Haldane officially stated that he left the UK because of the Suez Crisis, writing: "Finally, I am going to India because I consider that recent acts of the British Government have been violations of international law."
Additionally, Helen had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and for refusing to pay a fine was sent to prison; the university sacked her, triggering Haldane's resignation.
[11] At the Indian Statistical Institute, she turned her attention in 1959 to the genetics of the giant silkworm Antheraea paphia, raising them in captivity to test the quality of their silk.
In January 1961 she and Haldane, assisted by their associate Krishna Dronamraju, were hosts to United States National Science Fair biology winners Gary Botting (zoology) and Susan Brown (botany).
Botting, being at that time a convinced biblical creationist and missionary for the Jehovah's Witnesses, concluded from Spurway's observations about the black dots on her larvae, and from other similar statements, that she and Haldane were "committed Lamarckian evolutionists" who were prepared to believe, without sufficient evidence, in the possibility of rapid evolutionary adaptation.
[16] The following month (February 1961), the Haldanes, who were also irritated by the abrupt changes made by Director Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis in the social programme of the visiting Soviet leader Alexei Kosygin, resigned from the Indian Statistical Institute.