Democracy, like science, advances on fierce disagreement, born out of rationality, not abuse. The history of science has taught us that dissent can never be suppressed with power or force, nor will dissent be heard when abuse becomes the language of disagreement. This distinction between disagreement and denigration appears increasingly lost in India’s political discourse. It is time that both ruling and opposition leaders remind themselves of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who famously said: democracy has space for Matbhed, not for Manbhed.

Having spent over four decades serving India’s scientific and cultural institutions, I believe that progress demands the courage to challenge established norms and beliefs. Einstein’s General Relativity superseded Newton’s two-century-old postulation of gravitation. In 1921, C. V. Raman, gazing at the Mediterranean from a ship’s deck, doubted Lord Rayleigh’s explanation that the blue colour of the sea merely mirrors the sky. That disagreement led to the Raman Effect, earning him the Nobel Prize.

In 1935, young S. Chandrasekhar presented his stellar-collapse limit to the Royal Astronomical Society. Arthur Eddington publicly rejected it. The disagreement was bitter and long, yet it relied on mathematics and evidence. Chandrasekhar prevailed, and decades later his work earned him a Nobel Prize.

Dissent Is Essential For Progress

Museums work the same way. Whether we debate the Rakhigarhi findings, nuclear energy or modern art, museums provide a public space where disagreement can become a means of advancing knowledge. Competing views, tested against evidence and offered with mutual........

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