The minister for HRD proves no apologist for his views as Aditi Phadnis discovers over a simple meal

There is nothing Murli Manohar Joshi enjoys more than a good intellectual argument. Having taught postgraduate-level physics for close to four decades, he is Socratic in his method of achieving knowledge, deliberately casting doubts on accepted beliefs. Lunch with BS was an exploration of the personality of a man cast by his adversaries as the most retrograde and obscurantist figure in the government.

I asked him, somewhat incautiously, why this was so. Could it be because of the tika he habitually wore, his dhoti-kurta, his choti and his constant harking back to the ancient Indian scientific tradition — more importantly, the ancient Hindu scientific tradition?

Joshi's eyes began to glitter as he settled himself more comfortably at the India International Centre sofa. We elected to lunch in a room to ourselves because his staff assured me it would be impossible to have a conversation if we ate in the main dining hall — there would be just too many people coming up to greet him.

"I wonder if you have read about Ashtavakra," he began mildly. "Ashtavakra was born misshapen and deformed to his mother but he had a phenomenal understanding of advait vendanta. At the age of 12 he had already mastered the Vedas, and decided to go to the court of King Janak to engage in a debate with sage Vandin who, it was said, could not be defeated by anyone.

When the guards brought Ashtavakra to the court, the assembly started laughing, because he was so ugly. At this he said: ‘I thought I was in the presence of wise men. But you are no better than cobblers, making judgments on the basis of the colour of my skin and my mutilated appearance.' I don't judge people by their external appearances. It is content, not packaging that matters to me. If having a beard or wearing a tie doesn't bother people, why should my tika or my dhoti?"

I tried to rephrase my question, but he continued. "Those who say it is obscurantist to seek out the Hindu scientific traditions are saying so mostly because of ignorance of the traditions themselves. We have been brought up on books written by western scholars or western-oriented Indian scholars.

Ancient India understood mathematics, philosophy, physics and chemistry much before the world got it from Calculus, Pythagoras and Newton. Some of the most interesting problems in mathematics have been solved through poetry in Lilavati's works. The Vaisesika has a long treatise on cosmology. We must explore our past to understand better what we really were. Then you will begin to appreciate India's true strengths.'

Was it acceptable to throw out knowledge and technology only on the basis of origin? "It is widely accepted that what comes from the West is most modern and progressive. But on the other hand, Western technology today is the most exploitative weapon on earth," he pointed out in a twist of argument that would have had the Marxists nodding in agreement.

"I believe India must give technology a human face. We are now producing satellites for education and resource forecasting — I don't believe satellites should hang in the sky as a coercive instrument of surveillance. We are researching the use of atomic energy isotopes to create genetic transformation of seeds. I have told scientists to study the effect of gomutra (cow's urine) on diseases like cancer and AIDS, in themselves health disorders created by the crisis in the Western civilisation."

We were in the thick of the debate and lunch had arrived. It was ordered by Joshi's staff so we were spared the chore of deciding what to eat. It was all vegetarian and cooked in minimal oil, with the least possible spice — boiled potatoes lightly sauteed in jeera, beans chopped fine and drizzled with coconut, dal, yogurt, capsicum and cottage cheese.

I asked him about the controversy over the rewriting of history. "Let us get one thing clear. The debate is not about rewriting history — because if that were so, it would have erupted a long time ago, on the basis of the circulars issued by the West Bengal government that all references to misdeeds by Muslim rulers should be deleted. It is about the effect Nurul Hasan has had on Indian scholarship, especially relating to the writing of history," he said.

He was referring to Indira Gandhi's portly left-leaning education minister who is widely credited with creating the infrastructure for Marxist historiography in India in the 1970s, a structure that became a stranglehold until Alternative Historiography struck back, represented by Joshi and others.

But wasn't this a fake fight to reach the right conclusions about history, a fight between two ideological persuasions that had nothing to do with history as such? Joshi was adamant. "I don't think politics should be played with the writing of history. Should we not teach India's contribution to bio-sciences or Sarva Dharma Sambhav?"

I asked him what he thought his biggest contribution as education minister had been. "My priority was universalisation of education. Education as a fundamental right was made part of the Constitution unanimously by the two Houses of Parliament for the first time in independent India. But more than that, if a child is hungry he cannot study. In India, prior to the Muslims and the British education was always funded by the community. I was visiting the ISKCON temple in Bangalore in 2000 where I found the priests serving prasad. I asked them if they would also serve the prasad as hot meals to 500 underprivileged students in Bangalore. They said they would consider it. Two months later, they said we have begun feeding 10,000 children from the prasad.

They asked me for a name for the project. I named it the Akshaypatra, after the pot given by Krishna to Draupadi that yielded endless food. Six months later, the temple was feeding 20,000 children and in 2001, the number was up to 40,000. I have appealed to all religious denominations — gurudwaras, Wakf boards — to replicate that scheme. The Karnataka government is following it in seven districts. It is with great satisfaction that I heard that some children of prosperous parents in public schools in Bangalore also wanted to eat the same food that the poor children were eating."

Joshi was a teacher at Allahabad University, sometimes called the Oxford of the East. ("Oxford should be called the Allahabad University of the West" he said, somewhat overstating the case.) Who were his most famous students? ‘I often say that the government of India is being run by my students,' he said. Former cabinet secretary Prabhat Kumar was his student, he said, as was former defence secretary Yogendra Narayan to name just two.

Dessert was announced. Joshi asked for fresh fruit, but I was unabashedly Western and opted for apple pie. Joshi was reminded of an anecdote. He said long years ago, there was a school in UP where the headmaster would say to his students every morning: "Bachhon tumhe tumhare headmaster ka pranam".

The British inspector of schools thought this was an unhealthy practice for it encouraged insubordination. He asked the headmaster for an explanation. The headmaster said: "Sir, you and I have reached the plateau of our lives. But what we have is the talent of the future — who knows where these children will be in 20 years. That is why I bow every morning to this assembly of talent and hope".

"That is how I see myself as a teacher — for without commitment, there is nothing," he said as our lunch came to an end.