On Saying NO to Nuclear Energy: SHIV VISHWANATHAN

Shiv Vishwanathan

Shiv Visvanathan is a social science nomad.

The other day I had a dream. I dreamt I lived in a nightmare, a nightmare everyone else saw as normal. It was a world which saw the nuclear regime as normal and it did not make a difference whether it was nuclear energy or nuclear war. Both were necessary and there was nothing as necessary as a necessary evil.

One cannot think of the modern state without the baggage of necessary evils. Torture is a necessary evil. Detention is a necessary evil. Suspension of Rights is a necessary evil. Genocide is a necessary evil. It is almost as if you cannot have a social contract without necessary evils. The greater the evil, the bigger the necessity.

It is the beginning of the Machiavellian mind. I somehow want to belong to a world where ethics is not a technical answer to a technical question. I want my ethics to be playful like I like my future to have laughter. Today politics has become a dismal science and science a dismal politics. We summon experts for everything and an expert seems to be a form of truth outside truth as we all live it.

Inside the dream, I had an idea. I summoned into my head a panchayat of the wise, men and women who have taught me that truth is what you live out. Let me list them out for you. There was Dalai Lama, there was Baba Amte, scientists like Amulya Reddy, C. V. Seshadri, Satish Dhawan, Madhav Gadgil, activists like Aruna Roy and Medha Patkar, wise women like Mahasweta Devi and Ela Bhatt. They were men who brought laughter even to this august crowd, the irrepressible Ashis Nandy and to keep an eye on him, his old compatriot, Rajni Kothari. They were storytellers like U. R. Amantramurthi, all great speakers, also wonderful listeners, people who understood the power of silence like the power of prayer. A commons of wisdom. I asked them about Kudankulam, what it meant, what to say. How does one say no as a resounding yes to life?

I asked the scientist first, a Pavlovian reflex tacitly confessing that Kudankulam was still defined as a scientific problem. That was a give away. Reddy laughed “Science has to return to life. It needs a good laugh at the pomposity of clerks who run our world, who titrate truth through pipettes”.

“Look at number” Seshadri said. “We lie through a number. Number is seen as a form of assurance that creates certainty for the Hamlets in us. Number is a form of story telling. To use percentages is to hazard a guess. Number is a wager, and an estimate, a ratio. Number needs a hermeneutics, a numeracy to match literacy. Numbers have to be read and one has to know how to read a number”.