Comrade Provash Ghosh, General Secretary, SUCI(C) issued the following statement on 24 November 2022:
On 20 November last, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), obviously under the advice of the BJP government, tweeted about a project involving researchers from one of its constituent laboratories where, by using a system of mirrors and lenses, it can be ensured that sunlight falls on the forehead of the Ram statue in Ayodhya on Ram Navami every year. Naturally, it has irked the scientists and 200 of them in an open letter have said that engineering such a device may be a good learning exercise for an undergraduate student but is not focused on quests which advance human knowledge.
They have also decried criminal waste of public money for such and have questioned the use of government science resources on installing such an elementary device to track a star and focus its light on the deity’s head. This evidently is a part of the Hindutva agenda of subsuming technical science to achieve spiritual ends. The entire incident, from the government roping in the CBRI (Central Building Research Institute) for such a simple contraption which is technologically feasible but is against the spirit of the scientific process, attests to the fact that the BJP government’s compass is aligned not along doing what is right by the spirit of science but along whatever misuse or abuse of science will keep it in power.
We fully concur with the views of the protesting scientists, hail them for raising their voice against such gimmick in the name of scientific research and vehemently condemn the move of the BJP government whose endeavour to link technological aspect of science with spiritualism holds evidence of its objective to establish a fascist culture.
