The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has removed references to the 19th century English naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution from certain textbooks. 

For the 2021-22 school year, questions related to evolution and the origin of species were excluded from ninth- and tenth-grade examinations in India’s public schools, while some of these topics were still part of the curriculum. 

However, when NewsCafe tried to have a look at Chapter 9 “Heredity and Evolution,” the clickable link would open a PDF file about “Light – Reflection and Refraction,” which on the list of topics is part of Chapter 10 but in fact it moved to Chapter 11. 

It is unclear whether this was done intentionally to hide the themes on evolution or purely by mistake. Yet this speaks of a shift towards prohibition of certain subjects, according to more than 4,000 Indian scientists and scholars who have signed an open letter opposing the decision. 

They stated, among others: “In the current educational structure, only a small fraction of students chooses the science stream in grade 11 or 12, and an even smaller fraction of those choose biology as one of the subjects of study. Thus, the exclusion of key concepts from the curriculum till grade 10 amounts to a vast majority of students missing a critical part of essential learning in this field.”

“Knowledge and understanding of evolutionary biology are important not just to any subfield of biology, but is also key to understanding the world around us. Evolutionary biology is an area of science with a huge impact on how we choose to deal with an array of problems we face as societies and nations from medicine and drug discovery, epidemiology, ecology and environment, to psychology, and it also addresses our understanding of humans and their place in the tapestry of life,” the letter reads further.

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In response, ministerial officials and academics close to the Modi government attacked the scientific community in the media, defending the change with the need for “rationalization” of textbooks and the “Lighter Schoolbags” initiative of the the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), which is the publisher of textbooks in India. 

The scientists were literally accused of “misinformation” with the intention to derail Modi’s educational reforms. 

The signatory scientists regard the decision as an attempt to politicize science and demanded the NCERT to reintroduce evolution as an approved subject matter for early high school students.

Interestingly, while rejecting the Darwinian theory of evolution and origin of species, some nationalist Hindu groups are promoting an alternative theory of evolution.

Their theory posits that various forms of animal and human life are avatars or living embodiments of the Hindu creator god Vishnu. It suggests the existence of ten Vishnu avatars that have manifested on Earth, representing different groups of life forms. Collectively, they are referred to as the Dashavatara in Hindu scripture. According to this theory, these avatars appeared at different stages, with each subsequent set of life forms being more complex than those that came before, effectively mirroring the steps of traditional evolutionary theory. 

Hindu fundamentalism

The education reform undertaken by the nationalism government is in line with Hindu fundamentalism and exclusivist ideology that extend beyond the modification of science textbooks. The NCERT has also revised other types of educational materials, including political science and history books at various grade levels.

For instance, in 2020, the Council deleted two sentences from political science textbooks used in the 11th and 12th grades regarding the beliefs and accomplishments of the revered Indian leader, Mahatma Gandhi. One says he “was convinced that any attempt to make India into a country only for Hindus would destroy India.” The other states that “steadfast pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists so much that they made several attempts to assassinate Gandhi.”

The educational reformers with Hindu nationalist leanings, who currently oversee the NCERT, are trying to rewrite India's ancient political history, by discrediting or overlooking the contributions and achievements of Muslims. Consequently, entire sections dedicated to the Mughals, an Islamic dynasty that ruled over the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to the 19th centuries, have been removed from Indian history textbooks.

A banner on NarendraModi.in website.

At its zenith, the Mughal Empire extended from southern India to the regions that now constitute modern-day Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The present generation of schoolchildren is being denied the opportunity to learn about the accomplishments of this empire and an important era in Indian history. 

In 2019, for example, India’s supreme court resolved what is arguably the world's most contentious property dispute at that time. The judges decided to allocate the holy site of Ayodhya for the construction of a Hindu temple, rejecting Muslims’s claims of ownership of the site and creating thus motives for new violence. 

The judges neglected the fact that Hindu mobs destroyed a 460-year-old mosque on the 2-hectare site in 1992. The disputed land, which lies 550 kilometers east of New Delhi, was the site of the 16th-century Babri Masjid mosque. Its razing led to riots in which more than 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed.

Muslims currently account for 14% of the Indian population.

What next?

Pseudoscience in India enjoys a growing influence in India as conservative scholars and politicians linked with the nationalist government now cast doubts about evolution and promote fictional stories that ancient Indians had built spacecraft and conducted stem cell research. They pretty much like the preface of Pakistani textbooks – albeit God’s name is “wrong” – which reads literally this: “You will encounter the theory of evolution—but you are advised not to believe it because it is unscientific, lacks proof, and goes against Islam.” 

"Similarities" in the Vishnu scripture and the Darwin teory of evolution, according to Hindu fundamentalists. Credit: Medstudies.com

The 4,000 voices of scientists represent just a drop in a vast sea of 1.4 billion people (according to 2021 statistics) who have seen an energetic government battling poverty in their country. Most of them are supportive of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has ruled in the country since 2014.

The Modi government was praised by the United Nations Development Program for its extreme poverty reduction progress (-10% points), down to 15% by the end of 2021. 

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), at the growth rate of 11.5%, India will be the fastest growing economy in 2023, the world’s only country to register a double-digit growth this year.

However, due to the pandemic, there were job cuts on a large-scale in India and in early 2020 many were pushed back into poverty, which is set to rise again. The Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) estimates that 150-199 million additional people will fall into poverty at the end of 2023 because of the coronavirus and the war in Ukraine. 

This forecast is shared by the World Bank, too, which says that India may not be able to end extreme poverty by 2030, a target assumed by the BJP.

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Although India is a democracy, the largest in the world, this may not be the case in the long run. The country remains heavily divided along religious and ethnic criteria, being occasionally embroiled in territorial disputes with its autocratic neighbors, China and Pakistan.

Populist Narendra Modi isn’t really a man standing for democratic ideals, while New Delhi’s stance on the Ukraine issue and sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin speak for themselves.

Erosion of democratic institutions starts with the politicizing and the silencing of the primary source of truth – science, which is an important peace in the checks-and-balances mechanism.

Denial of reality and facts is a key stone in paving the path towards authoritarianism, and India is doing just that.