CSI: God and rockets, a tale of science in India

From Austin Dacey, at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry:

“We are afraid that the thunderstorms might have an impact on the scheduled launch.” The Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, G. Madhavan Nair, was speaking to reporters in Tirupathi on the morning of May 5, 2005, as the countdown continued for the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, a 140-foot rocket loaded with two satellites. Still, he said, he remained optimistic that lift off would occur as planned at 10:19 am.

Nair had reason for confidence. Since 1993 the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, or PSLV, had been a success story of India’s space program. What’s more, earlier that morning Nair and more than a dozen other top space scientists had visited the Tirupati temple of Lord Venkateswara, where they laid a miniature prototype of the PSLV-C6 at the feet of the deity (a form of the sustainer-god Vishnu also known as Lord Balaji) and offered prayers for a successful mission.

Was this some kind of prank? Was it a symbolic gesture, intended in fact not for Balaji but instead for the more earthbound audience of the public, a Hindu equivalent of those prayer breakfasts that U.S. presidents cannot seem to go without? Or did the scientists actually believe in Balaji? Did they consider the temple ritual a proper part of their public scientific activities?

This last question has been put to India’s scientific community as part of a national survey of professional scientists released last year by Trinity College’s Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society in cooperation with the Center for Inquiry-India, headquartered not far from Tirupathi in Hyderabad (full disclosure: I had a hand in coordinating the project while at Center for Inquiry). The first-of-its-kind study, entitled “Worldviews and Opinions of Scientists: India 2007-2008″, gathered responses to an email questionnaire from 1,100 participants at 130 universities and research institutes. The results reveal a fascinating portrait of science and religion in the subcontinental context.

Most readers of Skeptical Inquirer have committed to memory the figures from the famous 1998 survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S.: only 7.5 percent of physicists and astronomers and 5.5 percent of biological scientists believe in a personal deity. By contrast, Worldviews found that most Indian scientists are believers. Only one-fourth are non-theists, while 66 percent identified as Hindu. Half hold that homeopathy and prayer are efficacious; 90 percent approve of the offering of university degrees in Ayurvedic medicine, a traditional practice that prescribes various herbs, oils, and spices to bring the diseased back into balance with the universe. The blessing of rocket launches turned out to be relatively contentious, with 41 percent approving the 2005 event and 46 disapproving (the remaining 13 percent were not sure what they thought about it).

The Worldviews survey sparked plenty of conversation, especially in the Indian press, about whether such attitudes are defensible or whether they are a dangerous betrayal of the civic duty — mentioned in the national constitution — to cultivate a “scientific temper.” However, the survey did not attempt to explain why it is that so many Indian scientists cleave to non-naturalistic worldviews, as compared to their American counterparts. After all, the rates of religiosity in the Indian and American general populations are not so dramatically different.

Was this simply a case of Pascal’s Wager: Ignore Venkateswara, thereby risking his displeasure and aeronautical disaster; or supplicate Venkateswara, thereby risking nothing and possibly gaining favor? One classic objection to Pascal — the so-called Many Gods objection — points out that the wagering party, who resorts to a gamble precisely because he lacks conclusive evidence about the divine, cannot know which of all the possible gods might exist, and therefore which he might be enraging by wagering on another (to say nothing of the possibility of a supreme being who smites all those and only those who believe just to escape a smiting). The unimaginable pluralism of India, with its 22 official languages and thousands of castes, extends to its supernatural precincts as well, with over 200,000 gods and goddesses crowding temples and rickshaw triptychs. Many Gods with a vengeance! In this case, one might worry about Indra, formerly the king of the gods who was demoted to running the weather and who is quite possibly disgruntled about it. As with India’s infamous bureaucracy, the trouble may lie in figuring out which official to propitiate.

Austin Dacey is contributing editor for Skeptical Inquirer and former United Nations representative for the Center for Inquiry. He is the author of The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life. His website is austindacey.com