Politics of pseudoscience: Harvard-educated Scindia wants to cool masses with onions!

By Prof. Hemantkumar Shah* 

At 55, Jyotiraditya Scindia served as a Member of Parliament from 2001 to 2020 with the Congress before switching to the BJP in 2020. A scion of the Gwalior royal family, educated at Harvard University and Stanford University with degrees in BA and MBA, he embodies what is often described as elite polish and global exposure.

Yet this very man recently declared at a public rally that he does not use air conditioners and instead keeps an onion in his pocket for “cooling.” Not stopping there, he theatrically pulled out this “lucky onion” from his kurta pocket and displayed it to the crowd.

What does one make of such a claim from someone so highly educated? It seems that in certain company, intellect simply evaporates. When you sit among leaders who expect you to leave reason at the door, conformity replaces thought. In such circles, it is quietly assumed that wisdom resides with only one—or at most two—individuals, and the rest must fall in line.

The “light” of Jyotiraditya’s intellect appears dimmed; the “Aditya” seems shrouded in darkness. At a time when nearly a billion ordinary Indians are scorching under brutal heat without access to air conditioning, this descendant of opulence—owner of the extravagant Jai Vilas Palace built in 1874 at a cost equivalent today to thousands of crores—now seems to find amusement in mocking the struggles of the common people.

How does such a transformation occur? Perhaps by aligning with those who themselves stand under a cloud of doubt regarding their own academic claims—figures like Narendra Modi. In such company, one begins to “discover” ideas that even the great scholars of Ayurveda—Charaka, Sushruta, or Agnivesha—never conceived.

Today’s ideological circles seem eager to dispense all kinds of “knowledge” to the public. This onion theory is merely another shining example—one that promises both darkness and “cooling” for devoted followers.

In school, we once read a line in science textbooks: “Onion is the poor man’s musk,” followed by a list of its benefits. Never, however, was it suggested that carrying one in your pocket could cool you in extreme heat. That, it seems, is a groundbreaking “discovery.”

Curiously, even that modest textbook line disappeared over time—silently erased, without objection, even from communities that might have taken issue with it. Now, one would not be surprised if Gujarat State textbooks or even NCERT publications begin to include this latest “innovation.” When the educated abandon reason—not for the uneducated, but for the proudly irrational—this is the inevitable result.

The Hindi poet Abdul Rahim Khan-i-Khana once wrote:

“जो रहीम उत्तम प्रकृति का करी सकत कुसंग,

चंदन विष व्यापत नहीं लिपटे रहत भुजंग।”

Meaning: A person of noble nature cannot be corrupted by bad company, just as a sandalwood tree remains unaffected even when snakes coil around it.

It appears Rahim may have been wrong. Would Jyotiraditya Scindia have made such statements had he remained in the Congress? It is only in the company of the Modi–Shah combine that such “divine wisdom” seems to emerge.

India produces nearly 30 million tonnes of onions annually. Perhaps now production will rise further in the name of this new “cooling technology,” boosting GDP along the way.

And do not be surprised if Gujarati poets and ghazal writers begin composing verses on the cooling virtues of “Scindia-brand onions,” some of which might even find their way into school textbooks—provided, of course, they receive the necessary endorsement from the right quarters, perhaps even a Bharat Ratna along the way.

As the company—and the “Sangh”—so the color it imparts.

With apologies to poet Dalpatram for borrowing his sentiment: this is what intellectual decay looks like.

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*Senior academic based in Ahmedabad