Specifically, Washington's call last week to reject the visa application of Atomic Energy Commission Chief Dr R Chidambaram to attend an international conference in the US is in brazen contravention of the charter of International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU).

The ICSU charter strongly upholds the principle of the universality of science, which entails freedom of association, expression, information, communication and movement in connection with international scientific activities, without any discrimination on the basis of such factors as citizenship, religion, creed, political stance, ethnic origin, race colour, language, age or sex. The International Union of Crystallographers (IUC) -- the annual meeting of which Dr Chidambaram sought to attend -- is a memberof the ICSU. In fact, so strongly does the Council feel about such matters that its statement on freedom in the conduct of science states that ICSU shall not permit any of its activities to be disturbed by statements or actions of a political nature.

Just to give an example of the Council's exacting standards, one scholar who did not want to be identified said that at the height of the apartheid issue in South Africa, the Council shifted a meeting out of India because New Delhi denied visas to South African scientists.

In Washington, the executive meeting of the International Union of Crystallographers is considering writing to the State Department protesting its action. There is also some talk of rousing the American Academy of Scientists.

The ICSU is the oldest existing non-governmental body committed to international scientific cooperation for the benefit of humanity and was, in fact, created in 1931 after its predecessor, the International Research Council, was dissolved because of discriminationagainst scientists of certain countries.

The pointed discrimination against Indian scientists could put the ICSU in the dock again unless it acts. What is particularly galling to the scientific community is Dr Chidambaram was going to the US to attend an executive committee meeting of the IUC in his capacity as the union's vice-president -- a gathering that had no scientific meaning and certainly not related at all to nuclear technology.

Dr Chidambaram himself was typically understated and unfazed about the flap. ``It's just a small ripple... If I had known it would cause so much controversy, I would not even have applied for the visa,'' he said in an interview on Thursday at his sparce office overlooking the Gateway of India in Mumbai. Dr Chidambaram has previously attended IUC's annual conferences in Seattle and Pittsburg in the US and was looking forward to this year's pow-wow which was to be held in Arlington, Virginia, a suburb of Washington DC.

But other Indian scientists are less sanguine aboutthe American attitude. Much to their irritation, proliferation hawks in the US have long made a living out of fanning the theory that Indian scientists have filched American technology to further their nuclear and space programs.

For a community that prides itself on its indigenous efforts, such talk is an affront. One of India's premier scientists, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, has refused to visit US for several years after a proliferation czar slandered him by saying he had purloined US rocket technology.

Kalam was in the US for only a few months. There was nothing he could have got there which he could not have learnt by reading scientific journals, one of his colleagues told this correspondent some weeks back. The Indian scientific community has also been irked by US high-handedness and ham-handedness on issues like the sale of supercomputers and stopping the sale by Russia of cryogenic technology. Like Kalam and many other top Indian scientists, Chidamabaram is also an indigenous product. He fumed aboutreports in a recent newspaper article that he had a foreign degree -- a badge of honour for most scholars -- saying he had studied only in India and took his doctorate from Bangalore's Indian Institute of Science.

In fact, institutional cooperation between India and the US in the field of nuclear technology has been zilch for more than 25 years -- after the first Pokhran tests. But at an informal level, Indian scholars joust with their American and other Western counterparts in various fora across the world. By its actions, the US is seeking to scupper even such informal activity. There is a view though that the decision to deny visas is a call by persnickety State Department types and does not have the backing of the American scientific community which, from all accounts, enjoys interacting with Indians.