I happened to have my philosophy lecture with around 280 engineering undergraduates at IIT Gandhinagar on August 18, 2026, the day the IIT system and IIT Kharagpur marked 75 years. I asked students a question I had been grappling with for some time: could you name any IIT student, faculty member, or alumnus whose original social, scientific, or technological contribution had changed the lives of a substantial share of India’s population?
The class fell silent for a few minutes. Then came Sundar Pichai and a few other corporate leaders. I pointed out that leading a company and inventing the technologies it uses are different achievements. Perhaps there are names we were overlooking, and I could be wrong, I told them. That silence was no verdict on the IITs’ contribution, or, for that matter, thousands of institutions of higher education and research in India. It prompted a discussion about what we recognize as achievement and what conditions enable original work.
It is in this context that I return to our annual season of ‘national disappointment’ over Nobel recognition for research done in India. When the Nobel Prize announcement season is over, we start lamenting, why did India not produce Google, Microsoft, Tesla, OpenAI, or Anthropic? Every time Silicon Valley or any international research institution unveils a new marvel, we engage in a ‘ritual of lament’ on social media, with carousels on lack of funding, brain drain, a colonial past, etc.
Why has a country of India’s size, intellectual inheritance, and scientific workforce produced so few Nobel laureates working within its own institutions? My argument is that transformative discovery and innovation require more than skilled workers and investment. They require a culture of ‘critical thinking’ in which inherited truths can be questioned, authority can be challenged, and failure can be reported without embarrassment. A person can use modern instruments without acquiring a scientific temper, just as an institution can possess laboratories without cultivating curiosity.
It is also very curious to note that Indian-origin scientists abroad seem to achieve impactful research and innovation. Is it that creativity begins only after an Indian crosses an airport?
AnnaLee Saxenian’s research on Silicon Valley has shown that migrant engineers flourish in ecosystems where questioning authority is a professional virtue rather than a social transgression. People think differently when they encounter colleagues who possess different assumptions, methods, languages, and intellectual histories. Studies of psychological safety similarly show that people learn, disclose errors, and propose ideas that are uncertain when they do not expect humiliation or retaliation. If these enabling conditions are available nationally, we can hope to win a Nobel Prize or two, other competitive international accolades, and participate in global thought leadership.
As part of the same course, we were discussing the philosophical and social implications of ‘dogmatism’, the tendency to assert opinions, doctrines, or beliefs as “unquestionable truths” without considering evidence, logic, or alternative viewpoints. I argued that we should not believe or disbelieve something merely because someone had said it or because it appeared in a text. Ideas, theories, and arguments must remain open to logical and philosophical scrutiny.
I asked students to consider how often we accept a dogmatic claim because it comes from a parent, teacher, elder, or text we have learned to revere. Respect for a person can become an expectation that their claims should go unquestioned. When disagreement is treated as disrespect, we learn to withhold objections even when we have reasons to raise them. Over the years, we learn that justification can stop at authority, and questioning or proposing an argument to counter the “authority” can carry personal costs and make disagreement emotionally exhausting.
Argument and disagreement have a place within our own intellectual inheritance. The philosophical schools of the subcontinent contested one another’s accounts of knowledge, reality, and how we ought to live. This does not mean that ancient India was uniformly rational or free from hierarchy. It reminds us that engaging with a tradition can include questioning its claims. A civilization becomes dogmatic when it stops reading its traditions as debates and begins displaying them as monuments.
Currently, the dogmatic mindset has hijacked our educational practices. Conformity spares us the effort of examining assumptions and the discomfort of disagreement. Age, caste, class, gender, and designation often determine who may question whom. Asking for reasons is often treated as disrespectful, while obedience is evidence of ‘character’. The expectation that I must be subservient to someone, while someone else must submit to me, leaves little room for intellectual equality. Our universities inherit these relationships and give them administrative form. Creativity and curiosity receive less attention than compliance. This is where bureaucracy and dogmatism meet.
Rabindranath Tagore envisioned a country “where the mind is without fear, and the head is held high”. That aspiration requires institutions where questioning an administrative decision is not mistaken for disrespecting authority. A professor constrained by institutional hierarchies may reproduce the same expectations in the laboratory. Students learn which questions are welcome and which might endanger a recommendation or delay a degree. Choosing the expected answer can then become a strategy for survival.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize honors South African jurist Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for promoting peace and international law. Born in Durban in 1941 to a family of Indian origin, she grew up confronting racial discrimination. Her ancestry may give Indians reason to celebrate. Her willingness to ask difficult questions gives us something to learn from.
Those of us who teach and administer universities must make questioning an ordinary part of academic life. The next time a classroom falls silent, we should ask whether students lack an answer or have learned the cost of speaking. Our responsibility begins long before a Nobel announcement, with what we do when someone raises a hand, or how we enable them to do so.
(Jaison Manjaly is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar.)
Published – October 20, 2026 02:16 pm IST
