Respected Dr Bhargava,
This letter comes from an ordinary
citizen of this country who thinks that Padma awards are given to those Indians
who are regarded as jewels in the crown of India and who have added glory to
the Nation by their exceptional contribution in some fields that make India a
great nation. When I read the news reports that you have returned it, I
wondered what you were trying to convey. Is it because you no longer consider
your contribution as a worthy something or you consider that India is not a
worthy nation to have you honored?
In your letter of return to the
President you have cited the reason as “an expression of my concern at the
currently prevailing socio-politico situation in the country.” (The news report
that I read is produced at the end of this letter). So you think that the
prevailing conditions in the country are not good; in other words you think our
country is not doing great. By returning the award do you mean to convey that
India is not a worthy nation to have you as a jewel of honor? Or you don’t want
an honor from a country that is “divisive,
unreasonable and unscientific” – the description you have given to the RSS for
which the BJP is the political front, to quote your words.
According to the news report you go on
to quote Mr Mohan Bhagawat on what he thinks on the role of woman (‘that
marriage is a contract according to which the woman is supposed to be only a
housewife and not work outside’). I don’t know in what context Mt Bhagawat had
said that, because technically speaking ‘Vivaha’ is a contract of complementary
roles for the partners to run a household while fulfilling their Purusharthas. If
one works outside, the other works at home. But what struck me was that you
have taken objection to this as a reason for returning the Padma award!
Looking back in time when you received
this award, Dr Bhargava, there was a huge controversy raging on Shah Banu case.
You received the award in 1986 and in the same year the Rajiv Gandhi Government
overturned the Supreme Court verdict on alimony to the hapless Muslim housewife
and enacted a new act that was divisive, autocratic and yielding to religious bigotry.
The same President who conferred the award on you sanctioned that act. I don’t know
which happened first, you receiving the award or the act that changed the fate
of Muslim women.
My question is where were you and your sensibilities
when such a draconian act was enacted purely based on the tenets of a religion?
Why didn’t you refuse the award then or return the award at that time itself?
After all, Mr Bhagawat’s comment is not going to change the life of an average Hindu
housewife. But the Shah Banu act did spell doom on countless Muslim women and
for all the years since then. Where was your humanism and spirit of inquiry at
that time? Or was it developed by you only later and has woken up now on
hearing Mr Bhagawat speak?
The Hindu report then quotes you calling
the Dadri incident as a plan controlled by the BJP. May I ask you the proof you
have in hand to make this accusation? You are a person steeped in scientific
temper and rational thinking and therefore you cannot be expected to make
claims without proof. What is the proof you have for this that made you take an
extreme step of returning the award which was not returned even in 1986 despite
the more provocative Shah Banu case?
I have another question for you in this
connection. If the ruling Governments are responsible for the incidents like
the Dadri one, would you in the same breath take the Congress party and the Government
in Karnataka to task for the lynching of Prashanth Poojary? Have you at least
expressed your displeasure over the killing of Poojary? Why this hypocrisy for
you and your fellow intellectuals and awardees?
Quoting the Dadri case you have lamented
that the BJP wants to control what we eat, what we read and so on. But your
attention must in fact turn to those places where even naming one’s child is
controlled by the Government. Dodn’t you know that one cannot name one’s child
as Rama in Saudi? (Read
here). But In India there are many Hindus who voluntarily name their kids
with Christian and Muslim names. But you won’t come across an Indian Muslim or
Christian naming his child as Rama or Krishna or any Hindu name. Such is the
level of tolerance among them – the minorities for whom your heart was bleeding
when you returned the award.
You said, ‘Minorities are made to feel
that they are second class citizens of the country’. You invoke the clause ‘intolerance’
in this context. I know that you are a pioneering head of the Centre for
Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) of Hyderabad. CCMB has earned an eternal
name in having discovered the ANI
and ASI genes (excuse me for the colloquial terms) as mother of all Indian
population. An ordinary citizen that I am, this kind of researches led me to
know more about the genesis of minorities in India. You as one engaged in such
studies must have very well known that the Muslims of India whom you call as
minorities were indeed culturally transformed ones and not genetically different
from the Hindus.
A reserach study published
in 2006 by Ramana Gutala, Denise R.
Carvalho-Silva, Li Jin, Bryndis Yngvadottir, Vasanthi Avadhanula, Khaja
Nanne, Lalji Singh, Ranajit Chakraborty and Chris Tyler-Smith
did show that Muslims of India were indigenous people culturally changed into
their present religion. It was found out that “Islamization in India did not
involve large-scale replacement of Hindu Y chromosomes”.
Similar results were published in the Journal
of Human Genetics in June 2009 by another
group of researchers consisting of Muthukrishnan
Eaaswarkhanth, Bhawna Dubey, Poorlin Ramakodi Meganathan, Zeinab Ravesh, Faizan
Ahmed Khan, Lalji Singh, Kumarasamy Thangaraj and Ikramul Haque who
said that ‘the spread of Islamic faith in the Indian subcontinent was
predominantly cultural transformation associated with minor gene flow from West
Asia’ and that they are closest to the geographical neighbors of the Hindu
communities – implying that these Muslims were originally Hindus and were
converts later.
Yet another study by the Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International
University, University Park, Miami, done on the mtDNA of Sunni and
Shia Muslims of Uttar Pradesh showed
that they are of Indian origin and when integrated with Y chromosome results
showed the Indo Hindu to Islamic conversion in those two populations of UP (abstract
here).
All these information, known
to me from news paper publications must have been known to you as one in the
related scientific field. What is the message these studies convey? Are they
not a proof of integrated India where Muslims are not minorities but are
natural sons of this soil whose ancestors were not as fortunate as the Hindus
in their surroundings in having escaped from the atrocities heaped on them by the
invaders? Why your scientific temper and urge for things scientific failed you
to understand the cultural history of Muslims? If I were in your place I would
have striven for unifying Hindus and Muslims as one stock using more and more
of such studies and have truly lived up to the Padma honour given by the
country.
You are known for the spirit
of inquiry and humanism. Where were they when you quoted Charaka Samhitha? You
attributed the following to Charaka Samhitha: “The
flesh of the cow is beneficial for those suffering from the loss of flesh due
to disorders caused by an excess of vayu, rhinitis, irregular fever, dry cough,
fatigue and also in cases of excessive appetite resulting from hard manual
work” How many Hindus, do you think subscribe to this remedy? The spirit of
inquiry taught by Krishna is not to accept even his teaching verbatim but to think
and act. Even if it is true that Charaka Samhitha gave this prescription, don’t
you think that this sounds too general and not specific as a medicine for the said
diseases? I never heard of anyone who ate beef for getting relief from dry
cough and nor have known any Ayurvedic doctor prescribe beef for rhinitis or
fever. The spirit of inquiry must teach us what to follow and what to discard.
More than the spirit of inquiry, it is compassionate
humanism that must dominate our thinking if something like eating beef is
prescribed by the scriptures. Ahimsa is the supreme Dharma declared by Hindu
scriptures. The Swasti Vachan of Vedas wishes good will for all plants, bipeds
and quadrupeds besides wishing peace at all levels of existence. Such being the
compassion and care for all beings in our surroundings, how can a Hindu medical
scripture subscribe a cure that can be got through violence? I expected you to condemn
and not concur with this passage from Charaka Samhitha –as one known for
reformist and humanist tendencies – and denounce beef on compassionate grounds.
Your thirst for scientific inquiry also
seems to have taken a back seat, as you seem to have ignored the many research findings
on harmful and adverse effects of beef on human health and environment. Just
before you returned the award, WHO and UNEP published their findings on need to
avoid eating beef. How come you failed to take note of them?
From your comment that the present
government is least knowledgeable and least concerned about science, it is known
that this government is not up to your level of knowledge. Let it be so. But
couldn’t you have exhibited the knowledge of the highest order by recognizing the
right to life for the cows and other animals who share most of our genes? Why
couldn’t your knowledge of biology infuse a sense of love and respect for the
fellow living things with which we share our space? You must have been in the
forefront of promoting compassion for other lives.
That four lettered word b… was a bad
word even to utter for the Hindus not because the Hindus were less knowledgeable
or low in scientific temper. It is because they have a heart full of compassion
and gratitude for the animal that gives them food and livelihood. Knowledge
makes one powerful, but compassion makes one Godly. Knowledge that does not
teach compassion is a waste. Don’t you agree Dr Bhargava?
With respects,
Jayasree Saranathan.
****
The article from The Hindu that made me
write to you:-
P.M.
Bhargava sends back Padma Bhushan award to President
By
Well-known scientist and
founder-director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) P.M.
Bhargava has returned the Padma Bhushan award, received by him in 1986, to
President Pranab Mukherjee in protest against the direction in which “today’s Government run by the BJP is driving the
country”.
Mr. Bhargava sent the award
to the President on November 6. Explaining the reasons for his decision to
return the award, he said in a letter to Mr. Mukherjee: “it is with much regret that I am, with this letter,
returning the award of Padma Bhushan that I had the privilege of receiving in
1986 from the then President of India, Shri Giani Zail Singh. This award has
been very dear to me. My returning it to you, for whom I have much respect and
admiration, is an expression of my concern at the currently prevailing
socio-politico situation in the country. I am deeply concerned that the
Bharatiya Janata Party which is ruling at the Centre and several States, has
deserted the road of democracy and is driving my beloved country on a path that
would make the country a Hindu religious autocracy, somewhat like Pakistan with
Islam replaced by Hinduism”.
He said “no one would be more aware than you that, de facto, BJP
is the political front of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and functions
under the leadership of the RSS that is fully committed to the ideology of
Hindutva, which I find divisive, unreasonable and unscientific”.
Referring to the
Constitution (Article 51 a(h)), he said that one of the duties of citizens was
to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and
reform. He said: “Steeped in superstition, unreason
and irrationality, much of what RSS and BJP do goes against the grain of
scientific temper. An example would be the recent statement of Shri Mohan
Bhagwat, who heads the RSS, that marriage is a contract according to which the
woman is supposed to be only a housewife and not work outside”.
Dr. Bhargava said “The Dadri incident in which Mohamed Akhlaq was lynched to
death in a pre-planned manner (probably by fringe elements that are related to
BJP) showed the control that BJP wants to have on what we may eat and what we
may not, just as it wants to control what we may wear or whom we may love or
what we may read."
“Incidentally,
our scriptures put no bar on our eating beef. Charaka Samhita says: “The flesh
of the cow is beneficial for those suffering from the loss of flesh due to
disorders caused by an excess of vayu, rhinitis, irregular fever, dry cough,
fatigue and also in cases of excessive appetite resulting from hard manual
work”.
He also expressed his
concern that the space for dissent, “which is the
hallmark of a democracy is decreasing and intolerance increasing. Minorities
are made to feel that they are second class citizens of the country. There are
organised attempts to impose Hindutva agenda across the country. Cultural
intolerance is a dominant element in the functioning of the present government”,
he said.
Stating that he was a
professional scientist with an experience of 65 years, he mentioned that he had
the occasion of interacting on matters of science with the governments at the
Centre since Independence. “I find the present
government the least knowledgeable and least concerned about science. The
climate of religious conservatism that we have today is a major obstacle in the
functioning of science and thus in meeting developmental objectives”, he
added.
