The All India People's Science Network and the Breakthrough Science Society, two NGOs coordinating the campaign in India, said over 3,000 people joined the march in Calcutta. Science minister Harsh Vardhan had last month claimed that physicist Stephen Hawking had said the Vedas might have a theory superior to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. The call for the march had come from scientists from many academic and government institutions, including the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai; the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai; the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad; and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Calcutta. "We have reports of marches in around 40 cities across India, including Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Lucknow, Patna, Bhubaneswar and Guwahati," said Chanchal Ghosh, a coordinator with the Breakthrough Science Society. The global organisers of the march for science have described this year's event as a second show of unity by science supporters "to hold elected and appointed officials responsible for enacting equitable evidence-based policies that serve all communities and science for the common good".

Source: The Telegraph April 14, 2018 20:48 UTC