The cancellation of the annual session of the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) this year hasn’t surprised sections of scientists who view it as a fallout of the Centre’s efforts to promote an alternative science festival linked to Vijnana Bharati, the science wing of the RSS.

The ISCA had planned to organise the 109th Indian Science Congress (ISC) at the Lovely Professional University (LPU), Jalandhar, from January 3 to 5. But a decision by the Union science and technology ministry in September 2023 to “dissociate” itself from the ISC and to deny any government funds to the event made it impossible to continue with the conference, an organiser at the LPU said.

The department of science and technology (DST) had accused the ISCA of changing the venue from Lucknow to Jalandhar “unilaterally” without government approval. The DST, explaining its decision, had said ISCA’s annual event had “already lost its relevance in the scientific community and lacks a professional approach on the conduct of the event on many fronts”.

Several thousand scientists, research scholars and faculty members from universities and scientific institutions and schoolchildren typically attend the annual sessions of the ISC.

Officials and scientists who are familiar with the ISC concede that the content of its annual sessions could have been improved and that it would not be entirely incorrect to question the relevance of the conference to the country’s core scientific activities.

But some view the DST decision to deny government funds to the ISC as the outcome of efforts by the government to undermine the ISC’s conference while in parallel promoting an alternative conference, the India International Science Festival (IISF), an annual flagship event of Vijnana Bharati.

Vijnana Bharati, which describes itself as a “science movement with a Swadeshi spirit, interlinking traditional and modern sciences … and natural and spiritual sciences”, has organised the IISF every year since 2015 with financial support from government departments.

The government budget for the IISF is between Rs 20 crore to Rs 25 crore, compared with Rs 5 crore for the ISC’s conference, according to a former DST official who requested not to be named.

The responsibility for this mega event is given to the science departments, the DST, the department of biotechnology, or the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research or to the ministry of earth sciences in rotation, according to the Vijnana Bharati website on the IISF.

Autonomous institutions under government departments have also been directed to buy space for exhibitions at the IISF.

“We’re in a regime that expects all instructions to be followed. The guiding principle is: I say, you do,” said the former official.

Some scientists say the enthusiasm for the ISC from top scientists and premier scientific institutions has waned over the years, despite its technical content, including the presidential addresses across multiple branches of science, mathematics and engineering.

“But the IISF too is more like a science carnival than a serious scientific conference,” said Aniket Sule, an astronomer at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai, who has participated in the IISFs and the ISC annual sessions.

Sule added: “I’m not worried the science congress is dead. I agree that the science congress had mostly lost its meaning, but I’m concerned about the cause of its death. It was sacrificed to help the Vijnana Bharati promoted IISF get all the glory.”

Vijnana Bharati itself has described the IISF is a “celebration of India’s achievements and laurels” in science and technology and is committed to developing scientific temper, reason, and logic among children and people and aimed at making “India the most credible centre for scientific learning” as envisioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Some officials and scientists have noted what they view as efforts to sully the ISC annual sessions with side events with dubious claims that drew ridicule in scientific circles. An IAS officer gave a talk at the ISC’s Mysore session in 2016, saying blowing a conch is good for health. And the former Union science minister Harsh Vardhan claimed at the ISC’s Imphal session in 2018 that the late physicist Stephen Hawking had said the Vedas had a theory superior to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

“Simultaneously, there is an attempt to keep the IISF away from controversy,” the official quoted earlier in this report said. A scientist tasked with organising the IISF in Bhopal last year had initially proposed that the conference could adopt the theme of “panchabhuta” — the five basic elements: earth, water, fire, air, and space. But science minister Jitendra Singh shot down the proposal, arguing that the focus of the conference should be science and not something that could trigger controversy, according to the official present in the room when these discussions took place.