MUMBAI: Godrej Industries Group Chairperson Nadir Godrej on Saturday said that traditional knowledge from India, written about 2,000 years ago, was good but needed to be validated by science.
Godrej, who was speaking at the first Ratan Tata Memorial Lecture at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), made the remark while responding to a TISS professor’s question on when India would Indianise its knowledge systems and stop looking to the West for new ideas and innovations, given that the country was steeped in rich culture, especially the Vedic sciences and scriptures. According to the professor, most of the psychology and sociology, among other things, that exists in the West has actually been drawn from the Vedic sciences.
To this, Godrej said that science and knowledge were universal. “We should look at all streams of thought,” he said. “Also, there is a lot of traditional knowledge that is good but not necessarily validated. But that doesn’t mean we can’t validate it today; we should do that. We should not ignore sciences that have not become popular. Certainly, we should study them. But it is important that everything should be validated. We can’t just say that because somebody wrote about it 2,000 years ago, it must be true.”
Recalling his experience validating Vedic science or Ayurveda during the development of one of his company’s products, Godrej shared that while researching a soap, the company was working with neem oil and wanted to remove all the smelly chemicals from it. “We discovered that there were about a thousand chemicals there. Many of them had many different uses, some of them must have been clearly mentioned in Ayurveda. Here, with modern science we could validate what those chemicals were and how we could use them. So, all I am saying is draw on all sources of knowledge but make sure that you validate them.”
During the interaction, Godrej suggested to TISS vice-chancellor Badri Narayan Tiwari that the institute introduce a course on ‘History of Science’.
Prior to the interaction, while delivering his speech in his signature verse style on ‘How business contributes to society: The making of India’, Godrej went on to praise the early years of India’s independence. “…When we started at the gate, all we could claim was the Hindu rate (of growth)… our selfless leaders built a nation. Civil discourse was maintained. A scientific temper was gained.”
In the same spirit, he criticised India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru for adopting a “socialist” approach toward the economy and nationalising some sectors, but appreciated Manmohan Singh’s tenure as finance minister in the early 1990s for the economic reforms, calling it “the golden way”. Godrej believes that the gains India is currently witnessing could have been achieved long ago.
He called on corporations to spend on public health through Corporate Social Responsibility funds and effective business models, arguing that a healthier working population would benefit the business world in the long run. “We often think that charity can address disparity but tackling health and education are better means of alleviation. Using Artificial Intelligence for education and health will create meaningful wealth. If we work together to fix it, India will be truly Viksit,” quipped Godrej on a rhyming note.