Narlikar's message is clear: don’t accept anything on face value unless you understand it in its entirety.
Published May 24, 2025 | 11:51 AM ⚊ Updated May 24, 2025 | 11:51 AM
Jayant Narlikar (19 July 1938 - 20 May 2025)
Synopsis: Jayant Narlikar was open to reason and logic. Later in life, he also grappled with the difficulties in grasping why one exists and why one does what one does, and why one should let go.
Indian astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar, who passed away in Pune, aged 86, on 20 May, had posited one logic against another, one rationale against another, one evidence against another, and drew accolades and awards from all over the cosmos.
It is well-known that Narlikar and Fred Hoyle crafted the quasi-steady state cosmology theory, which proposed an infinite, ever-evolving universe that was not a sudden inception, as an alternative to the Big Bang theory.
While ‘empiricism’, ‘evidence’, ‘proof’, and ‘data’ dictated his life, Narlikar had recently invoked the notion of Karmayoga from the Bhagawad Gita that he felt showed the way to a ‘graceful exit’.
Karmayoga is a spiritual path or action that emphasises selfless action and duty, without attachment to the results – an astonishing quality of Narlikar. But it is also an invocation of divinity, which could mean beauty in a conventional sense, but also a realm far beyond the immediate and practical, something that cannot be explained, but only felt, experienced.
Padma Bhushan Narlikar perhaps articulated this transition publicly, while he may have felt it all along his journey.
No one doubts Narlikar’s scholarship, grasp, breadth, selflessness, sense of duty, and his emphasis on logic, even while positing alternative understandings that were still rooted in logic. This explains why he loved ‘scepticism’ as an idea, habit, practice, and methodology – his message was clear: don’t accept anything on face value unless you understand it in its entirety.
He rejected the notion and belief in astrology. But it has to be asked – why do people believe in a practice that they think will tell them what their life ahead would look like, even if that puts themselves and others at risk, by propelling them to undertake actions that are supposed to better their lives, but could endanger their stability?
This is not to defend or promote the practice, but to understand why people rely on it within a particular faith in India. What is its logic?
On the face of it, there is no science behind this belief, but it exists. And then, how does one explain and understand people, from a diametrically opposite faith, that has no history of such a practice or craft, exploring astrology to get a hold on their lives and seek assurances of comfort in their lives ahead? Or how does one explain the belief in God and religion, which is based purely on faith, fear, emotion, and perhaps not on science, reason, and logic? Or how does one explain the instability of the human mind – sudden shifts in mood, emotion, feeling, the sudden highs and lows, not all of which have to do with cells, tissues, nerves, DNA, and genes?
Narlikar did everything a scientist would have been expected to do, and he did exceptionally more – understanding and explaining the universe and the cosmos, its origins, theoretical cosmology, the stars, the blackholes, physics, mathematics, and all of that. He even set up institutions to spawn a generation of researchers and thinkers – the pathbreaking Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune.
He had exhausted all of it – studying reason in Western thought before turning to Indian traditions, particularly the Rig Veda, which he could align with since it carried a tradition of skepticism and criticality, of not just established practices, but of why and how of things. Narlikar also felt deeply for the Indian origins of the concept of zero, which changed the way the world was understood.
Narlikar appreciated reason and science in both Western and Indian traditions – this openness is itself remarkable, because it has long been held and felt that reason is a preserve of the West.
What is interesting is that Narlikar moved towards a sense of detachment towards the end or later in life, prompting an inference that nothing is perhaps yours, that you don’t own anything. You are in the service of work and duty in the larger scheme of life, the cosmos, universe or a higher force (he perhaps did not say this but may have meant it), whatever you may call it, and hence you have to let go – this last bit was Narlikar’s realisation after a long innings in creating, understanding and disseminating knowledge.
Narlikar had a great pedigree. His father, Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar, was a Mathematician at the Banaras Hindu University and Cambridge, UK, and his mother, Sumati Narlikar, a Sanskrit scholar, played a significant role in his intellectual development. Narlikar also loved and was inspired by Fred Hoyle, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, and Ray Bradbury, among others.
He also loved cricket and played badminton. He was inspired by Indian thinkers too, who may have included Aryabhata, the 5th-century Astronomer and Mathematician.
Towards the end, he went back to the philosophical scriptures and texts – drawing lessons from the Bhagawad Gita, the most pivotal one being – detachment, to let go. This is feeling. Not science. Not reason. It is a subjective and fluid enterprise. Narlikar perhaps had exhausted understanding reason.
(P Ramanujam is a Science, Space and Technology Commentator. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
