From Haldighati to AI: What Turmeric Can Teach Us About the Ownership of Civilisation’s Knowledge

 

The turmeric patent battle of the 1990s was not merely about a spice or a patent. It was an early warning that the traditional knowledge of communities could be appropriated unless it was documented, recognised and protected. In the age of Artificial Intelligence, that warning has acquired an altogether new significance.

The Global Turmeric Conclave 2026, held in Mumbai on 28 September, provides an occasion to revisit a remarkable episode in India's scientific and intellectual-property history. What appeared to be a dispute over the medicinal use of a humble spice became a landmark demonstration of how traditional knowledge could be defended through modern science, documentary evidence and international patent law.

The conclave also invites us to ask a much larger question: who owns the knowledge accumulated by civilisations over thousands of years?

For India, haldi, or turmeric, has never been merely a spice. It has been food, medicine, colour, cosmetic, household remedy and sacred substance—sometimes all at once. Its significance extends from the kitchen to the household medicine chest, from marriage ceremonies to religious worship, and from everyday dietary practice to traditional systems of healing.

The history of turmeric is therefore a particularly revealing way of understanding what traditional knowledge means and why its preservation has become increasingly important in an age when data is being transformed into economic value.

From the Harappan kitchen to Hortus Malabaricus

Archaeobotanical research offers a fascinating starting point. At Farmana, a Harappan site in present-day Haryana dating to approximately 2600–2200 BCE, researchers identified starch grains of Curcuma, identified in their study as turmeric, on a cooking vessel. The finding provides direct archaeological evidence of turmeric being processed in food preparation during the Harappan period. It does not, by itself, establish an uninterrupted history of every subsequent use, but it offers a tangible glimpse into the antiquity of the plant's association with food in the Indian subcontinent.

Source: Arunima Kashyap and Steve Weber, Harappan Plant Use Revealed by Starch Grains from Farmana, India, Antiquity.

A later and particularly significant documentary record is Hortus Malabaricus, the twelve-volume botanical treatise compiled under the direction of Hendrik van Rheede, a Dutch East India Company administrator on the Malabar coast. Published in Amsterdam between 1678 and 1693, it documented the flora of the region, including the medicinal properties and uses of hundreds of plants.

Turmeric appears in the work under the local name “Manjella Kua”, subsequently associated with Curcuma longa, the botanical name for turmeric. The record is significant not simply because it identifies a plant, but because it provides a window into the traditional botanical and medicinal knowledge of seventeenth-century Malabar.

An important contributor to this knowledge was Itty Achudan, a physician and herbalist from Kerala's Ezhava community. He supplied information on plants, their properties and medicinal uses, drawing on practical experience and inherited knowledge. Three Brahmin physicians—Ranga Bhatt, Vinayak Pandit and Appu Bhatt—also contributed to the work. Their knowledge was translated across languages and eventually presented in Latin to an international readership.

As botanist K. S. Manilal's research has demonstrated, Hortus Malabaricus remains an important record of the ethnomedical knowledge of the region.

[Sources: K. S. Manilal, “Hortus Malabaricus and the Ethnoiatrical Knowledge of Ancient Malabar”, Ancient Science of Life; Oxford's account of Hortus Malabaricus.]

The work also raises a question that remains relevant today. When knowledge travels from a local community into a global scientific system, are the people who developed and preserved it adequately acknowledged?

Hortus Malabaricus was an important example of knowledge moving between Indian and European intellectual traditions. It would be simplistic to dismiss it merely as appropriation: it preserved valuable knowledge and identified some of its contributors. Yet it also emerged within the unequal power structures of European colonial expansion. The distinction between the person who gathers and publishes knowledge and the community that has preserved it is an important part of this history.

The history of turmeric thus takes us beyond botany. It brings us to the relationship between knowledge, documentation, recognition and power.

Haldi: a plant woven into everyday civilisation

The historical importance of turmeric cannot be understood through medicinal literature alone. In India, its significance extends into social and religious life.

Turmeric has long been associated in many Indian traditions with auspiciousness, prosperity and well-being. Turmeric paste forms part of marriage ceremonies in numerous communities. Turmeric-dyed threads carry ritual significance in some traditions. The plant is used in household preparations, cosmetics and religious observances, including various forms of puja.

Its cultural journey is extraordinary because the same substance can occupy several worlds simultaneously. It can be a culinary ingredient, a traditional remedy, a colouring agent and a ritual material.

In Ayurveda and other South Asian medical traditions, turmeric acquired a substantial vocabulary of medicinal uses. Scholarly literature records numerous Sanskrit names for the plant, reflecting its colour, perceived properties and cultural associations. Modern scientific research has also examined curcumin and other constituents of turmeric, although traditional uses and contemporary clinical evidence must not be treated as interchangeable.

The point is not that every traditional claim has already been scientifically validated. It is that generations of observation, practice and transmission have created a body of knowledge that deserves careful documentation and scientific investigation.

Traditional knowledge does not necessarily originate in one laboratory, belong to one inventor or fit neatly into a single discipline. It often accumulates over generations, through repeated observation, practical experience and transmission within families and communities.

That is what makes turmeric such an illuminating example.

And that brings us to a remarkable episode in India's recent scientific history.

The second Battle of Haldighati

In 1995, India challenged a United States patent relating to the use of turmeric powder for wound healing. The argument was that this use was not a novel invention: it was already part of India's established knowledge, documented in traditional texts and scientific publications.

CSIR, under the leadership of Dr R. A. Mashelkar, played a crucial role in the challenge. Documentary evidence was presented to demonstrate that the claimed use was already known. On 13 August 1997, the US Patent Office revoked the patent following the challenge.

CSIR records the episode as the case that the media dubbed the “second Battle of Haldighati”—a pioneering contest fought through evidence and the rules of the international patent system.

[Source: CSIR's account of the Second Battle of Haldighati.]

The metaphor is compelling. The first Battle of Haldighati belongs to the history of territorial conflict. The second became a contest over intellectual territory and the recognition of prior knowledge.

The significance of the episode went well beyond turmeric. It demonstrated that knowledge could have existed within a community for centuries and yet become vulnerable in a modern intellectual-property system if it was not documented in a form that patent examiners could recognise.

The knowledge was not necessarily absent. It was the documentary evidence that the system needed.

This was not merely an Indian problem. Traditional communities around the world have accumulated knowledge of plants, agriculture, seeds, food preservation, healing, ecology, fibres, navigation and natural resources. Some of this knowledge has been recorded in manuscripts; much has been transmitted orally or preserved in languages and knowledge systems that remain inaccessible to modern patent databases.

The challenge is to prevent the absence of accessible documentation from being mistaken for the absence of prior knowledge.

From turmeric to the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library

The turmeric and neem patent controversies helped bring the problem of protecting traditional knowledge into sharper focus. India's response included an initiative that was remarkably farsighted: the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), established in 2001 through collaboration between CSIR and the Department of AYUSH.

The TKDL was designed to systematically document traditional medicinal knowledge and make it accessible to patent examiners in formats and languages they could use. It draws on traditional systems, including Ayurveda, Siddha and other documented medicinal traditions, translating and structuring information from classical texts so that existing knowledge can be identified during patent examination.

The idea was not to patent ancient knowledge. It was to help prevent the grant of patents for claims that lacked novelty because the knowledge already existed.

The principle was simple:

This knowledge already exists. Do not mistake its rediscovery for invention.

[Source: CSIR's account of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library.]

The TKDL represented an important bridge between traditional knowledge and modern intellectual-property institutions. It helped address the problem of knowledge being overlooked because it was recorded in unfamiliar languages or dispersed across historical texts.

The turmeric patent case was not the sole cause of the TKDL, nor did the library itself overturn the original patent. Rather, the experience formed part of the larger context in which India developed a systematic defensive mechanism for protecting its documented traditional medicinal knowledge.

The broader insight was prescient: if traditional knowledge is to be recognised by modern institutions, it must be made visible to them.

That insight assumes a new significance in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

When data becomes the new gold

The world of the patent examiner has now been joined by the world of the algorithm.

Artificial Intelligence can search, classify, translate and connect information on a scale that would have been difficult to imagine when the turmeric patent was challenged. It offers enormous opportunities for preserving traditional knowledge, especially when that knowledge is dispersed across manuscripts, archives, oral histories, local languages and community records.

Imagine AI-enabled systems that help translate endangered languages, connect botanical descriptions across centuries, identify related material in distant archives and preserve oral traditions before the people who carry them are no longer able to pass them on.

Such systems could help researchers study relationships between plants, preparation methods and historical medical texts. They could assist museums, libraries, universities and community institutions in documenting collections and making them more discoverable.

My own work at CSMVS Museum in Mumbai brings this question into sharper focus. The museum's international exhibition, Networks of the Past: India and the Ancient World, uses original objects borrowed from museums in India and abroad to illuminate the connections between ancient societies. Such objects are more than artefacts: they are evidence of human experience, exchange, skill and knowledge.

Museums, manuscripts and archives preserve fragments of the past that can help us understand how people lived, made things, traded, healed and interpreted their world. Digital technologies can connect these fragments in new ways. AI may make those connections easier to explore, but it cannot replace the need for careful scholarship, provenance and historical context.

The opportunity is immense. So is the responsibility.

The new danger: appropriation at algorithmic scale

Digitisation can protect knowledge. It can also make knowledge easier to appropriate.

The turmeric controversy concerned a patent applicant's claim that India challenged as insufficiently novel. Future disputes may take a different form: an AI system could draw on large bodies of traditional knowledge and generate insights with commercial value, perhaps without the original custodians being acknowledged or benefiting.

These possibilities raise difficult questions.

Who gave permission for community knowledge to be digitised or used to train a commercial system? Who should be acknowledged when a new discovery builds upon knowledge preserved over generations? How should access to sacred, restricted or sensitive knowledge be governed? And how can communities share fairly in commercial benefits arising from the use of their knowledge?

These questions cannot be answered simply by saying that information was available somewhere on the internet.

Availability is not the same as consent, provenance, ownership or benefit-sharing.

Nor should every use of traditional knowledge be treated as appropriation. Research can be legitimate and beneficial; scientific investigation can create new knowledge; and commercial innovation can produce value for society. The challenge is to establish fair rules that distinguish legitimate discovery from the unauthorised exploitation of knowledge and resources.

The answer must not be to prevent knowledge from travelling across cultures. It must be to ensure that, when it travels, its provenance and the rights of its custodians are not erased.

Towards a Global Traditional Knowledge Commons

The international system has begun to recognise parts of this challenge.

In May 2024, member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization adopted the WIPO Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge. The treaty introduces a patent-disclosure requirement for inventions based on genetic resources and/or associated traditional knowledge, requiring applicants to disclose specified information about the origin or source and, where relevant, the Indigenous Peoples or local community providing the associated knowledge.

This is a significant development. However, the treaty is not yet in force: it requires 15 ratifications or accessions to enter into force. Its scope is also specific; it is not a comprehensive international framework governing all traditional knowledge or the use of such knowledge by AI systems.

[Sources: WIPO Treaty overview; WIPO Treaty summary.]

The AI era demands that we think beyond the patent system. Perhaps the world needs a framework that could be called a Global Traditional Knowledge Commons—not a single, centralised database controlled by one institution, but an interoperable network of national, institutional and community-controlled repositories.

Such a framework could be developed through cooperation among WIPO, UNESCO, the United Nations and other appropriate international bodies, with the participation of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, governments, museums, libraries, universities and scientific institutions.

Repositories could document not merely the knowledge itself, but also its provenance: where it originated, which community preserved it, the historical evidence supporting it, and the conditions under which it may be accessed or used.

They should distinguish between knowledge that is openly available and knowledge that is sacred, restricted or subject to community protocols. They should support attribution and, where commercial exploitation occurs, mechanisms for appropriate consent and equitable benefit-sharing.

AI could then become an ally in preservation rather than an instrument of extraction. It could help communities document their knowledge in their own languages, improve access to historical records and establish connections between dispersed sources.

But the system must not assume that every piece of traditional knowledge should be placed in the public domain or fed indiscriminately into commercial AI models. Communities must have a meaningful voice in deciding how their knowledge is recorded, shared and used.

The governing principle should be clear:

The digitisation of knowledge must not become the privatisation of knowledge.

From colonial extraction to equitable innovation

There is a further historical dimension to this debate.

Colonial expansion transformed the relationship between knowledge, institutions and economic power across much of the world. Traditional knowledge was collected, classified, translated and incorporated into new scientific and commercial systems. In many cases, the communities that had preserved it received limited recognition, while the institutions that published or circulated it became more visible in the historical record.

Hortus Malabaricus illustrates both the value and the complexity of this history. It preserved Indian botanical knowledge and brought it into international scientific circulation, while also emerging from the colonial world of the Dutch East India Company. The contributions of Itty Achudan and other Indian scholars remind us that the history of science is not simply a story of discoveries made by a few celebrated individuals. It is also a story of communities, practitioners, translators, informants and knowledge keepers whose contributions deserve recognition.

The appropriate response today is not to reject modern science, intellectual property, pharmaceutical research or commercial innovation. Nor should traditional knowledge be frozen in a museum, preserved only as a relic of the past.

The objective should be to build a fairer bridge between traditional knowledge and modern innovation.

Traditional knowledge should be documented, studied critically, scientifically investigated where appropriate and innovated upon transparently. Where commercial value emerges, mechanisms should recognise provenance, respect applicable rights and enable equitable benefit-sharing.

This is not an argument against innovation. It is an argument for innovation that understands its foundations.

The unfinished Battle of Haldighati

The turmeric story offers a remarkable journey through time. Archaeological evidence from a Harappan cooking vessel points to the plant's use in food preparation thousands of years ago. Hortus Malabaricus preserves a seventeenth-century record of botanical and medicinal knowledge. The patent controversy of the 1990s demonstrated the importance of documenting prior knowledge. TKDL sought to make traditional medicinal knowledge visible to modern patent examination. Today, AI opens new possibilities for connecting, interpreting and preserving such knowledge—while raising new questions about consent, attribution and commercial value.

The Global Turmeric Conclave in Mumbai on 28 September 2026 provides a contemporary reminder that turmeric is not only a crop, commodity or ingredient in a global value chain. It is also a window into the history of knowledge itself.

Perhaps that is the real significance of the “second Battle of Haldighati”. It was not a battle against another country, or against science and commerce. It was a reminder that knowledge without documentation can become vulnerable; knowledge without provenance can become detached from its custodians; and knowledge without recognition can be presented as somebody else's discovery.

The first Haldighati was fought over territory. The second was fought over intellectual recognition.

The emerging challenge in the age of AI may concern something even more fundamental: the stewardship of humanity's collective memory.

For thousands of years, communities have observed, experimented, adapted and passed on knowledge. Modern science has given us extraordinary tools to test, validate and extend it. Artificial Intelligence gives us new tools to search and connect it at unprecedented scale.

We should ensure that AI does not merely make traditional knowledge available. It should help make that knowledge visible with provenance, context and credit.

Civilisations may lose battles. They may lose territories. But they should not lose the memory of the knowledge through which they have understood and shaped their world.

Haldi, the golden spice celebrated in Mumbai, has a message for the twenty-first century. The knowledge associated with it did not begin with a patent, a laboratory or an algorithm. It accumulated through human experience, was preserved in communities and travelled across generations.

What is new is our ability to digitise, connect and monetise that knowledge on a planetary scale.

Knowledge is not merely information. It is part of our shared heritage—and in the age of AI, preserving its provenance may be as important as preserving the knowledge itself.

Image: Courtesy of ChatGPT

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Indian Air Force Day - 2026

 Indian Air Force Day:  The Marut (HF24) and the Unfinished Business of Self-Reliance.

Today, 8 October, the Indian Air Force celebrates its 94th anniversary. Four of my Sainik School classmates – Pramod Deshpande, Kalyani Biradar, Chand Nadaf and Tayannavar - wore the blue uniform: one of them as a pilot in the Air Force, another as a pilot in the Indian Navy, and the other two supporting their brethren in maintaining these flying machines for defence preparedness. There are many other alumni from our school who proudly have served the Indian Air Force, including two of our fellow Ajeets, Alumni of SSBJ, who have made their supreme sacrifice while serving the nation. So, this day is personal for all Ajeets, including yours truly. To my class buddies and to the entire Air Force fraternity, a very Happy Air Force Day.

Modern wars are decided in the skies long before the ground forces meet. That is why air power is among the most critical pillars of a nation's defence. It is also why India's fighter story deserves to be remembered with pride and examined with honesty.

Today, few remember that India was once ahead of most of Asia in building its own fighter plane. The HF-24 Marut, made by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), was among the first fighter jets designed and built outside Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States. HAL itself traces its roots to Walchand Hirachand and Bharat Ratna, Sir M. Visvesvaraya, who persuaded the Mysore government to set up an aircraft factory in Bangalore. It was in 1956 that Pandit Nehru asked HAL to build a Mach 2 fighter, and the German designer Kurt Tank of WWII fame was brought in to lead this project.

It was during the planning, designing, and manufacturing of the fighter plane at HAL that Kurt Tank and his team confronted their first challenge - The engine. The engine Tank had designed the aircraft around was never sourced, partially due to scarcity of funds and partly due to bureaucratic delay and indifference. And years of searching for an alternative engine to achieve the same desired result came to nothing.

The substitute engine sourced to manufacture the fighter produced far less thrust than the design needed. The Marut was meant to be a Mach 2 fighter when it was envisaged. However, it never got beyond barely touching Mach 1 at altitude, and by the time it entered into combat service in 1967, the IAF was already preparing itself to adopt the better fighter aircraft, MiG-21.

Yet the Marut – HF 24 carries a special place in the Indian Air Force History. Besides, the Nehru Science Centre is in proud possession of one of these fighter aircraft displayed in the open-air science park.

In the Battle of Longewala in 1971 – part of the Liberation of Bangladesh War that India was forced into fighting in 1971 against Pakistan - the Maruts of No. 10 Squadron, alongside the Hunters, helped break a massive Pakistani armoured tank movement and destroyed their effort to overrun a tiny Indian garrison. The Air Warriors of the Indian Air Force flew over two hundred sorties in that war, and there are reports of several aircraft returning home on a single engine.

The last Marut was retired from active service in 1990. Considering its rich history and also the fact that one of the HF 24 Marut aircraft is displayed in the Nehru Science Centre, at the time of its restoration, I researched this aircraft and have told its full story on my blog;

The HF 24 – Marut Fighter Aircraft](https://khened.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-hf-24-marut-fighter-aircraft.html).

Nehru Science Centre in Mumbai proudly owns one of these aircraft, gifted by the IAF in 1978-79. During my tenure, it was restored to near-pristine beauty by a dedicated HAL Nashik team, who worked tirelessly on our campus during the COVID period.

The MiG-21 stepped in where the Marut fell short. India's first supersonic jet retired after 62 years of service, having been inducted in 870 units across variants. Some called the MIG 21 a flying coffin, but those who flew it, including our own senior Ajeet, Air Marshal Yajurvedi, who flew this aircraft, still speaks of it with deep affection, and recalls what a faithful workhorse it was. Its departure has left a gap.

Fighter squadron strength, understandably, has slipped to 29 against a sanctioned strength of 42. In the Air Chief's own assessment, the Tejas Mk1A programme is unfortunately running about two years behind schedule, and the IAF needs to induct roughly 36 to 40 fighters every year to arrest the slide.  The Tejas Mk1A is held up largely by late supply of F404 engines from GE Aerospace. Six decades after the Marut, the engine is again the bottleneck.

The way forward is clear: we must learn from past lessons of the significance of the engine and how it impacted the Marut. We should therefore secure engine supply and give a major impetus to the Kaveri and other indigenous engine efforts with the urgency that was found wanting in the 1960s, and we must also overcome any other bureaucratic or other issues to ensure that indigenous engines ultimately fly our Tejas fighter aircraft.  

It is also perhaps time that, to meet HAL's delivery targets as per Air Force demands, it may also be necessary that private sectors are encouraged to improve production capacity. It is also heartening to note that the 114 Rafale deal could conclude by the end of this financial year, and that the Tejas Mk2 is targeted to fly in mid-2027.

Another significant development for the Indian Air Force is India’s ambitious fifth-generation stealth fighter project, Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA). This project has reached the RFP stage, and the AMCA is expected to become the centrepiece of India’s future air combat strategy in an era increasingly dominated by stealth fighter capability

The Marut fighter aircraft taught us that India can design and build a fighter on its own. However, for the success of such projects, we must also understand that no aircraft is better than the engine that drives the aircraft, and therefore adequate emphasis must be given to indigenous development of the engines. If we learn from our past lessons from the Marut aircraft, the next chapter of Indian air power can truly match our aspirations.

Happy Air Force Day. Jai Hind.

Lal Bahadur Shastri

 

Lal Bahadur Shastri: Reemembering the leader whose  Slogan Became a National Mission.

October 2 is Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. It is also the birth anniversary of Lal Bahadur Shastri. The coincidence is both appropriate and unfortunate. Appropriate, because Shastri was deeply influenced by Gandhi and carried into public life some of his most demanding values—simplicity, personal responsibility, restraint and service. Unfortunate, because the towering public memory of Mahatma Gandhi often leaves little space on this day for remembering the diminutive man who became India’s second Prime Minister.

Lal Bahadur Shastri was physically small, soft-spoken and outwardly unassuming. But beneath that unassuming exterior lay great inner strength. Replying to a Parliamentary debate on the railway accident, Shastri himself remarked that people were apt to mistake his small size and soft tongue for a lack of firmness. The Prime Minister’s Office biography records his remarkable journey from poverty and the freedom struggle to the highest office in the land, noting that behind his soft exterior was the firmness of a rock. 

That combination of humility and steel perhaps explains why his short tenure as Prime Minister, from 9 June 1964 to 11 January 1966, continues to occupy such a disproportionate place in India’s national memory.

A country facing two crises

Shastri inherited a deeply difficult India.

The trauma of the 1962 war with China had shaken the country's confidence and exposed serious weaknesses in India's defence preparedness. At the same time, India was confronting an acute food crisis. Agricultural production was inadequate, foodgrain imports were substantial and the spectre of food insecurity was a matter of national concern. Contemporary assessments of the period describe defence preparedness and food security as two urgent and interconnected national priorities. 

Shastri therefore confronted two battles simultaneously: one against an external threat and another against hunger.

His response was characteristically uncomplicated. He sought to mobilise the nation rather than merely administer it. This was the context in which the words "Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan" acquired their extraordinary force. The slogan was not simply a catchy political phrase. It connected two apparently different imperatives—national security and food security—and placed both within the framework of national duty.

The soldier defending the country's borders and the farmer feeding the country were, in Shastri's formulation, equal partners in nation-building. And there was something else implicit in the slogan. It was an appeal to citizens to participate in the national effort.

When food shortages became acute and India was heavily dependent on American PL-480 wheat shipments, Shastri appealed to citizens to observe restraint and even to voluntarily give up one meal a week. Importantly, he did not merely ask others to sacrifice. He first experimented with the idea within his own household. His appeal became popularly associated with the "Shastri vrat" (in practice, skipping a Monday evening meal), and his example helped convert an economic necessity into a collective moral exercise. 

This was leadership through example.

From "Jai Jawan" to a confident India

The 1965 India-Pakistan war tested Shastri in the most unforgiving circumstances. Pakistan's military leadership appears to have calculated that India, still recovering from the trauma of 1962, could be pressured militarily. The outcome did not conform to those expectations. India fought back, and the war ended with a ceasefire on 23 September 1965 and, eventually, the Tashkent Declaration of 10 January 1966.

The significance of 1965 was not simply military. It was psychological.

A country that had been deeply shaken by the events of 1962 had demonstrated that it could recover, reorganise and respond with determination. Recent scholarship on the period has also highlighted something less visible than battlefield operations: the institutional changes in India's handling of defence and foreign policy after 1962. Under Shastri, decision-making mechanisms involving the political leadership, defence establishment and foreign-policy apparatus became more coordinated, while the Emergency Committee of the Cabinet became an important forum during the 1965 crisis. 

Shastri therefore did not merely provide rhetoric during a war. He helped create the political conditions in which India's military leadership could operate with confidence.

His famous words—Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan—gave ordinary citizens a role in the national struggle.

The jawan would defend the nation.

The kisan would feed it.

Both were indispensable.

And then came the Green Revolution Perhaps the most consequential part of Shastri's legacy is one that is sometimes obscured by the drama of the 1965 war.

The second half of his slogan was not allowed to remain merely a slogan.

Shastri recognised that food security required science, technology, agricultural research, improved seeds, irrigation, fertilisers, extension services, appropriate pricing and, above all, the participation of farmers.

He also backed this with concrete steps. When senior colleagues declined the agriculture portfolio, Shastri persuaded C. Subramaniam to take it up, with an assurance of full political support. The Agricultural Prices Commission, which recommends minimum support prices to farmers, began work on 1 January 1965, and the Food Corporation of India was established the same year. The high-yielding varieties programme that transformed Indian agriculture took off in 1966–67, after Shastri’s death.

The Green Revolution did not, of course, happen overnight, nor can it properly be attributed to one individual. It was the outcome of the work of a large institutional ecosystem involving agricultural scientists, administrators, policymakers, international researchers and millions of farmers.

But Shastri's contribution was to make food self-sufficiency a national mission at precisely the moment when India was facing acute vulnerability. I have written about the Green Revolution in greater detail in my tribute to Dr M S Swaminathan on his birth centenary; the link is given below.  https://khened.blogspot.com/2025/08/birth-centenary-of-dr-ms-swaminathan-7.html

Shastri’s slogan – Jai Jawan Jai Kisan - became policy. Policy became an institutional effort led by many people, including C. Subramaniam, B. Sivaraman and Dr M. S. Swaminathan. They connected science with the farmer. And the farmer became an active participant in transforming India's food security. The results that followed are now history.

Integrity was not just a slogan

Shastri's most enduring legacy lies elsewhere—in the meaning he gave to public integrity.

The story of his resignation as Railway Minister after the railway accidents of 1956 is often recalled as an anecdote. It deserves to be remembered as something much more significant.

Shastri offered to resign twice in 1956. The first time was in early September, after the Mahbubnagar train accident in Andhra Pradesh in which 112 people died; Prime Minister Nehru refused to accept it. When a still deadlier accident occurred at Ariyalur in Tamil Nadu on 23 November 1956, killing over 140 people, Shastri again tendered his resignation, and this time Nehru reluctantly accepted it. Shastri resigned because he considered himself morally responsible for a disaster in a ministry under his charge, even though there was no suggestion that he had personally caused either accident. In Parliament, Nehru explicitly clarified that he was accepting the resignation to set an example of constitutional propriety, not to imply personal culpability on Shastri's part. 

This distinction is important. Shastri was not resigning because he was personally responsible for the accident. Shastri ji accepted the moral responsibility for the institution he headed.

That is a standard of public accountability which is difficult to imagine today.

There is another, quieter reminder of his personal integrity at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial in New Delhi. Displayed there is the 1964 Fiat car purchased by Shastri with a loan from Punjab National Bank. The Memorial displays it as part of its collection. As his son Anil Shastri has recalled, the loan was Rs 5,000 towards a car costing about Rs 12,000, and it was repaid by his widow, Lalita Shastri, from her family pension after his death.

The significance of the car is not the car itself. It is the fact that the Prime Minister of India did not simply acquire a car through the privileges of office. He took a bank loan to purchase one.

It is a small archival fact, but sometimes small facts illuminate character more powerfully than large speeches. The distance between public office and personal possession was clearly understood by Shastri.

For Shastri, simplicity was inextricably linked to his life and was never an image-management exercise. It was a way of life. What happened to that legacy?

 Some uncomfortable question.

Shastri's tenure lasted barely nineteen months. His life was cut short in Tashkent, in circumstances that continue to raise questions about the cause of his death.  Shastri ji did not live long enough to consolidate the ideas of Jai Jawan and Jai Kisan into a longer political programme.

His death in Tashkent on 11 January 1966, hours after the signing of the Tashkent Declaration with Pakistan, remains one of the unresolved episodes of independent India's history. The official account attributed his death to an acute myocardial infarction. A joint medical examination was conducted by his personal physician, Dr R. N. Chugh, and Soviet doctors.

However, according to the Ministry of External Affairs’ later response to an RTI query, no post-mortem was conducted in the USSR; a separate RTI reply indicated that none was conducted in India either.

That unresolved question of the cause of Shastri ji’s death should not, however, be allowed to overshadow the extraordinary record of the nineteen months that preceded it.

 From Jai Jawan Jai Kisan to Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan

There is perhaps a lesson here for India today.

Shastri's great slogan subsequently acquired new dimensions. Jai Vigyan was added by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee after the Pokhran tests of 1998, and the expression Jai Anusandhan was added by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Indian Science Congress in January 2019 to emphasise the importance of research and innovation. The four together—Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan, Jai Anusandhan—can be read as a continuum: security, food, science and research.

But the real Shastri lesson is not in adding words to a slogan.

It is in translating a slogan into a mission. That is what made Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan different and enduring.

The soldier was backed by defence preparedness. The farmer was backed by agricultural research, improved technology, institutions, policies and eventually the Green Revolution. Perhaps this is precisely what Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan require today.

India has no shortage of slogans. What Shastri demonstrated was something much harder: the conversion of a national aspiration into a sustained mission, supported by institutions, science, policy, public participation and personal example.

The challenge before us is to ensure that Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan do not remain additions to a memorable phrase, but become measurable national missions in the same way that Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan helped mobilise a country confronting war and hunger. This will be the true and befitting tribute we can pay to Shastri. 

Jai Jawan Jai Kisan

Gandhi Jayanti 2026

 

Gandhi Jayanti 2026

Looking at the Lesser spoken aspects of Mahatma: His brief love for Stars & some things that he got Wrong

On every Gandhi Jayanti 2^nd October, tributes will pour in, as will new books written or planned and so also new films and documentaries, rightly so for a man who we call the father of the nation.

On this Gandhi Jayanti, I would like to remember him differently this year: as a man who looked up at the night sky with wonder, and who was also fallible, as every great person is.

Gandhi’s Love for Stars

We usually picture Gandhi with the spinning wheel, not a telescope. Even in the Gandhi and science debate, he is often cast as the man who warned against machines and modernity. Yet during his imprisonment in Yerwada Central Jail, Pune, between February and May 1932, he fell in love with astronomy.

Kaka Kalelkar, a philosopher and devoted follower who shared the jail with him, kindled the interest. With a telescope, sky charts and books, Gandhi began reading and observing seriously. He slept in the open yard and shared the sky with his fellow prisoners. Two large telescopes in that bare prison yard struck visiting reporters as an unusual sight.

He told them that astronomy had always interested him and had now become a passion. He devoted every free minute to it. To lie on your back on a starry night and regard universe after universe, he said, is to become a worshipper.

He wrote two articles titled "Watching the Heavens" for the inmates of Sabarmati Ashram. In them he sketched the Orion constellation and noted that sky charts differ with the observer's location. He suggested that the changing position of the Saptarshi could be used to tell time. He urged beginners to observe from a fixed place at a fixed hour and to draw what they saw for themselves. He also called the mythological creatures of the constellations "beautiful fancies", not real figures in the sky.

He wanted lucid books written on the lives of great astronomers, men of courage and noble character, and he knew that physics underlies the stars. To a friend he wrote that he had woken up late in life, but that it did no harm to wake up even on one's deathbed if watching the stars gave a glimpse of the soul.

For Gandhi, sky observation was spiritual, a lesson in humility. For Meghnad Saha, the same sky led to the hidden laws of nature and the ionisation equation. Both are valid ways of looking up.

Gandhi was not anti-science. He announced a ₹1 lakh prize for a better spinning wheel. He wanted technology to serve the last person in the queue, not widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. He also admitted to contradictions, writing that he had never made a fetish of consistency and was a votary of truth. That is a scientific temperament in its own way, since it means being willing to revise your position.

The fallible Mahatma

This brings me to the other side of Mahatma. The man who stargazed with such wonder was also capable of serious error, and his own willingness to admit his errors is part of what makes him great.

In January 1934, a devastating earthquake struck Bihar and killed thousands. Gandhi declared it divine chastisement for the sin of untouchability. Rabindranath Tagore, a rationalist in thought and deed, publicly and firmly disagreed. He feared that such a statement would strengthen superstition and cause real damage in a country where it was already widespread. Earthquakes, Tagore argued, are caused by natural forces, not by our social sins.

Tagore's critique has not aged; Gandhi's explanation has. A man who studied the heavens and urged others to question and observe had, that day, replaced evidence with moral causation. The cause of untouchability was just and Gandhi's concern for it was real. His reasoning about the earthquake was misplaced/wrong.

There are other chapters that historians still debate, where Gandhi arguably went wrong. His support for the Khilafat movement and his remarks on the Malabar violence of 1921 remain contested. His late experiments with brahmacharya troubled even his admirers. Gandhi was no stranger to confessing error. He openly called one of his own political miscalculations a "Himalayan blunder."

Why Gandhi’s Fallibility matters now

There is no perfect human, and there never was. The real measure of a leader is how they respond to being wrong: whether they listen to critics, own the error and correct course.

We should extend the same measure to those who govern us today. In recent years, I have seen every honest mistake by a politician or administrator become an occasion to bay for blood. Often the response comes from political rivals and vested interests, not from any search for accountability. A flawed decision taken in good faith is treated like a crime.

I am not pleading for leniency toward corruption, malice or deliberate wrongdoing. Those deserve scrutiny and consequences. But we must distinguish an honest error from a dishonest act. If we cannot, no capable person will take the risk of deciding anything, and public life will fill with those who do nothing and so never err.

If we can hold the Mahatma's greatness and his fallibility together, we can accept that a person may be admirable and mistaken at once. That is a rare kind of respect: for the person, for the truth and for the process of learning.

This Gandhi Jayanti, I am tempted to remember Mahatma Gandhi looking up at Orion in a prison yard, humbled by the vastness of the universe and, I hope, willing to be humble about his own errors too.

Jai Hind.

My earlier blog on Gandhi and science:

https://khened.blogspot.com/2020/10/commemoration-and-culmination-of-150th.html

 

When a Dinner Menu Becomes a Political Battle

When a Dinner Menu Becomes a Political Battle: India’s Deepening Crisis of Political Trust

From Parliament to the BRICS summit, every political disagreement is increasingly interpreted through mistrust and suspicion.

Perhaps nothing illustrates how deep the trust deficit has become better than what happened at the recently concluded BRICS Summit in New Delhi. The elaborate vegetarian dinner hosted to the leaders and delegates - showcasing India's regional culinary traditions - at the Summit, which could ordinarily have been seen simply as a choice of hospitality and cuisine, has become a media headline and an unescapable political controversy.

Science and India’s own scientific experience offer a simple lesson: trust is earned by demonstrating public purpose, not merely proclaiming it.

Mumbai, the epicentre of Ganesh festivities, is continuing to celebrate the ten day Ganesh Festival with thousands lining up to seek blessings of Bhagwan Ganesh - Lalbaugcha Raja, Mumbaicha Raja and many others including the neighbourhood Ganesh mandals, each sustained by local committees, artisans, and volunteers, complete a tradition that the world now travels to witness.

Historically, the devotees look up to Ganesh as Vighnaharta” (विघ्नहर्ता), the remover of obstacles. In India we are now encountering a different obstacle - an uncomfortable one – which our democracy urgently needs to confront: the growing deficit of trust in public life. This year, I join Mumbaikars in praying Bhagwan Ganesh – Vighnaharta, to remove the obstacle of trust deficit, which unfortunately is plaguing Indian polity, which is adversely affecting Indian society.

In the prevailing political circumstances of trust deficit, no wonder vegetarian dinner menu is being interpreted as evidence of cultural exclusion, ideological imposition or political intent. That is how dangerous a trust deficit can become, which encompasses all aspects of Indian polity.

Today, the Treasury Bench and the Opposition increasingly appear to be antagonistic to each other’s thoughts, demonstrating political realities of current times. What the government presents as reform is interpreted by the Opposition as manipulation. What the Opposition presents as scrutiny is interpreted by the government as obstruction. To add to this is the sloganeering and social media trolls and viral media messages that ghettoise society on political ideological beliefs which further accentuate the political mistrust. 

Unfortunately, caught in this political cross fire, is the credibility of the constitutional and investigative institutions—from the Election Commission and judiciary to agencies such as the CBI and ED. The result is not merely an unpleasant political atmosphere, but a weakened confidence in the democratic process itself.

We must remind ourselves that Trust, once lost, cannot be restored by louder political sloganeering.

Science offers an interesting lesson in how trust is created.

In 1854, when the safety of Lift was still viewed with suspicion, Elisha Otis demonstrated his newly devised safety brake mechanism, which he had designed for the lifts, before a packed hall of curious onlookers at the Industry of All Nations exhibition at the New York Crystal Palace.  Otis, standing on a lift platform suspended 50 feet high in the air, ordered his assistant, to cut the cable holding the lift. Instead of an expected free fall, the rope snapped and the platform dropped a few inches, and then instantly jerked to a complete halt. The safety design had worked. Otis delivered one of the most famous catchphrases in industrial history:

"All safe, gentlemen, all safe!" His words demonstrated that technology could be trusted and rest is history. That demonstration helped build trust in technology that would eventually transform high rise landscapes in cities.

Science has repeatedly shown that difficult problems become manageable when evidence, leadership and collective purpose converge. The story of polio is an even more relevant Indian example.

Jonas Salk developed the first successful inactivated polio vaccine, while Albert Sabin subsequently developed the oral vaccine that became central to mass immunisation programmes. Their scientific achievements provided the tools. But science alone could not create trust to eradicate polio in a country as vast and diverse as India.

India's success came when political leadership, public health institutions, international partners, health workers, civil society and communities trusted each other and worked towards one national objective: making India polio free. In two decades, India from reporting highest cases of world polio cases, was certified polio-free in March 2014.

The achievement was not the triumph of one government, one organisation or one scientist. It was the result of many parts of society trusting each other in achieving a common goal.

That is precisely the lesson that public life needs to rediscover.

Prafulla Chandra Ray, the great Indian chemist and institution-builder, famously observed: “Science can afford to wait, but Swaraj cannot.” The statement was not a dismissal of science. It reflected a larger principle: there are moments when personal interests and professional ambitions must be subordinated to a larger national purpose.

Jagadish Chandra Bose offered another dimension of that ethic. His pioneering work in radio waves and plant physiology brought him international recognition, yet he was deeply uncomfortable with the idea of scientific knowledge being treated merely as private property. His life reflected a belief that knowledge ultimately carries a responsibility to humanity.

Democratic public life requires precisely this sense of larger purpose.

In a democracy none of the institutional positions nor the political parties own the Republic. The people do. Every institution and every political leader, therefore, has a duty to protect the trust placed on them by the people.

The government cannot build confidence merely by announcing schemes, invoking civilisational ideals or repeating slogans. Transparency, fairness, accountability and demonstrable outcomes are what convert promises into credibility.

The Opposition has an equally important responsibility. It cannot rebuild public confidence if every government action is approached with an assumption of bad faith. Opposition is indispensable to democracy; permanent disbelief is not the same as democratic scrutiny. Criticism becomes meaningful when it engages evidence and offers an alternative.

Institutions face a similar obligation. Autonomy and independence cannot merely be claimed; it must be demonstrated. Authority may confer institutional power, but only conduct confers institutional credibility.

The Indian armed forces offer another useful lesson in leadership. Their ethos recognises that responsibility flows downwards while legitimate needs and concerns flow upwards. Those who command carry greater responsibility. Political leadership could benefit from more of that understanding: public office is ultimately a responsibility, not merely an opportunity to win the next election.

The government and Opposition do not have to trust each other's politics. They do, however, need to trust the democratic process—and demonstrate that trust through their conduct.

The Parliament must show that disagreement can coexist with deliberation. Institutions must demonstrate that their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to whoever happens to occupy office. Political leaders must show that public interest can rise above partisan advantage.

Perhaps that is the real lesson of the seemingly trivial BRICS vegetarian dinner menu controversy. It would be unfortunate if an international summit intended to showcase India's civilisational diversity became another battlefield in India's domestic political war.

India is too diverse to have one compulsory idea of food, culture, identity or ideology. But India is also too important to allow every disagreement to become an accusation of bad faith.

When trust disappears, even a menu becomes political.

When trust exists, disagreement remains disagreement.

That is the difference between a functioning democracy and a deeply polarised one.

For this year’s Ganesh Festival, perhaps the most appropriate invocation is therefore not another political slogan but a simple civic prayer: remove the obstacles to trust.

And then let our political leaders do what science and India's own experience have taught us to do—not merely speak, not merely promise, not merely accuse, but demonstrate, to create trust and learn to walk the talk.

The Republic cannot live on slogans alone. It lives on trust. And trust, like science, must ultimately be demonstrated by what we do.

Image: Courtesy Gemini AI

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Shivaprasad Khened

Senior Advisor CSMVS Museum, Mumbai.

Former Director Nehru Science Centre and NGMA Mumbai & Trustee, Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, Mumbai