Dr. Achuthshankar had delivered a wonderful speech on "Mahatma Gandhi and Scientific Temper", in the online event facilitated by APIC Thiruvananthapuram chapter in the eve of Gandhi Jayanthi, on Oct 02, 2024.
Below are some random points grabbed from the speech and following discussion:
Science is about stating hypotheses and doing experiments against them to evolve inferences. Gandhiji, throughout his life, as he named his autobiography was a man of experiments. He had a very little reluctance to change his stance, upon receiving more convincing information. As we can see, only a man with great scientific temper can only have the courage to behave so.
Gandhiji was also in favour of technology innovation and was a clear advocate of sustainable development. He himself was directly involved in building better charka designs. There were incidents where he had conducted contests, like the one he had done to get an equipment designed to capture snakes. Gandhiji used to build chappals from used tyre, by his own. If we watch his great life closely, we may get many such incidents.
Mahatma Gandhi was totally against the use of science and technology for destruction and lust. He had a strong view on science, that it makes sense only if it improves the life of a normal man. He used to judge any scientific advancement or application through this lens.
Unfortunately, this led to a false perception in some section of the society that Gandhi is against science, which is mostly originated from views of some eminent writers like Aldos Huxley, without understanding the spirit of his views.
There were many renowned scientists who appreciated Gandhiji to the core. His close relationships with veterans like Albert Einstein and Jagadeesh Chandra Bose are famous. Gandhiji invited J C Bose and other eminent scientists of that time to the Khadi Development Board to enable the self-reliant and nonviolent use of scientific knowledge.
Sasthravedhi is committed to take forward the scientific temper of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru, as lauded by its mission "non-violent development and social progress through science and technology"
Our society is far away from Gandhiji's aim to build a non-violent world. He used the term non-violence, not only to refer the violence against human beings, but also to refer violence against anything in the universe. We cannot exist, without exploiting the universe a bit, but it should be within a reasonable limit. It is like a kid drinking the milk from its mother, that is reasonable, but, what if it sucks blood of mother? We should learn to live within limits.
Gandhiji advocated to build houses with raw materials available within 5 kilometres. This is one of the best environment-friendly suggestion, with the least carbon emission possible for a house construction. Now, when the world is after carbon control, off late, we started recognizing the value of his view on this.
In above context, just examine the compound walls around our properties. If we measure the wall length within Kerala itself, it will cross lakhs of kilometres. In fact, do we need to have these strong compound walls? More than serving the purpose of fencing, is it our expression of power and status? Think about the carbon foot print we could have saved, if these walls were made up of mud or other materials like that.
Luckily the K-Rail project was offloaded, else it would have been another big blow to our environment. If it was implemented, among other risks, the entire westersn ghatts (sahya parvatham) would would have been damaged for collecting raw metals for its construction.
There are small things, we can take up in concurrence with Gandhiji’s great views. We can avoid flex boards, plastic sheets, water bottles, paper cups and plates from meetings. Sasthravdhi, insists this in all of its meetings in an attempt to be the change, we want to make.
At time of independence, we were having heavy food scarcity. People at old age may be still remembering about the Americans supplies of aid. We have mastered the food shortage by increasing our food security, with the application of science and technology at various parts of production, storage and supply chain. In this context, one of the major seed varieties was of IR8 rise, which was commonly known as radio rise, as it became popular due to radio.
Gandhiji was sceptical on using modern communication devices in the beginning. He was reluctant to use telephones and was not keen on using radio as a medium. But later he changed his mind, may be based on his guiding principles, on realizing the change it brings to common man.
Gandhiji gave only one radio speech in his life time, on Nov 12, 1947 and we observe that day as our national broadcasting day. Such evolving ability, is based on his open mind, powered by scientific temper, that is ready to accept change.
There were long discussions on Swaraj magazine on use of trains. Gandhiji himself was a product of train, as he experienced India using trains. The very making of the Mahatma was related to a train incident in South Africa. But he was brave to air his concerns on the negative impact of trains in a sustainable self-contained society. He was not only critical about the possibility of train travels spreading contiguous diseases, but also was sceptical in its ability make migrations possible. He was in the view that migrations may bring adverse effects in the social fabric. Even when realizing many benefits of trains, he was open to review the negative side effects seriously.
As in the case of communication systems, if we were able to bring more benefits of trains for the discussions in the angle of upliftment of poor, the discussions would have been in the angle of accepting positive use of mass and rapid travel solutions.
In the above context, we could also review the car scrapping policy pushforward by Union Government of India, that mandates the scrapping of cars after 15 years of manufacturing, siting the emission reasons. It is not transparent on what basis 15 years was selected. Upon the carbon emission goals, we do not have enough data, on what is the carbon footprint of the scrapping process as well as the new car manufacturing process. We are advertised about concerns on the emission part of old cars alone. Also, we are not open for research on modifications of existing cars for emission reduction. This would have been a good matter for discussion, if Gandhiji was among us.
It came out in the discussions, that some countries like Japan are refurbishing their used cars and gives them to third world for further use. But this move also has its own problems, the transportation is mostly happening via ships, and the emission due to it needs to be considered. There is also a view that it is an effective technique used by developed nations to dump their scrap to third world.
The talk and discussions were spread across various topics and gave a direction on how we have to adopt the social centric scientific temper exhibited by Gandhiji regardless of the dimension of subject.
