Deletion of Lessons on Darwin’s theory of Evolution from syllabus of 10th class: Attack on Rationality

NCERT earlier this year removed lessons on Darwin’s theory of evolution and periodic table from the syllabus of class 10th students. This is in line with the policies of the Modi government since its coming into power. It has constantly attacked the natural sciences and history. Indian Science Congress is one such example where ‘cow science’ and myths instead of Indian history and natural science were propagated. Social sciences have also been the target of this onslaught. Modi government and its paternal organization, RSS’s ideology is contradictory to the logic of history of nature and society. Darwin and the theory of evolution are part of the history of natural sciences, which were important in establishing the modern understanding of the nature. The latest attack is in line with the trend that includes what happened at the Indian Science Congress, IIT Kharagpur’s Calender, challenges to DNA analysis of our ancestors to deny the Aryan migration in the Indian subcontinent. It can be predicted that more such attacks on education will soon follow. Darwin’s theory of evolution is one such conception that has faced a lot of challenges from the ruling classes and religious institutions over the period of time. It has been mocked and faced censorship even in the 20th century. But the latest attack on Darwin’s theory in India is not the repetition of an old or medieval barbaric attack; rather, this is a part of the modern anti-modernist and anti-rational attitude spread by fascists and far-right groups.

NCERT has defended the removal by saying that the lessons on Darwin are removed only for 10th class students and are present in 11th and 12th standard. But this is problematic because the number of students who will opt out of science from class 11th and those who drop out of school is huge in comparison to those who actually pursue science in 11th and 12th. This also shows that the profit-driven education system retains the technical and advanced study of evolution for further studies in Genetics and biology in general for research, but the lessons introduced in class 10th that generate a general outlook of the world are deleted. Natural sciences have an effect of enlightenment on the common masses. Modern natural sciences were born with the rise of capitalism in western Europe. Galileo’s discoveries established the viewpoint of Copernicus, and Bruno and Robert Hooke’s cell in cork were found in Leeuwenhoek’s experiments. Galen’s purity of body and impure air was challenged by the anatomical studies of Vesalius and Vinci. Natural science established that the world in itself is transitional and changes. The strata of nature changes under different laws of motion.

Not only does it change under the different laws of motion, but it was also revealed that the form of existence of the material world is in motion. The reason of motion is the internal contradiction present in everything. As this constituting internal conflict is different for different material things, the study of different material entity has different laws of motion and thus a different branch of natural science.

“So all have birth and perishable frame,

  Thus the whole nature of the world itself

  Must be conceived as perishable too.

  For, verily, those things of which we see

  The parts and members to have birth in time

  And perishable shapes, those same we mark

  To be invariably born in time

  And born to die. And therefore when I see

  The mightiest members and the parts of this

  Our world consumed and begot again,

  ‘Tis mine to know that also sky above

  And earth beneath began of old in time

  And shall in time go under to disaster.”

The viewpoint of Lucretius, the primitive dialectics was established and yet negated by modern science. Negated in the sense that the development was understood concretly and not in abstraction. This logic of change is the first reason for targeting evolutionary theory. Although Darwin had problem in understanding this development through jumps.

He understood change only as a gradual process, but the radical ruptures in the evolution of life, the finest example of which is the Cambrian explosion, was not incorporated into the evolutionary theory of Darwin.

Secondly, in the 19th century, Darwin expanded evolutionary view and explained how life evolves and how the human species evolved out of a primate species. This view challenged the church orthodoxy and shook the ground on which the holy touch of God created “man.” This is why it was attacked by the religious orthodox community. History and nature proved Darwin right. He remained firm and kept on explaining how evolution is the cause of descent of man. This is the second reason why Darwin is the target of the BJP-controlled NCERT.

Thirdly, Darwin’s theory rejected the notion of idealized species type with species itself becoming the subject of evolution. Thus there is no external agency required for explaining the cause of evolution and rejecting the rigid boundaries which was the metaphysical conception of biological life forms.

These three contributions of Darwin have general consequences for philosophy. It attacked the idealist absolute types of species, made the genesis of human beings a scientific study, and introduced the conception that every thing under the sun is undergoing change and all that comes into being deserves to perish. During the 19th century, other scientific discoveries also paved the way for this general viewpoint. The law of energy transformation, the discovery of cells, and the mathematical formulation of non-Euclidean space were examples that gave a viewpoint which upheld the idea of Kant that the solar system had a beginning and an end. More clearly Hegel expressed this idea of development, whose dialectical method was incorporated later and developed by German philosophers and revolutionaries Marx and Engels in the dialectical materialist world view, which explains the dialectical conception of nature.

This general iridiation of consciousness, which arose out of Darwin’s teaching, has been the target of reactionaries for the past two centuries. It is this crushing of consciousness, which is the fascist agenda, that has been unfurling in India since the Modi government has been in power. Release of IIT Kharagpur Calender rejecting scientific rigour and propagating myths, Science Congress used for cow myths and mockery of ancient India, and now, attack on the syllabus of schoolchildren are examples of how systematically the academic institutions are under attack. And if today the scientific community stands passive and silent to these attacks, then our country’s fate will be similar to Hitler’s Germany. It is the duty of every scientist to protest against the fascist onslaught in our country.