“We believe that it is our responsibility to extend solidarity and support to those facing violence and dispossession in whatever way we can. The successful petition to suspend Israel from the IOAA is a small step in that direction,” wrote two of the signatories to the petition.

Groundxero | Sep 1, 2025

Hundreds of academics, physicists, scientists and former participants of international science olympiads approached the executive committee members of the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) with a letter demanding the suspension of Israeli teams from participating in science olympiads. The most recent edition of the Olympiad was held in Mumbai from 12-21 August, and it was here that the board voted in favour of placing sanctions on Isreal. IOAA becomes the second international science olympiad after International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) to sanction future participation of Israel.

Madhusudhan Raman, who teaches physics at Delhi University, and Aditi Dudeja, a postdoctoral fellow working in Salzburg, were both signatories on the petition to suspend Israel from the IOAA. They have written an article on Israel’s suspension from the IOAA, and the response by some Indian academics (in Swarajya) asking that action be taken against the letter’s authors.

Here is the article:

We are signatories of the recent petition addressed to the current President of the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA), Prof. Aniket Sule. This petition drew attention to Israel’s flagrant violations of international law, the systematic destruction of Gaza’s educational infrastructure, and the killing of many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children. The petition requested that the board adopt a resolution to suspend Israel from the IOAA until it complies with international law. This resolution was discussed and adopted by the international board of the IOAA with an overwhelming majority; Israeli students will now still be allowed to participate in the competition, not under their flag, but as individuals.

A group of Indian scientists have now authored an incoherent and confused letter published in Swarajya demanding action against the letter’s authors for, among other things, having “hijacked this platform [the IOAA] to advance an ideological agenda,” and “targeting India’s diplomatic stance and embarrassing the nation before the global community,” etc. We address this article not to the authors and signatories of this letter, whom we believe quite sincerely to be far beyond the reach of patient efforts and the light of reason, but to scientists and citizens who are not yet gripped by this baseless paranoia.

The international body of the IOAA is a group of astronomers and astrophysicists from countries all over the globe. Its deliberations are its own, and the conclusions it reaches have nothing to do with Indian foreign policy. The fact that this year’s IOAA was hosted in India is simply not germane to the issue. They were presented by Prof. Sule — who was not a signatory — with a petition supported by hundreds of academics across the globe. Despite what the tenor of the letter published in Swarajya suggests, this petition was never guaranteed to succeed — indeed, one of the initial signatories, the mathematician Ahmed Abbes, has been valiantly fighting a campaign to get a similar resolution passed in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), with no success. In other, smaller conferences with less visibility, those of us sympathetic to the Palestinian cause have made efforts to get similar resolutions passed, once again with no success. We fully intend to continue in this course of action until the genocide stops and the State of Israel abides by international law.

Why do we persist? We do this because we believe that it is our responsibility to extend solidarity and support to those facing violence and dispossession in whatever way we can. The successful petition to suspend Israel from the IOAA is a small step in that direction. It is our earnest hope that more scientists and citizens will shed their fears of reprisal and raise their voice in a chorus of sympathy for the Palestinian people and that this will force Israel to withdraw from Gaza and the occupied territories, stop the routine harassment, kidnapping, and torture of Palestinians, and comply with international law. To imagine, against the backdrop of an ongoing and live-streamed genocide, that the real victim here is the Indian state and the “embarassment” it has faced on account of a petition addressed to an independent international body, is a willful and unconscionable misdirection. The real embarrassment here is the continued support Israel enjoys on the world stage, despite its deliberate, horrific, and unforgivable actions. Our humanity is not negotiable. A continued silence on our part would be an abdication of our responsibility as intellectuals and custodians of knowledge, and as human beings.

We continue to emphatically endorse the petition to the IOAA that we signed. There is an effort underway to isolate some of the signatories and point to them as ring-leaders of a network of supposed troublemakers. This conspiratorial framing may suit the agendas of a few, but nothing could be further from the truth. We have seen injustice and we have spoken out against it, that is all. If the initial signatories have committed a crime by authoring this petition, we submit that we are equally culpable. We stand firmly by what we said, and we stand with our fellow signatories.

Above all, we stand with the people of Gaza.

Madhusudhan Raman and Aditi Dudeja