Inaugural Address at National Seminar on Scientists who Dared and amade the Difference, Asiatic Society, Kolkata, 3 March 2015

Modern science in Bengal:Cultivation and early

accomplishments

Rajesh KochharPresident IAU Commission 41: History of Astronomy

Hon. Prof., Panjab University, Mathematics Department, ChandigarhIndian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, Punjab

rkochhar2000@yahoo.com

Bengal placed India on the world map of modern science. In the 1890s, J.C. Bose (1858–1937) and P.C. Ray (1861-1944) became India’s (and the Non-West’s) first internationally recognized modern scientists. In the 1920s, Nobel prize-level theoretical physics research were carried out by M.N. Saha (1893-1956) and by Satyen Bose (1894-1974). Finally, in 1930, C. V. Raman (1888-1970) received the physics Nobel prize which was the first one to go out of Europe and America.

Normally, an activity begins modestly, rises slowly and stabilizes at a high level. In contrast, India began at the top and had no place to go except down. The down-hill journey has been steady and without the benefit of a plateau even at intermediate heights.

It is no coincidence that modern Indian science began in Calcutta. Culturally, the two main British Indian cities, Bombay and Calcutta developed differently. Bombay was an isolated piece of real estate which was motivated by

Money and practical things. It had no use for pure intellectual pursuits. Calcutta, on the other hand, came with its hinterland. In the development of its ethos, the new zamindari system, defined by the 1793 Permanent Settlement of land revenue played a major role.In Bengal, the British had the convenience of dealing with a new social class that did not exist before and which owed its prosperity, status and community leadership position to

its association with the British (The Tagores, Akrur Dutta, Canto Baboo, Nubkissen + Radhakanta Deb, etc.). Accordingly, Bengal was far more receptive to the new rulers and their ideology than the rest of the mainland. Also, government support for and investment in Western education was far greater in the Imperial capital than anywhere else.

The pre-history of Calcutta’s tryst with science begins in 1870s. These were socially and politically complex times.After the 1820s, agricultural prices rose steadily. Since the land revenue to be paid to the government remained constant, an increasing surplus was left in the hands of the landlord. In course of time, big landlords sold zamindari rights of small parcels, called patnis. Purchasers of these lands, patnidars, in turn sold still smaller rights and so on. The result was that in many estates there were

eight or many more intermediate tenures between the proprietor and the actual tiller. Almost everybody working in the city, be it a barrister, lawyer, official, litterateur or trader, contrived ‘to acquire his bit of land’. By the 1870s, however increase in population had decreased individual income from land to such a small amount that dependence on education as means of survival increased.

On the educational front, a paradoxical situation had arisen. On the one hand, numerous colleges were churning out a large number of unemployed and unemployable young men whose discontent was becoming a major cause of worry for the colonial government.

At the same time, there were, after fifty years of English education, a significant number of well-educated, articulate, bright young men who could look the empire in the eye and now wanted a community leadership role. Indeed, in the late 1870s, the community leadership passed from the hands of the landed class to the new professional class.

Indian Association was formed on 26 July 1876, which became the precursor of Indian National Congress, founded 1885. What is not so well known, barely three days after the Indian Association, on 29 July 1876, there came up the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS). The similarity in the names is explained by the fact that both involved the same set of people

Campaign for the Science Association had started in December 1869. It is remarkable that the first ever Indian initiative for a middle class organization was in the name of science.

Many published accounts of the Association’s history tend to give the impression that the sole purpose of its establishment was to wait for Raman to bring glory to it half a century later. An individual award is an accident.

No matter how happy or welcome it is, it cannot be a factor in the historical assessment of an institution.To scholars, historians and laypersons alike, the Science Association is well known as Raman’s work place. The dazzle of his Nobel prize has made it difficult to make an objective assessment of the early years of the Science Association which had been in existence for thirty tortuous years before Raman set foot in it in 1907.

A swim against the tide, the Science Association required five long years’ of campaigning before it could come into existence. What sustained it thereafter was the single-minded devotion of its founder, Dr Mahendralal Sircar. While it failed in its goal of initiating modern scientific research under Indian auspices, it succeeded in getting science incorporated into the state education system and into the Bengali ethos. We shall begin by looking at where English and science education stood up to the initial days of the Science Association.

Science in Calcutta under colonial auspices

The British were not interested in scientific or industrial development of India. A small exception however had to be made in the case of chemistry for reasons of commerce, governance and healthcare. The earliest British institution that required some scientific input was the mint which made coins of noble and base metals and in addition was a symbol of sovereignty. As early as 1680, an assay master (one Mr Smith) was sent out to Bombay.

Chemistry education

It is a matter of historical curiosity that unsuccessful attempts to introduce chemistry education in Bengal were made as early as the 1820s. Quite untypically, the first modern chemistry professor in India was a missionary. The Baptist Reverend John Mack (1797-1845) came to Serampore College in the Dutch enclave near Calcutta in 1822 as professor of natural science. He gave a series of ‘chemical lectures’ in Calcutta and even published an elementary treatise on chemistry in Bengali titled Kimiyabidya Sar [Essence of chemical science] in 1834.

In 1872, after Sircar’s campaign in favour of science had started, Calcutta University permitted First Arts (F. A.) students to opt for chemistry in place of psychology. Also B.A. was split into two streams: the traditional A course (literature) and the new B (science) course. Two years later chemistry (along with physical geography) was made a compulsory subject for the B course while two papers in physical science were made optional.

It was left to the far-sighted and therefore unpopular Lieutenant Governor Sir George Campbell (tenure 1871-1874) to ask for specialist professors in chemistry and botany. [Sir] Alexander Pedlar (1849-1918), joined in 1874 at the young age of 25 and later rose to become the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University. He can truly be called the founder of chemistry education in India. ‘Under instruction from the Government’, Pedlar ‘came with a considerable supply of chemical apparatus’ and started practical classes in 1875 itself.

Presidency College Calcutta was the best funded college in the whole of the country and the only one in Calcutta, apart from the Jesuit St Xavier’s, which offered science. Other private colleges did not have the resources to do so. Their students were however permitted to attend classes in Presidency College on payment of a small fee. The popularity of science can be gauged from the number of these ‘out-students’. Year> 1871 1872 1873 1974 1875 1976 1882

No of

outstudents>

4 0 0 14 21 45 63

Gilchrist scholarship

Indians had gone to England for academic attainments in law or medicine on their own money or with some support from their universities. The first all- Presidency institutionalized mechanism for even impoverished young men to go to Britain became available in 1869 thanks to an England-based charity, the Gilchrist Trust.

Not unexpectedly, at least in the early years, most Indian Gilchrist scholars were Calcutta students. Bengalis were the only ones who opted for a degree in science. Most scholars chose ICS/ law / medicine.

Gilchrist scholarship enabled Assamese young men to join the national professional mainstream. The very first Indian Gilchrist scholar, Anundoram Borooah from Assam9

became the first ICS officer from Assam, and North East in general. His junior school mate Boli Narayun Borrah, is probably India’s first England-trained civil engineer.

Science Association: Manifesto and Campaign Sircar was the first Indian to acquaint himself with scientific developments in Europe. He was the first one to employ the Aryan race theory for furthering India’s cause. In December 1869, Sircar declared that ‘The best method…the only method… by which the Hindu mind can be developed to its full proportions is… by the cultivation of the Physical Sciences. Though the Hindus were ‘now fallen and degraded’ ; still they were the brethren of the Europeans. It was therefore the duty of England to take Indians by hand and elevate them in the scale of nations.Permit me a small digression.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838-1894) seems to have drawn on the Sircar thesis while bringing his influential novel Anandamath to a close. After the sanyasis have crushed the Muslim rebellion and wish to take on the English, a Healer (Chikitsak) appears on the scene. This Healer could have been Dr Mahendra Lal Sircar himself even though transported a century back. The Healer explains that the knowledge is of two kinds: Outward and inward. ‘For a long time now the outward knowledge has been lost in this land, and so the true Eternal Code [Sanatana Dharma] has also been lost.’

It is noteworthy that in the first edition of Anandamath, Bankim used Arya Dharma in place of Sanatana Dharma. The Healer continues: ‘The outward knowledge no longer exists in this land…The English are very knowledgeable in the outward knowledge, and they are very good at instructing people. Therefore we’ll make them king. And when by this teaching our people are well instructed about external things…the true Code shall shine forth by itself again’.

Sircar wanted his institution to be like the Royal Institution and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Both were irrelevant for India. Sircar’s Science Association project was not driven by any historical necessity. It did not fulfil any felt need. No wonder then that the type of funding and support Sircar had envisaged was not forthcoming. If Sircar was able to establish his institution and sustain it for three decades without any regular source of income or grant it was due to his tenacity. It of course helped that he was a successful physician and in the good books of the government.

Sircar found a valuable ally and comrade in the science professor at St Xavier’s College Calcutta, the Belgian Jesuit priest, Father Eugene Lafont (1837-1908). It is very likely that Lafont arranged Sircar’s meeting with Sir Richard Temple, who held office as Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, from April 1874 till January 1877.

Sircar met Temple briefly on 10 March 1875 on the latter’s invitation. The news that the Lieutenant Governor had invited Sircar for a private audience enhanced Sircar’s prestige among the native gentlemen and changed the Association’s fortunes. After the meeting, Sircar announced that Temple had supported his initiative. This is true only to the extent that Temple did not reject the scheme outright.

He could not possibly have publicly opposed a cause that seemed to command native support. He instead chose to operate through a section of the local leadership, which formed the Indian League. If he failed to scuttle the Science Association, it was not for want of trying. Temple firmly believed that the Bengali ‘quasi-disloyal dissatisfaction’ arose because the higher education was ‘too much in the direction of law, public administration, and prose literature’, with the result that the educated young men were trying to compete with their masters. The remedy, Temple argued, lay in directing the natives’ towards practical science, ‘where they must inevitably feel their utter inferiority to us.’

Temple’s compulsions may have been political, but the point he was making was valid. He explained that through technical education many new industries would be introduced into Bengal, and old established manufacturers rendered more useful and remunerative. Science would ‘add immeasurably to the national wealth’ and so afford lucrative employment to numberless persons’. Bengal and indeed the whole of India today could advantageously use Temple’s blueprint prepared 120 years ago.

Community leadership was in the hands of upper castes well known for their disdain of manual work. It had taken it two generations of study of western law and literature to claim equality with the rulers. They wanted science to be cultivated at the same equal level. If the Indians drawn from artisan castes had been consulted, they would not have minded their utter inferiority to the foreign rulers for one or two generations as a price for an upgrade of their traditional skills.

Interestingly, Christian missionaries acted as a bridge between the colonial rulers and native upper class interests. Lafont opposed technical education on the ground that it ‘transform the Hindus into a number of mechanics’. Ten years later, in 1886, his colleague, Father H. Neut (1845-1921), decisively argued against introduction of technical education in schools saying that ‘would prepare a generation without elevation or grandeur’. The West artisanized modern science; India Brahminized it.

At the very outset, the government purchased a building for Rs 40000, and made it available free of charge to the Association. This gave the administration a right to oversee the working of the Institution. To avoid that, the Association purchased the premises from the government ( September 1880). The Association would accept government aid 50 years later.

The Association now became a private club. Rather grandiosely, Sircar decided to build a 500-capacity lecture theatre and a tower to house an astronomical observatory. It is a measure of the prestige the Association enjoyed, that the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, came to the Association (on 13 March 1882) to lay the foundation stone and returned two years later to inaugurate the new buildings. Ripon made Sircar a Companion of the Indian Empire in 1883. This was the beginning of Sircar’s social rise.

Lafont was going to Europe for health reasons. He was given a substantial amount of money to purchase instruments for the Association. These included a Crookes tube, an 1878 invention. It would emerge as a powerful tool in the hands of European physicists and be used by Joseph John Thomson to discover electron, in 1897. In India, it remained a scientific toy and yielded dividends of a different type. On 18 March 1880, the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, came to the Science Association to attend Sircar’s lecture demonstration on the Crookes tube and invited him to perform at the Viceregal residence 12 days later before a select audience.

This greatly enhanced Sircar’s reputation among the fellow natives. Within a month of the foundation stone ceremony (1880), Dr Rajendralala Mitra, resigned from the twin posts of the Vice-President and the Chairman of the Managing Committee of the Association.

In the resignation letter sent to the Association president, the Lieutenant Governor Sir Ashley Eden, and made public later, Mitra justifiably alleged that the Association showed a systematic preference for ‘show and ostentation’ over ‘honest, diligent work’. Since the lecturers were all voluntary, Mitra pointed out, ‘the Association cannot command or control their actions’. The first requirement of the Association, Mitra asserted, was its own ‘staff of tutors’ , but ‘With half the funded capital now spent’, “The idea of paid lecturers cannot now be realised’.12

Sircar concurred with the view that ‘the Association cannot carry out its work with honorary lecturers’ His repeated attempts to raise funds to be able to institute professorships successively in the names of Ripon, David Hare, and even Queen Victoria, all failed. It is only in 1937, after the Association had become a government-aided institution, that a Ripon professor (Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor) could be appointed.

In one important respect, Mitra had been right. If the Science Association had maintained its links with the government; if it had developed itself as a science college with government grant-in-aid that surely would have been forthcoming; if in its early days it had focused on the faculty rather than the buildings; modern scientific research might have taken roots in India in the 1880s itself.

Sircar greatly valued encouragement, recognition and honours that he personally received from the government.But he turned his back to the state at institutional level. And then he bitterly complained about the failure of the native community to shell out enough funds for instituting professorships.

May be in the first flush of excitement he spent the collected money on buildings hoping that the inflow would continue. His hopes were badly belied. The upper classes were ready to financially support Sircar in his pursuits because he was one of them. But they were not ready to give money for creating employment for others. I have already mentioned the Crookes Tube demonstration before the Viceroy. In the same vein, In 1897 Father Lafont assisted by a Tagore boy (Maharaja Jotindro Mohan Tagore’s son Pradyot Kumar) took the X-ray image of the Viceroy

Lord Elgin’s hand decorated with a ring and won a photography prize for the effort.

One wonders why Sircar did not become a researcher himself. He was eminently qualified to do so. His Association was well equipped with the state-of-art instruments from Europe. After all the same Crookes Tube led to the discovery of electron in Europe.

He could easily have become a discoverer. But he preferred to be a high-profile demonstrator.

Those days, publication of a research paper would not have made any impact on fellow Indians. But socializing with the Viceroy would. Even today, we are not capable of recognizing scientific work. We recognize its recognition by the West

Within a month of its inauguration, the Science Association embarked on its regular lecture series. These lectures attracted science-hungry students from private colleges. Thus during 1881-82, P. C. Ray, a regular student at Metropolitan Institution (since renamed Vidyasagar College after its founder), attended lectures not only in Presidency College but also at the Science Association for additional instruction. As private colleges opened science classes of their own, the Science Association lecture-rooms became ‘almost deserted’ .

Pedlar recommended appointment of an additional member of faculty. The addition, in 1889, was the Edinburgh-trained P.C. Ray which turned out to be historically significant. The Presidency College chemistry laboratory refurbished in 1893 helped P.C. Ray attain international fame as an experimental chemist as also to found a flourishing school (see below). India would go on to establish a successful chemical industry which in turn has led to a pharmaceutical industry now known the world over for its ability to produce generic drugs at low cost.

While, Ray is hailed as the father of Indian chemistry, Pedlar’s pioneering contribution should be kept in mind as also the important fact that the colonial administration had provided for a chemical lab. ( Among other things, the lab also tested the wines imported from Europe!)

Chemistry generated its own momentum. While, the driving force in the case of Ray was nationalism, Dacca was an important chemistry research and training centre under colonial auspices.

Science Association succeeded in introducing the Bengali youth to the attractiveness of science as a career option in preference to public service or law. One is inclined to agree with the assessment offered by Sircar at the 1899 annual meeting. ‘It is not too much to say that it was mainly through the influence of the founders of the Science Association that examinations in scientific subjects were gradually introduced for the conferring of University degrees’.

Bose and Ray

Jagadis Bose was the first tangible and dramatic proof that the natives of a slave country could be the equals of their European masters. His appeal and message went beyond the science that made him famous. Bose’s researches were very original, but his impact was more psychological than real. Bose worked on the experimental properties of radio waves for only about 6-7 years: 1895-1901. His work received immediate international recognition. Bose however gave up this line, and worked on the connection between the living and the non-living. In his time, this work was not

considered mainstream and had to be privately published. The recognition that Bose won during the radio phase was transferred to his later work.Incidentally, this year is the 120th anniversary of India’s first modern scientific paper. Bose presented his first results at the Asiatic Society which published them in the 1 May 1895 issue of its Journal.

According to Ray, Bose did not quite recognize the significance of his own results. He sent a reprint to Rayleigh who immediately saw its worth and got it republished in The Electrician.

There is a reason for the importance of Bose’s radio researches for Europe.

Europe was happy to work with metal to make radio detectors. But since metal rusts in the damp climate of Bengal, Bose experimented with a whole new class of ‘natural substances’ including even jute. His work on galena was especially of great intrinsic value to the world of science. The appreciation that Bose got in Europe enthused India. Rabindranath Tagore whose own world fame was still in the future wrote to Bose in England on 17 September 1900:

‘We need not understand what you have achieved… we shall simply help ourselves to all the credit when The Times publishes words of praise from the lips of Englishmen’. Continuing in the same vein Tagore wrote to Bose 4 June 1901: ‘I bow my heart at the feet of the God who has chosen you as the instrument of removal of India’s shame’. Those indeed were the days when God operated through the West; it would not remove India’s shame directly. Colonialism has ended, but the paradigm never changed.

In 1901 itself Tagore wrote a poem in Bengali, titled To Jagadishchandra Bose, which dramatically opened with the lines: ‘Young image of what old Rishi of Ind/Art thou, O Arya savant, Jagadis?

Unfortunately for India and physics, Bose was seduced into rishidom by Tagore.

In 1901, Dr Alexander Muirhead (1848-1920), like Bose a doctorate in science from London University, and a manufacturer of telegraphic equipment, met Bose in London and suggested that Bose patent his discoveries and share profits with Muirhead. Bose rejected the suggestion outright and with contempt. The same year a patent was filed in U.S.A. in Bose’s name, assigning half of the royalty to Sara Chapman Bull, better known as Mrs Ole Bull after her Norwegian husband. But a stubborn Bose refused to encash it. Bose had no objection to accepting industrial money from the West (that is Mrs Bull) but would not generate it himself.

There is an irony that has often been missed. Bose though a physics professor in a college was still a product of an orientalized East; accordingly he was repelled by the idea of making money from his inventions. On the other hand Sister Nivedita (born Margaret Noble 1867-1911) though a spiritual person was still a child of western industrial culture; she was all for patents and royalties . Raman spectroscopy is today a billion dollar industry. Even though it carries an Indian name, no material benefit ever came India’s way.

If Bose had indeed taken out patents the history of Indian science and industry might have been different. As Ray reminded his audience on the occasion of Bose’s knighthood (1916), Bose would have made millions for himself as royalty. Even more importantly he would have become a role model for production of wealth through science. But at the time India was looking for a counter-example and not a role model. As it is, Bose abandoned radio physics altogether and there were no trained students to continue his line of research. Thus in spite of Bose’s epoch making researches technical physics could not be institutionalized in India.

Bose’s international stature was part of national consciousness. However in his own country he was perceived as an original modern thinker/researcher on issues that jelled with ancient Indian philosophy rather than as a part of the European science machine to which he owed his name and fame.

Creativity wise, Ray’s chemistry was not in the same league as Bose’s physics. Ray’s personal researches however remained sustained and focused.Note that Bose did his radio work in his private lab, while Ray worked in the College lab. Thanks to his well-rounded personality and the institutional facility at his disposal, he went on to found an internationally recognized school of chemistry.

Even before Ray embarked on his theoretical researches, he started manufacturing and marketing chemicals and drugs. He successfully produced phosphate of soda from animal bones which were available in plenty, much to the chagrin of his neighbours and suspicion of the policeman. He then graduated to making various syrups and tinctures according to the British Pharmacopoeia specifications. In 1892 or early 1893 he set up a private firm with the long but descriptive name Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works.13

As Ray recalled in 1940, in setting up the works he ‘had not only the idea of wiping out the reproach that the Bengalees were good for nothing in business affairs, but also of making it a model institution’. The firm was made into a limited liability company in 1901 and placed on a firm footing by the first world war. About the same time as Bengal Chemicals, T. K. Gajjar and his students set up Alembic works, which also benefited from the first world war. Look at the contrast in the two companies now!

To Ray and others goes the credit for the successful mainstreaming of traditional Indian health-care. At the Indian Medical Congress held in Calcutta in 1898, Ray and friends set up a stall in which they exhibited preparations of Indian drugs. A strong representation was made by the Council of the Congress at the instance, I believe, of Kanai Lal Dey, who was then almost on the verge of his grave, urging the official recognition of some of these drugs. As a result, they found place in the Addendum to the British Pharmacopoeia.

The year of Sircar’s death (1904) saw the passage of the Indian Universities Act on an initiative by the otherwise unpopular Viceroy Lord Curzon. If Sircar had lived a few more years he would have been a witness to the spectacular transformation of Calcutta University from a purely examining body into a post-graduate teaching and research centre brought about by Asutosh Mookerjee.

In the decades immediately following independence, science was seen as an instrument of nation building. Not any more. Globalization has transformed India economy as well as the Indian middle class. India’s economic growth is being driven by the services sector, which is manifestly science-less. If the economy of a country becomes derivative so will its culture. Science cannot flourish in a society whose economy does not require science. If the Indian economy has disowned science, the middle class has disowned India itself.

Globalization has introduced upper India to a consumerist lifestyle that is beyond the intrinsic strength of India economy. This lifestyle can only be maintained by servicing the Western economy.

West Bengal may be a small exception to this broad national pattern. It is my assessment that as the lure of servicing world markets sucks in more and more young men and women throughout India, West Bengal students will probably be the only ones left to pursue basic science. That is the real legacy of Dr Mahendra Lal Sircar and his Science Association.//

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