Risk and Resistance Around India-based Neutrino Observatory: Understanding the Science War in Tamil Nadu

Contemporary environmental conflicts around large-scale scientific and developmental projects in India are often narrated through analytically reductive binaries, framed either as ‘anti-science’ sentiment rooted in ignorance and superstition or as epistemic heroism opposing hegemonic modern science through indigenous knowledge. Despite their political differences, both positions rely on a stable epistemological opposition between science and experience. This article rejects both views and conceptualises environmental conflict as a struggle internal to modernity itself, where science emerges as a contested terrain rather than as a neutral authority or an external imposition. Focusing on the anti-neutrino movement in Theni, Tamil Nadu, the article examines how conflicts unfold through competing claims to scientific rationality, risk assessment and modern values. Drawing on theories of risk and multidimensional environmentalism, risk is understood as a socially inherited and historically sedimented condition shaped by prior encounters with state power, expertise and institutional failure. Within this framework, environmental movements engage modern legal, scientific and bureaucratic institutions to contest the production and insulation of scientific authority, which allows for a more adequate understanding of contemporary environmental struggles.