It begins, as these things increasingly do, with something that sounds harmless. A Union Minister says he keeps an onion in his pocket to beat a 50-degree heatwave.
No air conditioning, no elaborate measures, just a simple personal trick that "works". In another setting, it might have passed as folklore. But this was not a private conversation. It was a public claim in a country that constitutionally commits itself to scientific temper!
The problem is not the onion. The problem is what such statements signal, and how frequently we have begun to hear them from positions of authority. There is no physiological mechanism by which an onion in one's pocket can protect against heatstroke.
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Human thermoregulation depends on hydration, sweating, evaporation, ambient temperature, and airflow. This is not advanced science, but basic school-level biology. When a public figure presents a folk belief as a viable response to extreme heat, the issue is not merely that it is wrong. It is that it quietly lowers the threshold of what counts as acceptable reasoning in public life.
Over the past decade, such moments have not been rare. They range from the Prime Minister's claims about ancient genetic science to assertions by many others in authority about technologies embedded in mythology. Each instance, taken in isolation, can be ridiculed and dismissed as a slip or rhetorical flourish. Taken together, they form a dangerous pattern that deserves scrutiny. That pattern has, at times, entered spaces that should be insulated from it.
The Indian Science Congress, India's premier science event, has seen controversial presentations that blurred the line between speculation and science. Claims about ancient aviation and interplanetary travel were aired under the banner of a national scientific forum.
The backlash from scientists was immediate and justified. The concern was not about cultural pride. It was about the erosion of methodological standards. The Prime Minister's weird statements about evidence of genetics and plastic surgery in ancient India, made in speeches to medical professionals, went largely unchallenged.
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The boundary between mythology, history, and science is not some academic nicety. It is foundational. Texts like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are among the most profound works of literature ever produced. They carry philosophical depth and moral imagination. None of that requires them to be treated as records of technological achievement.
History demands corroboration, and science demands testability. Mythology operates in a different domain altogether, and when these categories are collapsed, clarity is lost.
India has seen how quickly that loss of clarity can spread. The 1995 Ganesh milk miracle showed how rapidly belief can travel when explanation lags behind emotion. Within hours, scientists demonstrated that the "miracle" was a simple case of capillary action and surface tension. Yet for a brief period, an entire nation hovered between demonstration and belief.
The episode was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of timely, credible communication. What is more concerning today is that confusion is not always coming from the margins. At times, it is reinforced by individuals with scientific credentials. When someone like S Somanath speaks in a public forum and suggests that modern space technology can be traced to ancient texts, the impact is qualitatively different from that of a fringe voice.
The authority of his position lends weight to the claim, even if the claim itself does not meet scientific standards. Similarly, figures such as BM Hegde have, on multiple occasions, made assertions in medicine that are widely criticised and debunked by the scientific community as lacking evidence.
The issue here is not personal, but structural. When credibility earned in one domain is used to validate claims in another without evidence, it distorts public understanding. This problem is not confined to medicine or space science. Even in areas as sensitive as nuclear capability, public narratives have not always aligned cleanly with internal debates.
After the 1998 nuclear tests, known as Pokhran-II, there were differing technical assessments within sections of the scientific community about the yields achieved, with figures such as K Santhanam (Chief Adviser - Technologies at DRDO and Field Director at the Pokhran-II site) expressing reservations about the thermonuclear device and HN Sethna later lending weight to these doubts.
While APJ Abdul Kalam publicly described the tests as successful, critics noted that he was not a nuclear physicist and argued that the assessment of yields should have been articulated by those directly involved in device design, particularly within BARC. The point here is not to adjudicate that debate, but to note that scientific matters require careful, technically grounded communication. When they are simplified into absolute claims, nuance is lost.
All of this unfolds within a political context that cannot be ignored. The Bharatiya Janata Party has, over the past decade, drawn heavily on civilizational narratives to construct a broad-based identity. Cultural symbols are elevated and given national significance. Figures like Ram are positioned not only as objects of devotion but as anchors of a shared cultural imagination.
There is nothing inherently illegitimate about invoking cultural memory in politics. The difficulty arises when that invocation extends into empirical claims. When mythology is presented as history, or belief as science, disagreement becomes fraught. It is no longer a question of evidence. It becomes a question of identity.
Language debates add another layer. Efforts to expand the use of Hindi are often framed as an administrative necessity. In practice, they are experienced in many regions as attempts at cultural standardisation. This tension between plurality and centralisation is longstanding. It becomes sharper when combined with narratives that seek a single cultural core.
It is tempting, in response to all this, to argue that people are being deliberately kept uneducated so that they can be manipulated. That argument, while emotionally compelling, I would say, is too blunt.
India has expanded literacy, built institutions, and produced scientists of global standing. At the same time, it struggles with uneven education quality and a weak interface between science and the public. The more precise problem is that political and social incentives often reward claims that are simple, emotionally resonant, and identity-affirming.
Evidence-based explanations are slower, more complex, and less immediately gratifying. In that environment, an onion in the pocket travels faster than a lesson on heatstroke.
None of this means that India is abandoning science. Institutions like ISRO, IISc, and the IITs continue to operate at high levels. Scientific work continues, often quietly, insulated from the noise. But public discourse matters as it shapes what people believe, what they demand, and what they accept.
Scientific temper is not sustained by laboratories alone. It is sustained by the quality of conversation in the public sphere. That brings us back to where we began. An onion in the pocket is a small thing. But it is also a signal that tells us something about the ease with which unverified claims can enter mainstream discourse, and about the reluctance to challenge them when they come from positions of authority.
The response does not require outrage. It requires insistence. Insistence that mythology be respected as mythology, not recast as science. Insistence that public figures speak with care when invoking scientific ideas. Insistence that institutions uphold standards even when it is inconvenient.
Above all, it requires a refusal to let the line between belief and evidence dissolve unnoticed. Because once that line fades, recovering it is far harder than keeping it intact.
The author is a National Award winner for Best Narration and an independent political analyst. Views expressed are personal.