Lessons from Darwin? No, thank you

Darwin would have never thought that natural selection would come to such a pass that those who get ‘elected’ will doubt the very idea of their own natural selection by nature to serve the larger humanity by being members of the legislature. It would have helped their own argument via social Darwinism that they are innately better incarnates to rule over the country or the world.

The recent brutalisation of the NCERT textbooks suggests otherwise, yet when a learner asks how and why we are on earth, the answer will come from creationism rather than Darwinism. Darwin, in a contest with God, was sure to lose due to his own idea of the survival of the fittest. Probably he never realised that between science and pseudo-science, it would be the latter that would be fitter to survive.

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The certitude of science in Darwinian theory is very high; it has undergone extensive testing through experiments and observations. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace’s theory of evolution through natural selection became recognised in 1859 when Darwin published The Origin of Species. Even then, people who had more power and more belief in the divine book than science feared the social and moral implications of this theory. The problems of teaching natural selection to the newer generation are many for those who have more faith in the status quo than change. Natural selection is a simple theory that asserts how populations change through variation, inheritance, selection, time, and adaptation.

Variation and Inheritance

The members of any given species are hardly the same. Those who oppose this theory somehow believe that yellows, whites, blacks, Aryans, Dravidans, Americans, English, Pakistanis, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Brahmins, Dalits, gays, and straights are very different species and only their own ilk will survive, to which the proponent belongs. There is a fierce contest among the people who oppose natural selection to prove that they are the ‘fittest’ to reproduce and survive given any opportunity to compete. Similarly, in the matter of inheritance, those who oppose Darwin believe that they inherited the best ancient wisdom from their ancestors and hence are the truest advocates of endogamy and purity of bloodlines. When women are exhorted to produce more children to strengthen the number of their religion or caste, probably it is the Darwinian elaboration that lurks in the background.

Iqbal wrote, Kuch dam hai ki hasti mitati nahin hamari, sadiyon raha hai dushman daur-e-jahan hamara (probably there is something inherently resilient in us that is why we are here; otherwise, the world has been against us). The intent of what Iqbal wrote also has Darwinian echoes, as it points out how the glorious us survived despite several invaders from the Northwest and the onslaught of European colonialism. This may also render us incapable of explaining why the OBC, SC, and ST populations together are higher than Brahmins and Kshatriyas when they are suggestively fitter to reproduce and survive. This explains the sinister and conspiratorial design behind the population explosion of certain religious and caste communities.

Time and Adaptation

This is one of the most problematic ideas in times when we have restarted celebrating the drive, namely ‘Go back to the Vedas’ and also in times of ‘righting’ all historical wrongs. We are humans who should not adapt to the changing times; we should rather make efforts to go back in time to reclaim the power that we once had. The discourse of modernity, modern, and mass education similarly vouched for liberty and equality and also that all of us have common ancestry and hence belong to the same origin. It is probably the belief in a different creator that implies my creator is stronger and superior than yours, which impedes believing in Darwin.

Darwin’s theory revolutionised not only the discipline of biology but almost every other discipline, be it economics, political science, or educational theory itself. The idea of competition, struggle for existence, and survival of the fittest, though not original to Darwin’s work yet attributed to him, has affected every discipline, curriculum, and pedagogy. Removing Darwin and every reference to his theorization may shackle the very foundation of many other disciplines.

Also, people with scientific tempers would think in multi-dimensional ways, developing their curiosity to explore more of nature, as Darwin did. Such a naturalistic worldview of science can be the biggest threat to an ideologically-driven polity; progressive science, aka Darwinism, and regressive ideology, aka majoritarianism, won’t go hand in hand. Any State that makes efforts to be hegemonic cannot tolerate people asking questions. Three noted Darwinian followers (or activists) with scientific tempers, namely Gauri Lankesh, Narendra Dabholkar, and Kalburgi, were eliminated. The elimination of Darwin from the textbooks will then turn out to be the last straw in this polity.

There is no western science, Indian science, African science, or Native American science; science is just science as it endeavours to exceed authority over the presumptions of any one culture and thus remains open to criticism and refutation. Rejecting science in favour of a cultural subversion of science is extremely harmful, especially for those who take pride in providing Covid vaccines to the whole world rather than deifying Corona mata akin to sitala mata.

(The writer teaches in the Dept. of Education, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamsala.)