Recommendations such as these are totally in character for the general milieu, said Sharma. “Most moral issues don’t come into the public discourse but remain private.” Using the example of another bioethical controversy that is contentious in the West, he added, “People deal with issues like euthanasia in the context of their families.”

India is officially a secular republic, home to the largest number of Hindus and Muslims in the world. “Nearly every Indian, regardless of religion, is Hindu-thinking and lives according to Hindu culture and philosophy,” said Ram Surat, a Christian convert getting his divinity degree at the Union Biblical Seminary, Pune. For Hindus, this philosophy translates to a respect for all life, a belief in an immutable soul and the body as a vessel.

Even Christians — a growing population in India — do not have as strong criticisms of biotechnology as their Western counterparts. The reason is that Hinduism casts a long shadow even over other religions.

Few Christians in India talk about such issues, said Selva Raj, the Stanley S. Kresge Professor of Religious Studies at Albion University in Michigan. “Indian Christians are much more interested in how to live and coexist with people of other religions.”

“Life and death are not points in a line. It is a Möbius strip,” said Shridhar Venkatraman, an engineer in Chennai who lived for 10 years in the United States. “All living things work toward escaping this cycle,” and so life and death are personal issues.

The news describes discoveries in science as well as the furor they cause in the West. But in general, the discussion is digested silently. “Bioethics is only discussed by the very few elite,” according to Dhruv Raina, a professor at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “In general, the well-being of people prevails over ideas of danger,” said Raina, who researches the relationship between science, societies, values and culture.

Hinduism, itself, is not a monolithic entity. “Unlike Christianity, Hinduism is not a codified religion with a single papal authority to pontificate on every subject,” said Jayanthi Iyengar, a practitioner of the Art of Living, in Pune. “You won’t find a position on these issues like the one the Catholic Church has on abortion or genetic modification,” Iyengar said.