Pinarayi gets back at Modi, engages him in a science vs superstition debate

Thiruvananthapuram: 2024 promises to be the year of the innuendo. It was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who made the first sally. On January 3, during the 'Sthree Shakthi Modikkoppam' (Women Power with Modi) programme in Thrissur, he said: "Everyone knows the office in which Kerala’s gold smuggling is headquartered."

This was widely interpreted as a sly and thinly veiled attack on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan whose principal secretary M Sivasankar was arrested in the gold smuggling scandal. Pinarayi chose not to respond and his silence was smirked at by the opposition, saying it was proof that the CM was beholden to Modi. 

Pinarayi but has picked the right moment to hit back. He has used the inauguration of the Global Science Festival Kerala (GKSF), to indulge in a bit of innuendo politics of the kind played by Modi.

He, too, did not take any names but left no one in doubt who he was talking about. "Instead of creating awareness against superstitions and occult practices, even those holding positions of power are spreading unscientific ideas. In the last 10 years, we have suffered innumerable examples of such gross misrepresentations of science," Pinarayi said while inaugurating the GKSF at Thonnakkal in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday.

"One person said that there was plastic surgery in India long before the world discovered it," Pinarayi said. No one will be left scratching their heads thinking who this person is. This was one of the first controversial remarks made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he took charge in Delhi. 

In October 2014, while speaking to a gathering of doctors and other professionals at a private hospital in Mumbai, the Prime Minister marvelled at the possibility that plastic surgery was in vogue in ancient India. "We can feel proud of what our country achieved in medical science at one point in time", he said. "We worship Lord Ganesha. There must have been some plastic surgeon at that time who got an elephant's head on the body of a human being and began the practice of plastic surgery," he said.

What Pinarayi said on Monday was similar to what Speaker A N Shamseer had said last July and earned the wrath of the Sangh Parivar. Except, Pinarayi did not specifically state that the elephant God was a myth. Shamseer had said that the BJP-led governments were trying to teach school kids that the first plastic surgery was done on Ganesha and was thus trying to replace science with myths.

It was not just Modi but the Sangh Parivar's inclination to confuse superstitions with science that Pinarayi sought to rubbish on Monday. "It was a person in a powerful position who spoke against Darwin's Theory of Evolution," Pinarayi said. This was a reference to BJP MP Satyapal Singh. While speaking in Lok Sabha during a discussion on the Protection of Human Rights (Amendment) Bill, 2019, the MP said that humans descended from 'rishis' not monkeys.

"Another had said that cow is an animal that inhales and exhales oxygen," Pinarayi said. This was Rekha Arya, now Uttarkhand's minister for women and child welfare. When she made this 'double oxygen wonder called cow’ remark on the floor of the Uttarakhand Assembly in 2018, she was the animal husbandry minister.

There was more ridicule reserved for Modi. "You cannot create a society with a scientific temper by banging on plates and lighting torches," Pinarayi said. On March 20, at the height of COVID, Modi had appealed to Indians to take out plates and bang on it like bells for 10 minutes to show solidarity with healthcare workers. 

A month later on April 5, he made his countrymen switch off the lights in their homes, and stand at their doors or their balconies or climb up their terraces with lighted candles or diyas, torches or mobile flashlights. They were made to do this “firefly” imitation for nine minutes. Modi said it was part of the fight against COVID.

Even if it was not overtly mentioned, Pinarayi was using the Global Science Festival Kerala as a counterpoint to the 'pran pratishta' at the new Ayodhya temple on January 22. 

"When such rank foolishness is spread by those in responsible positions, those associated with science have the social responsibility to expose the hollowness of such claims through rational and scientific explanations. They should not only take up this duty but should also be in the vanguard of attempts to galvanise the public conscience against the themes of hatred and divisiveness, and superstitions and misguided rituals," he said.  

The Chief Minister emphasised that the BJP dispensation has discarded science. He reminded the audience that there was uncertainty about the Indian Science Congress this year, traditionally the first major event of the Prime Minister in a calendar year.

"We are organising this Global Science festival at a time when Kerala is preparing for the 38th Indian Science Congress," he said. "However, the country's biggest science awareness event, the Indian Science Congress, has not happened this year. We are not sure whether it will even happen. I am told that the event has not received sanction," Pinarayi said.