The Indian nationalist hero had scientific temper. Now, he just has tech

Indian Express

13-06-2025

Through the 1950s and '60s, one of the most enduring figures of Indian nationalism on screen was the male figure we might call the Five-Year Plan Hero. He was, usually, a doctor, an engineer or a scientist and reflected an important theme within Indian nationalism of the immediate post-colonial period: That of 'nation-building'. He may have been a lover, a potential suitor and adept at singing romantic songs; however, the most crucial aspect of his personality was that he possessed a 'scientific temper' and sought to apply it to refashioning a national identity based on critical thinking.
The Five-Year-Plan Hero had mastered the technologies of medical procedures, dam building and laboratory-based experimentation; however, he was never just a technologist. He was, above all, a scientist. This was a time when a 'scientific' world view referred to a philosophical standpoint on the nature of post-colonial life and developing a questioning attitude towards established norms. Technology was just one aspect of science and did not exhaust its meaning. And, love (the filmic kind) and science co-existed in a very particular Nehruvian understanding of the possibilities of post-colonial life.
Romantic love offered freedom from familial constraints that dictated whom to marry, whereas scientific thinking freed one from outdated modes of thought. The 'scientific' Five-Year Plan Hero embodied a quiet confidence in Indian capacities for engaging with complex ideas and a lack of anxiety about having to prove oneself to the rest of the world. It was a confidence that derived from a progressive strand in anti-colonial thought.
If there is one thing that was clear in the version of nationalism that accompanied the India-Pakistan hostilities in May 2025, it is the shift from the possibilities of scientific nationalism imagined by the women and men who took part in the anti-colonial struggle to a technocratic nationalism that now strongly characterises the Indian present. It is also, in this regard, a shift from a confident national identity – one that could combine emotions with rational thought – to an anxious and insecure one. The vast number of social and other media articles relating to the Indian defence superiority derive from techno-nationalism and the concern that the world sees us as capable of 'precision' and technological mastery. Scientific nationalism was about questioning what came before. Technological nationalism is an anxiety to prove ourselves to the world.
There are, now, many situations where technological nationalism has conquered fields where, you would have thought, it might have been resisted. It is at the heart of Googling the meaning of a well-rounded education in order to discover that there is no relationship between thinking and its application to everyday life. According to this logic, there is no sense in reading books that say that religious or gender-based discrimination is wrong and criticising situations where this happens. The important act is the self-described capacity for, say, Googling: This form of technological mastery proves that we are as good as any in the world. Clicking, according to this line of thought, is everything. Technology itself is thought.
You know that something serious has happened when techno-nationalism becomes the key way of thinking about a well-rounded education. It takes us back to some older ideas about education and learning that we thought had been done away with. Two examples should be enough.
In one version of nationalist debates about schooling, an important reason for promoting education among women had to do with the idea that this would make them better mothers. The educated women will be better at child-rearing, and educated mothers, the thinking went, are important for nurturing healthy children, particularly sons. The key value of education was to maintain a social norm, one that said that motherhood was fundamental to a woman's identity. Education was a technology that allowed you to achieve that norm. You became a wholesome person through maintaining rather than questioning norms, and that is the actual meaning of a well-rounded education.
Educational activity also formed a cornerstone of the Charter Act of 1813, through which the British parliament introduced changes to the role and functioning of the East India Company. The Company was asked to finance education in order to impart 'civilizational values' and produce 'learned natives'. Colonial systems of education cannot, however, be about encouraging thought that might encourage criticism of colonialism itself. So, a key part of the debates that followed the 1813 Act interpreted 'civilisation' and 'learning' as technical mastery over many forms of knowledge, rather than knowledge as a tool of social and political change. To be civilised and learned was to know about many kinds of literature, music, philosophies, and art. Being civilised did not mean questioning the hierarchies of the world.
Anti-colonial activism that asked, 'Is being civilised just knowing more or is it also about questioning discrimination and power?' introduced other ways of understanding what it is to be civilised. It redefined the meaning of education, moving it away from technical mastery and rote learning by asking if education should be about changing society or just knowing many forms of art and music. In all parts of the world where colonialism defined education as a technology of civilisation, anti-colonial activity redefined it as a science of questioning the accepted norms of high and low, the civilised and the uncivilised.
The rise of techno-nationalism, so many years after the end of formal colonial rule and in so many different ways, says something both about national anxiety, about identity, as well as a return to an earlier meaning of what it means to be 'civilised'. Technological mastery over machines and technical knowledge of art, music and languages is the mark of a new national identity. To try and think beyond technology (the task of scientific thinking) and whether book knowledge should have any connection with real life – democracy, equality and discrimination – is pointless activism.
The writer is Distinguished Research Professor, SOAS University of London