Examine the role of science and technology in addressing age-old taboos and superstitions. (2023)
A taboo is a socially enforced prohibition attaching danger or pollution to a person, substance or act; a superstition is a causal belief that survives disconfirmation. Science attacks the explanation, technology the insecurity that sustains it. Both work — but only where the social interest behind the belief is also dislodged.
How they work on belief
- Max Weber (“Science as a Vocation”, 1919) identified the mechanism as disenchantment: the growing conviction that there are no mysterious incalculable forces, and that everything can in principle be mastered by calculation.
- Bronisław Malinowski (Magic, Science and Religion, 1948) located magic precisely where technique fails and uncertainty is high. Reliable technology should therefore shrink magic’s domain rather than argue it away.
- Robert K. Merton‘s norm of organised scepticism institutionalises the questioning of received belief, and the Constitution makes developing scientific temper a citizen’s duty (Article 51A(h)). Jawaharlal Nehru (The Discovery of India, 1946) insisted the phrase meant a way of life, not a stock of facts.
Evidence that it works: Indian cases
- Disease as retribution. Leprosy, long read as the wage of sin, became curable with multidrug therapy; the Personal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2019 finally removed leprosy as a ground for divorce, retiring a legal form of the stigma.
- Heredity replacing curse. Under the National Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission (2023), about 6 crore people had been screened by July 2025, with over 2 lakh patients and roughly 16 lakh carriers identified — recasting what tribal families read as an inherited affliction into genetic counselling and pre-marital screening.
- Menstrual pollution. NFHS-5 (2019–21) found 78% of women aged 15–19 using hygienic methods, against 58.3% in NFHS-4, sanitary napkin use rising from 42.2% to 64.5%. Cheap technology and supply schemes erode the seclusion practice even where the pollution belief survives.
- Possession and madness. The Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 established illness, treatment and rights where exorcism once explained distress, and decriminalised attempted suicide.
- Witchcraft. Germ theory removes the witch as an explanation for illness, and states have legislated — Bihar (1999), Jharkhand (2001), Maharashtra’s anti-superstition law (2013), Assam and Rajasthan (2015), Karnataka (2017). NCRB data show murders with witchcraft as motive falling from 102 in 2019 to 68 in 2021 — declining, not ended.
Why the retreat is partial
- Superstitions are social facts with functions. Witch accusations commonly disguise land disputes and fall on widows and single women; the belief persists because the interest does.
- Technology can be captured by the taboo: ultrasound served son preference, and sex determination rackets persist despite the PC-PNDT Act, 1994.
- Technology also distributes superstition — astrology has scaled into a fast-growing app industry, and rumour travels faster than correction on messaging platforms.
- Diffusion of scientific goods is not diffusion of scientific temper: a Pew Research Center survey (2021) found 44% of Indians believing in astrology and 83% fixing important dates by auspicious times.
Conclusion
Science and technology are necessary but not sufficient. They strip away the factual ground of a taboo; what dismantles it is the law, education and social reform of the kind Jyotirao Phule and B. R. Ambedkar pursued, which removes the interest the belief was serving. Where insecurity and dependence remain, magic keeps its function whatever the evidence says.