Where are political leaders to confront obscurantism, asks Jairam Ramesh

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Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday questioned as to where political leaders and parties were when it came to confronting obscurantism and asked students to imbibe the ‘scientific temper’ advocated by the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

"Where are the political leaders and parties today? Who will confront obscurantism? Who protested when a young woman committed 'sati' in Rajasthan in 1986? How is it that leaders across the political divide continue to tacitly support institutions like 'khap panchayats'?" Ramesh said in his convocation address at IIT-Guwahati.

"...Surely, scientists should not be seen as accomplices in nourishing an irrational anti-modernist culture!" he said.

Stating that the day was the 47th death anniversary of Nehru whose vision and leadership was responsible for India's ‘extensive of science and technology’, the minister said, "It is, therefore, only appropriate that I use this convocation address as an opportunity of revisiting a key Nehruvian concern – that of 'scientific temper'."

"Try and imbibe the spirit of what Nehru's scientific temper in whatever you do. You don't have to be a follower of his political party to acknowledge and appreciate the true value of Nehru's obsession with the idea of a scientific temper," Ramesh said. To Nehru, he said, scientific temper was a combination of a questioning mind, pushing limits, not getting structured by narrow limited concerns and to be consistent with changing time.

With the spread of education and economic development Nehru believed that the values that animated the scientific temper would get embedded in everybody's life, the minister said.

"Where are we placed in regard to the development of the scientific temper? Have we individually become more tolerant and accommodating of diversity, shed ourselves of dogma and superstition, given up outmoded ways of thinking subjecting phenomena to critical enquiry, opened our minds and broken the chain of obscurantism and bigotry of whatever kind?" he questioned.