For decades, I have listened to Carnatic music, and few composers have moved me as deeply as Muthuswamy Dikshitar. His kritis – elevating, serene and marked by impeccable, sonorous Sanskrit – possess a grandeur that is uniquely his. I must have heard “Sri Kantimathim,” his composition in praise of the presiding goddess of my birthplace, Tirunelveli, countless times, yet it has lost none of its power for me. I know I am not alone; there are thousands of admirers of Dikshitar who feel the same.It was, therefore, natural to welcome IIT Madras’s announcement that it would celebrate the 250th birth anniversary of Dhikshitar on March 23. One expected that such an occasion would introduce a great cultural legacy to the bright and curious students of that venerable institution. That the event would instead be used to peddle pseudoscience would have seemed unthinkable. Yet that is precisely what happened when S. Gurumurthy, an RSS ideologue and the editor of the Tamil magazine Thughlak, spoke on the occasion. His entire speech is available on YouTube.The expert of noneGurumurthy begins his speech by confessing that he is familiar with neither the “core” of science nor music, yet proceeds as though he were an expert in both disciplines. Within minutes, it becomes evident that the occasion is being diverted from a celebration of music to a platform for spurious claims dressed up as intellectual insight.The speaker begins by urging the audience to “empty” their thoughts and think afresh, citing a dubious anecdote from the life of Sri Aurobindo – a claim that is meaningless from a scientific standpoint. Thought is a continuous cognitive process; one cannot simply “empty” the mind at will. He then asserts that the Newtonian worldview blinds one to reality – an assertion that displays considerable arrogance and a lack of understanding. And, pray, what is this “magnetic” glass that Krishna supposedly gave to Arjuna so that he could behold the Vishwarupa?History as a political tool: Pococke and McEvilleyHe proceeds to mention two books that, in his view, state that Greek philosophy and myths borrowed heavily from Hindu philosophy. The first was India in Greece or, Truth in Mythology by E. Pococke (1852) and the second was The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies by Thomas McEvilley (2002).Contrary to Gurumurthy’s assertions, neither author was Greek. Pococke was a “blue-blooded” Englishman and McEvilley was an American of Irish origin. It is highly doubtful that the speaker has read either. He claims the British ensured Pococke’s book didn’t reach India, yet it was reviewed by both The Calcutta Review and The Friend of India. While the former was mild in its criticism, the latter was savage, calling it a throwback to the era of “amateur orientalism”.Furthermore, by modern standards, Pococke essentially peddles crackpot theories. He famously wrote:The war of the Cooroos and the Pandoos, though ostensibly political, was in reality a struggle between the Bud’histic and Brahminical party. The success of the latter was complete. Crishna, Baladeva and Yudishtra, the champions of the Heri or Bud’hist Faith, had become exiles.Will Gurumurthy agree with this theory – that Krishna was a Buddhist champion driven into exile by Brahmins? McEvilley’s book, by contrast, is undoubtedly scholarly. He argues that the “miracle of Greek thought” did not happen in a vacuum, acknowledging deep, structural debts between Indian and Greek thought. He effectively de-centers Europe, showing the ancient world was far more connected than modern history admits – but he does not argue for the one-sided “conquest” Gurumurthy implies.Physics according to ThughlakGurumurthy returns to Newton, claiming he discovered “thermodynamic theory” – a mistake unlikely to be made by even a high school physics student. He then quotes several modern scientists with wild inaccuracy, placing Erwin Schrödinger in 1867, twenty years before he was born.His most egregious claims involve the very nature of the universe.He plays the NASA sonification of the Big Bang, claiming that the humming sound at the birth of the universe is the ‘Om’ sound of the Vedas and Upanishads. Sound cannot travel through a vacuum, but the early universe was a hot, dense plasma that did support pressure waves (Baryon Acoustic Oscillations). Translating these oscillations into a frequency that humans can hear is a mathematical choice. Linking it to a specific Sanskrit syllable is an aesthetic or religious interpretation, not a discovery made by NASA.He asserts that the “universe is empty”. Science never says the universe is empty; it says it is in the lowest possible energy state.He loops back to his singular point: that modern science has moved to the position that matter came from “non-matter” (Brahman or Supreme/super/pure consciousness). Is he right? No. The intuitive brilliance of our Vedas and Upanishads is not in question here; the question is whether they are scientifically valid as of now.Modern science posits that the universe is filled with invisible “fields” (like the Higgs field). These fields are not matter; they are a tension or “fluid” permeating space. When these fields vibrate, a particle appears. This has nothing to do with Supreme Consciousness. Science’s “non-matter” is just a more subtle version of “stuff”, still bound by space, time and causality. Brahman, by definition, is outside them.The false marriage of science and shastraEven though the conclusion “matter comes from Brahman/Supreme consciousness” sounds superficially like modern physics, the statement lacks scientific validity for three specific reasons:Falsifiability: There is no way to disprove that the universe is the dream of Brahman.The consciousness problem: Science has zero evidence that consciousness can create matter. It suggests the opposite: that complex matter (the brain) creates consciousness.Mechanism: Science requires a ‘how’. We have the mathematics for how a photon becomes an electron. The shastras offer a ‘why’ and a ‘what’, but they do not provide the repeatable, mathematical mechanism required for scientific validity.Gurumurthy quotes Roger Penrose in his defence, yet Penrose does not say consciousness is non-physical; he says it is non-computational. He also argues that absolute mathematical truths (like 2 + 2 = 4) exist independently of human minds, which delivers a body blow to the theory that “only Brahman is real”.Gurumurthy also invokes the names of Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and Brian Josephson to give his claims a veneer of Nobel-certified legitimacy. Schrödinger and Heisenberg viewed the Vedas and Upanishads not as empirical scientific documents but as metaphysical frameworks that aligned with the non-dualistic nature of quantum reality. They were inspired by the philosophy; they did not ‘find’ the physics within the verses. Josephson is indeed a believer in Advaita, yet his attempts to merge it with parapsychology are widely criticised by the scientific mainstream as Nobel Disease – the tendency of brilliant winners to veer into unorthodox areas in their later years.Using these names as a shield for outlandish claims is a disservice to both the history of science and the majesty of our ancient wisdom.How pseudoscience confuses brilliant studentsThe reason pseudoscience is so effective is that it doesn’t present itself as magic. It presents itself as ‘High Science’ that the establishment is simply too narrow-minded to see. Intelligent students are often vulnerable because pseudoscience exploits specific cognitive and linguistic traps. It hijacks the vocabulary of modern physics. When a speaker links the “state before the Big Bang” to “Brahman”, the student’s brain makes a false-positive connection. By attacking a “Newtonian worldview”, a speaker appeals to a student’s desire to be a revolutionary thinker.In our country, when scientific claims are wrapped in the “glory of the ancestors”, the student’s emotional identity gets tangled with their ability to think rationally.Gurumurthy’s speech is a classic Gish Gallop – a technique where a speaker provides such an overwhelming number of arguments (referencing Schrödinger, Penrose, Heisenberg, Josephson, etc.) that it is impossible to fact-check them all in real-time. The sheer volume creates an illusion of authority, leading to “expertise transfer”, where students mistake the speaker’s confidence for competence.Pedestal versus crutchSubstituting actual scientific output with claims of ancient superiority creates a pseudo-scientific fog. It distracts from the hard, boring and expensive work of modern peer-reviewed research. Let us compare ourselves with our neighbour: India spends about USD 25 billion on science; China spends USD 500 billion.The Chinese also harp on the past, but they use it as a pedestal. They mention ancient inventions to say, “We belong at the top”, and then spend the billions required to get there. India is currently using the past as a crutch.ConclusionUnless fog-inducing machines like Gurumurthy are removed from the scientific scene, there is absolutely no hope for Indian science. But we have been doing this for so many years that even our scientists feel comfortable with it.Years ago, I attended a conference arranged by the Department of Biotechnology. The last speaker, from IIT Kharagpur, was rudely pushed away halfway through his presentation because a VIP was about to arrive. The VIP was Baba Ramdev. This happened when Manmohan Singh was our Prime Minister; the IITs were faring a little better then. Now they, too, have joined the scene. I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.P.A. Krishnan is an author in English and Tamil. With a postgraduate degree in physics from Presidency College, Madras and experience in academia, the civil service and scientific institutions, he writes frequently on science and public life.