New Delhi, Oct. 29: Some of India's most respected scientists, including acclaimed physicist Ashoke Sen, have expressed concern at the promotion of irrational and sectarian thoughts by "important" government functionaries - an aspect that has largely stayed under the radar but is drawing fresh attention because of the intolerance debate.

A statement by over 100 signatories has iterated the need to promote scientific temper as a fundamental duty through what some scientists say is "intentionally much stronger" language than that in a similar appeal issued by an inter-academy panel of India's three scientific academies on Monday.

The Constitution demands that citizens "develop scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry and reform," the statement issued yesterday said. "Unfortunately, what we are witnessing instead is the active promotion of irrational and sectarian thought by important functionaries of the government."

The statement does not identify such "functionaries" or elaborate how they have promoted irrationality. But several signatories said they had been concerned about, among other trends, how elements of mythology or folklore have been consistently portrayed as ancient science.

The Indian Science Congress, the nation's largest congregation of scientists supported annually by the Union science and technology ministry, had earlier this year accepted a presentation on ancient Indian flying machines.

Sections of scientists were also surprised when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last year in Mumbai appeared to interpret narratives from mythology as possible illustrations of ancient Indian medical feats.

"The government has a responsibility to eradicate irrationality, but this does not seem to be happening," Sen, a senior theoretical physicist at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad, told The Telegraph.

"It's important for the scientific community to speak out - science works on the principles of rationality," said Sen, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society and among the vanguard of physicists trying to unify two fundamental theories of physics.

Another scientist, who is also among the signatories, said statements by senior "government functionaries" had been disturbing. He cited the example of Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar suggesting that Muslims should give up beef if they want to stay in India.

"We reject the destructive narrow view of India that seeks to dictate what people will wear, think, eat, and who they will love," the statement said.

Drafted after about two weeks of consultations between senior scientists, the statement has asserted that the Indian people will not accept attacks on reason, science and on plural culture. It says Indian civilisation has always accommodated many practices and communities that have allowed space for each other, but this unity and peace have now been disturbed by a rash of bigoted acts, attacks on minorities and Dalits.

"Across the scientific community, across scientists of all ages, senior and junior, there is deep dismay at the atmosphere of bigotry and intolerance," Thiagarajan Jayaraman, professor and chair of the centre for science, technology and society at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, told this newspaper.

The statement has decried the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaque in Dadri and the killings of rationalists M.M. Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar and Govind Pansare.

"Our concerns have emerged amid what appears to be a growing climate of intolerance to any rational discourse, whether on evidence-based history or on the sacredness of a bovine species," said Satyajit Rath, a senior biologist at the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, who is among the signatories.

On Monday, an inter-academy panel on ethics in science with members representing India's three scientific academies had said it was concerned about statements and actions in the country that ran counter to the constitutional demand of scientific temper.

"The statement from the academies' panel was measured, compact and does not get into politics," said Roddam Narasimha, a professor of engineering mechanics at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, and former director of the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, who is not among the signatories.

"These voices of concern are significant because they come from a community that has rarely spoken about social issues," said Amit Sengupta, a physician and the national convener of the People's Health Movement, a non-government network of health organisations. "This should be seen as a barometer of the level of discomfort that more and more people are feeling," Sengupta added.

Senior biologist Padmanabhan Balram, former director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, physicist Spenta Wadia, the founding director of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Bangalore, mathematician Madabusi Raghunathan, head of the national centre for mathematics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and biologist Satyajit Mayor, director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, are among other signatories of the statement issued on Wednesday.