New Delhi, Aug. 1: Pushpa Mittra Bhargava, a scientist who built India's first molecular biology lab but appeared to oppose the release of gene-modified crops, commanded respect from scientists yet angered policy-makers and researchers with his candid views, died today. He was 89.

Bhargava, as the founder-director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research laboratory he set up in Hyderabad in 1987, inspired a generation of scientists, including one who brought DNA fingerprinting into India.

But those who knew him well say it was his work and his views outside the lab that brought him the most prominence as well as earned him his strongest detractors.

Bhargava is the only scientist who was elected fellow of all three Indian science academies - a prestige in scientific circles - and chose to resign from all three. He once described the academies as "intellectually and socially sterile" institutions that have made "virtually no contribution to the development of science". He resigned, expressing concerns about their election processes.

He questioned government policies on science and education, urged regulatory changes in the way India evaluated genetically modified crops and, in 2015, returned the government's Padma Bhushan award in protest against what he believed was "growing intolerance" in the country.

"The reason is that the present government is moving away from the path of democracy, moving towards the path of making the country (a) Hindu religious autocracy.... This is not acceptable... something I find unacceptable," Bhargava had said then.

Bhargava was born in Rajasthan, studied in Varanasi and Lucknow and worked in the US before moving back to India where, after some years at a CSIR lab, he founded the CCMB, a lab that pursues research on cancer, infectious diseases, population genomics, among other areas.

"He never feared to express what he believed, and he never compromised," said Lalji Singh, a senior biologist who had been persuaded by Bhargava to leave his foreign research position to join the CCMB. "And he believed that scientists should be concerned about society."

Bhargava often expressed his unhappiness over the way science was managed in India, once claiming that science in the country is under the hold of a "scientific mafia". He berated scientists who appeared to veer away from the concept of "scientific temper", something Bhargava espoused.

When India's science and technology department in the mid-1990s appeared ready to believe, albeit for just a couple of days, that someone could turn a cocktail of water and herbs into petrol at virtually no cost, Bhargava proclaimed it a "shame".

"A vast percentage of our practicing scientists believe in one thing or another, which is totally irrational and unscientific, and thus live two disparate lives," Bhargava wrote in a book he had co-authored in 2003 with Chandana Chakrabarti, who had helped him build the CCMB.

When the University Grants Commission in 2001, during the previous NDA government, proposed introducing courses leading to bachelors and masters degrees in astrology, Bhargava petitioned the Supreme Court opposing the move, seeking the help of prominent lawyer Prashant Bhushan.

In the 2003 book, Bhargava and Chakrabarti had expressed concern at what they believed was an attempt by the then NDA government to "appoint people in key positions who would blindly support the saffronisation agenda of revivalism, intellectual obscurantism, and corruption, religious bigotry, and a false sense of nationalism".

Over the past decade, those campaigning against the cultivation of genetically modified crops in the country saw Bhargava as an independent biologist and an ally.

"He argued for independent, rigorous and long-term safety tests on genetically modified crops," said Kavitha Kuruganti, a member of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture, an NGO campaigning against the commercial release of genetically modified crops.

But his outspokenness also lost him popularity in science policy circles. A senior biotechnology official once said science policy-makers had learnt to insulate themselves from his sharp and persistent criticism.

But, Lalji Singh said today: "He stood for his principles, and everyone should respect that."