‘National Science Day’ and ‘Nobel Prize’ can also be treated as such keywords: ones that organise India’s public imagination of science. If decolonising science is to mean anything in India, it must include the need to de-Nobelise how the state understands and valorises science. This is why what we celebrate on National Science Day is not value-neutral but a way to sort the labour of science. What counts as scienceThe keywords thus clarify what a de-Nobelised imagination of science, paralleling the decolonisation of science, would require. National Science Day, then, should not simply reproduce a Nobel-shaped story about genius and external validation.

Source: The Hindu February 26, 2026 09:13 UTC