technology, areas in which India has made rapid progress. ![]() ![]() Finally, astrobiology has continuously played a pivotal role in shaping outer space exploration programs and will be an important scientific area of development for the Indian Space Research Organization as well. The cross-disciplinary nature of the field brings together scientists from various backgrounds, breaking down silos that exist in today's scientific community in India. In this article, we highlight the critical role that astrobiology plays toward inspiring students and the general public toward space exploration. Astrobiology is an emerging and interdisciplinary scientific field that aims at studying and understanding life in the universe, with research topics including the origin of life and the feasibility of life existing and being detected elsewhere in the universe. ![]()
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