JC Bose became the first Indian mainstream modern scientist in 1895 with the publication of his first experimental paper on mm-wave radio waves. I discuss 12 decades of Indian pursuit of science by identifying three sequential stages: nationalist phase(1895-1945); international phase (1945-(say) 1990); and the current global phase. The year 1945 is important because this is the year Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Bombay was established.

1. Talk given at Cal. Univ. Physics Centenary Celebrations 7 Jan. 2016
Rise and Decline of Modern Science in
India
Rajesh Kochhar
Mathematics Department Panjab University Chandigarh
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali
rkochhar2000@gmail.com

2. India was the first country outside the Western world to take to
modern science, with Calcutta as the science centre. In the
closing years of the 19th century, two UK-trained Presidency
College Calcutta professors, the physicist JC Bose and chemist
PC Ray, became the world’s first non-White modern
mainstream scientists. A generation later, MN Saha at Calcutta
University (in 1920) and SN Bose at Dacca University (in 1924)
published epoch-making Nobel Prize-level theoretical work in
physics.

3. Finally, CV Raman’s 1930 physics Nobel Prize became the first
ever to go out of the Western world. It is noteworthy that
Raman almost missed the Prize. Chronologically speaking, two
Soviet physicists, Leonid Mandelstam (1879-1957) and
Grigory Landsberg (1890-1957) observed what came to be
known as Raman Effect a week before Raman did. However,
because of bureaucracy, the discovery announcement was
delayed. If these two researchers had been West European
or North American rather than Soviet, their publication
would have preceded Raman’s and the Prize gone to them.

4. In retrospect, it would perhaps have been better
for Indian science if Raman had missed his
Nobel. The freak individual honour has raised
false hopes, blinded us to the inherent
shortcomings of Indian science, and made a clear-
headed analysis well nigh impossible.

5. • Normally an activity begins modestly, reaches the peak,
stabilizes and then slowly declines. Modern science in India
however began at the top and has had no place to go except
downward. On the other hand, for China the present situation
is an improvement over the past.
 India’s expenditure on R&D remains a lowly 0.9%.
 China is taking its science very seriously. Since 1999 it has
been increasing its R&D spending by 20% every year so that
in 2012 it stood at an impressive 2% of GDP.

6. World share India World share China World share USA
Papers
%
Relative
Citation
Index
Papers
%
Relative
Citation
Index
Papers
%
Relative
Citation
Index
1996-2000 1.89 0.57 3.14 0.41 27.88 1.69
2008-2012 3.45 0.63 14.58 0.64 22.93 1.71

7. While India consistently ranks low in all merit-based
international listings, it does have a dubious distinction to
its credit. Recent years have seen an alarming growth in
new, obscure open-access online journals (‘predatory’
journals) where there is no quality control. In a span of
five years, 2010-2014, the number of papers published in
these journals rose 800% to reach the figure of 420,000.
Of these, the biggest chunk came from India which
accounted for 34.7% of the output. In USA, for every
100 papers in reputed journals, only six were published in
dubious journals. In sharp contrast, for every one good
Indian paper, there were three in low-level journals.

8.  Permit me to narrate a personal anecdote which provides
valuable insight into official Chinese thinking. In 2005, the
Chinese Deputy Science Minister with his team visited us at
NISTADS ( National Inst of Sci. Tech & Development Studies,
New Delhi). A short time previously, Business Standard had
published a long article arguing that just as China had become
the world hub for manufacture, India should become the hub for
services.

9. • I wrote a short letter ( Business Standard, 5-Oct-2005) saying
that the prescription is wrong. China has become the hub for
low-skill manufacture; India should become high-skill
manufacturing hub. I gave a copy of this letter to the Chinese
Minister who took my permission to keep it. Then he made a
very significant statement in English:

10. ‘We know we cannot compete with the West on today’s
technologies. We are therefore making money from
yesterday’s technologies and investing it in the technologies
of tomorrow.’
• In contrast to China, India has wrongly viewed science as an
intellectual activity rather than as an economic tool.
• It is pertinent to recall that many celebrated British scientific
names whom we know from text books ( Robert Hooke, Robert
Boyle) all worked to advance the cause of East India Company.

11. It will be instructive to look at the past 12 decades of
Indian science with a view to understanding
• how we have ended where we are and
• where we go from here.

12. INDIAN PURSUIT OF SCIENCE
can be discussed in terms of three sequential phases:
 (i) Nationalist Phase (1895);
 (ii) International Phase(1945); and
 (iii) Globalization Phase (c. 1990).
- The first phase can be assigned a precise beginning, 1895, when
Bose’s first paper on radio physics appeared.
- The second phase can nominally be taken to begin with the 1945
setting up of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research,
Bangalore/Bombay , by Homi Bhabha.
- The third phase, now on, began with the onset of globalization.

13. • As we move down the phases, there is a general decline
in the quality of Indian science and in its impact on the
world.
• I would argue that there is a striking correlation between
these three phases and the stages in the diminishing role
perceived by the middle class for itself in the national
scheme of things.

14. NATIONALIST PHASE: PRE-HISTORY
• Nationalist phase has a very instructive pre-history.
Although Dr Mahendralal Sircar failed to initiate
scientific research under Indian auspices at his Indian
Association for Cultivation of Science (estd 1876), he
succeeded in achieving two things.
• Sircar’s campaign compelled the colonial administration
to induct science into its education system.

15. • It introduced science culture in Bengal. Thanks to Science
Association, career in science became an attractive option
for Bengalis. Of all Gilchrist scholars sent by the
Government to London and Edinburgh for higher studies,
only the Bengalis opted for science : Aghornath
Chattopadhyay (1871), Pramatha Nath Bose (1874), and
Prafulla Chandra Ray (1882).

16. Generally speaking, the British were not interested in
creating laboratory or research facilities in India. A small
exception however had to be made in the case of
chemistry for reasons of administration and good
governance. Alexander Pedler was appointed Professor of
Chemistry in Presidency College in 1874. ‘Under
instruction from the Government’, he ‘came with a
considerable supply of chemical apparatus’ and started
practical classes in 1875.

17. • If today India has very successful chemical and pharmaceutical
industries, the roots go back to Pedler. Pedler can truly be called
founder of modern chemistry education in India.
-
• Accounts of early institutional history of IACS have been
coloured by the circumstance that 25 years after its
establishment, it became Raman’s workplace.
• The following points from the pre- and early history of IACS are
important for understanding later developments.

18. • For his own reasons, Lieut.-Gov. of Bengal Richard
Temple was keen to set up polytechnics in Bengal, but
support from the Indians was not forthcoming. The upper-
caste dominated leadership did not want a nation of
mechanics (why not?); it rejected science application in
favour of the more glamorous science speculation.

19. • Hindu Vidyalaya was set up in 1817 as a private body, but
chose to become government-aided in 1823. In contrast,
IACS began in 1876 as a government-aided institution
but opted to become private in 1881.
• If Sircar had accepted the status of a government-aided
science college and focused on the laboratory rather than
the lecture theatre, modern scientific research might have
taken roots in India in the 1880s itself.

20. • Sircar himself could easily have become a discoverer. But he
preferred to be a high-profile demonstrator. The high point of
Sircar’s social life was an invitation from the Viceroy to
display the spectacle of the newly invented Crookes tube . It
was a toy for India but a research tool in Europe. It was later
used by JJ Thomson in England to discover the electron. 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 s hand decorated with a
ring and won a photography prize for the effort .

21. • Sircar 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.

22. • The Indian wealthy owed nothing to science; there was
no reason for them to support science.
• Eventually it was left for the colonial establishment to
provide a forum for scientific research by Indians.

23. NATIONALIST PHASE
• Although creativity-wise, Bose’s personal research ranked
higher than Ray’s, the over-all impact and long-time
influence of Ray was far greater.
• Bose carried out his experimental studies on the optical
properties of mm-length radio waves in his personal lab, did
not train any students or assistants and gave this research up
altogether in 1900 or 1901. He chose to devote the rest of his
life to a study of the living and the non-living which work at
the time was considered to be pseudo-science.

24. • Bose could have made millions from royalty on his radio
work, but he did not.
• If he had done so, India would have learnt to appreciate
science as a producer of wealth and physics-based
industries would have been started.
• As it turned out, industrial physics never ever took roots
in India.

25. • Tagore wrote to Bose (who was then in Europe) on 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. Even 100 years later, our aim still is to
get a pat on the back from the West

26. • 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?
• Pre-independence India chose to Brahminize science, just as
after independence we have Kshatriya-ized it. Artisanisation
of science, which gave Europe its power, never took off in
India

27. • In contrast to Bose’s personal lab, Ray carried out his chemical
researches in the College lab, and set up a flourishing school as
well as industry.
• While the driving force in Calcutta was nationalism, it needs to
be appreciated that Dacca University emerged as a strong training
centre under a British chemist Edwin Roy Watson (1880-1926)
who remained there from 1906 till 1921 excluding the war years
when he returned home for war-oriented research.

28.  The spectacular achievements of the Nationalist Phase were made
possible by a fortuitous combination of circumstances.
(i) Modern science was young then. It was just a short step ahead of, or
rather a continuation of, M. Sc.- level studies.
-Thus Raman could publish research papers in international journals
while still a student and establish his credentials as a world-class
experimentalist working part-time.
- There was hardly any difference between a classroom textbook and a
research journal.
-

29. • Saha and Satyen Bose as young lecturers produced the first ever
English translation of Einstein for use as course material.
• Saha and before him Jagadis Bose could identify research problems
by reading popular accounts.
(ii) Another very important feature of this phase was that the caliber
of teachers was exceptionally high. Teaching was the best career
option after the civil service.

30. - Surendra Nath Banerjee after being unfairly dismissed from ICS
became a college professor (He taught P.C. Ray English literature).
- Since Saha could not enter civil services because of his pronounced
nationalist leanings, he became a university lecturer. Raman left a
cushy civil job to become a professor.
(iii) As J.C. Bose noted, in his time the Presidency College Calcutta
was among the best equipped anywhere in the world. The
infrastructural and technological requirements of experimental
research were very modest and easily available at the level of
college teaching.

31. J. Bose set up his radio lab with the help of atraditional
tinsmith. Ray had a B.Sc. - failed assistant, Jitendra Nath
Rakshit, who “Out of a few bits of rejected glass - tubing”
“could improvise an apparatus, which hitherto could be
had from a firm in England or Germany after months of
anxious waiting”.

32. • Raman used to boast that his equipment cost only 200 rupees.
Raman missed the point completely. What is important is not
the cost, but the fact that at the time world-class research could
be carried out in a college practical lab.
(iv) The take-off stage of modern physics coincided with the
enhanced sense of Indian nationalism. Making scientific
discoveries requires a certain amount of defiance. The
suppressed semi-articulated resentment against the colonial
rulers provided that defiance.

33. - Paradoxically, while Indian achievements in science were
perceived as part of the nationalist movement, at the same
time honours bestowed by the colonial rulers were
coveted and even flaunted.
• In the early days when India was new to modern science, it
was natural that recognition be sought from the West. A
very serious shortcoming of Indian science has been and
still is that it never became self-assessing. Scientists have
continued looking toward the West for guidance,
encouragement, support and recognition.

34. • In the pre-Gandhian years, the nationalist movement was
strictly a middle class affair, with the leadership still
making appeals to the Empire’s sense of noblesse oblige.
• In this scheme science and public affairs reinforced each
other. Things changed with the emergence of Mahatma
Gandhi on the scene.
• Leadership remained in the hands of the middle class but
its constituency became more broad-based.

35. • As a strategy, Mahatma Gandhi put the West on the
defensive on ethical grounds. Since modern science was
largely seen as a part of the Western civilizational
baggage, it went out of focus during years of Gandhi’s
ascendancy.
• Science returned centre stage with the emergence of
Jawaharlal Nehru as the undisputed leader of
independent India.

36. Second World War and Independence
• At the time of the Second World War (1939-1945)
there were two mutually exclusive streams in Indian
science: routine science under the government, and
nationalism-inspired research activity by the Indians
in the universities.
• The twain met during the war.

37. The government needed the help of Indian academics in its
war effort. And it was a foregone conclusion that the British
would leave India after the war. Indians were already in
important positions in government. Though still working
under British auspices, they sought to dovetail their
country’s post-independence interests into the British
exigencies of war’.

38. CSIR
• Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was
set up on 12 March 1942.( There is no reason for CSIR to
celebrate its foundation day on 26 Sep.) Its scientific
head was Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar who had been
brought two years previously from Punjab University
Lahore into the government as Director Scientific and
Industrial Research.

39. Two years later, in 1944, CSIR sanctioned the establishment of
five research laboratories the foundation stones of which were
laid between December 1945 and April 1947 and which were
opened between January and November 1950.

40. • In the enthusiasm for science, too many labs were opened in
too short a time. Since there was no felt need for them and
they were being opened for the sake of opening, extraneous
arguments were proffered and accepted for their
establishment and location.
• National Chemical Lab was located in Poona to be near
Bombay which was already a major hub for chemical
industry. ( It was funded by the House of Tata which even
wanted it to carry their name.)

41. • In contrast, there was however no obvious venue for the
Physical Lab. It was decided to locate it in Delhi rather than
Calcutta on the irrelevant ground that this would enable the
laboratory ‘to keep in touch with the government’.
• Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute was
opened in Pilani on the personal request of Ghanshyam Das
Birla (1894-1983 ) whose birth place it was.

42. • Central Electro Chemical Research Institute was set up at
Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu because a wealthy local landowner
(Alagappa Chettiar) offered 300 acres of land and 15 lakh
rupees provided it was located there.
The 1957 chemistry Nobel laureate, Alexander Robertus Todd, who
attended the inauguration, has recorded that
For the distinguished guests assembled for the opening ceremony,
Chettiar hosted a lunch where ‘plates and goblets used were silver or
gold’.

43. • The research carried out by Indians in the universities was
basic in nature. Sudden creation of national labs without
creating a pool of trained personnel beforehand robbed the
universities of talent. It also blurred the distinction between
applied and basic research.
• Without linkage to economy, a laboratory would merely be
an office. Government science in general is likely to be
more government than science.

44. • The first Indian research Institute ( as distinct from colonial
government establishments and the personal Bose Institute
Calcutta) was Tata Institute of Fundamental Research set
up in Bangalore in 1945 and shifted to Bombay before the
year end. It was the result of Homi Bhabha’s initiative
whose father’s sister was married to Sir Dorab Tata.

45.  Apart from TIFR two more laboratories were opened:
Physical Research Laboratory Ahmedabad (1947) and
Bangalore-based ‘Research Institute of the Indian Academy
of Sciences, directed by Sir C.V. Raman’ (1948).
 CSIR supported all three. Though legally private entities
TIFR, PRL and (post-Raman) RRI became for all purposes
national facilities, funded by various departments: DAE,
DoS, DST.

46. • Nehru had a soft corner for persons with an aristocratic
background. He thus was more comfortable with a Bhabha
than with a Saha.
• On his return to India from Cambridge in 1939, Bhabha
held temporary appointments in the Tata-owned Indian
Institute of Science Bangalore.

47. • Bhabha turned down offers of regular appointment from
Allahabad University as well as Indian Association for the
Cultivation of Science Calcutta, because he was ‘only
interested in research and not in teaching’, which to him
constituted ‘routine duties’.
• And yet, before leaving for India, Bhabha had applied for a
Reader’s position at Liverpool, but was not selected.
Bhabha was willing to teach in England, but not in India.

48.  He was a beneficiary of the British University system and
was ready to become part of it. But he would not extend a
similar courtesy to an Indian University.
• As TIFR director, Bhabha could comfortably deal with
people whom he had inducted into his own social club.
• It would be tempting to speculate on the impact an
aristocratic Bhabha would have made on the rank and file of
Indian students in a classroom and vice versa.

49. • Incidentally, we have it on the testimony of a leading nuclear
scientist of the time, Otto Robert Frisch (1904-1979), that at the
time of his return to India in 1939 Bhabha did not know how to
use a Geiger counter, the most elementary gadget in
experimental nuclear science.
• He however knew the significance of the new emerging field.
• Early 1946, CSIR set up an advisory Atomic Research
Committee under the chairmanship of Bhabha, which eventually
led to the formation of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).

50. • Bhabha is important on two distinct fronts.
• He initiated India’s foreign-policy related big science, and
he changed the social setting of fundamental research.
• Bhabha headed both TIFR and AEC which thus enjoyed a
symbiotic relationship. And yet, they were guided by
different philosophies.

51. • While the atomic establishment was to be self-contained
with its own rigorous manpower training programme, TIFR
was to be integrated socially and intellectually with the
West.
• It is as if the Trombay Bhabha was distinct from the Colaba
Bhabha

52.  Bhabha insisted at least with the TIFR senior faculty that they come in
a tie. Those without it were expected to avoid high visibility.
 Two separate canteens, aptly designated the west canteen and the east
canteen, were constructed for the upper crust and the lower crust
respectively. The European cuisine of the west canteen immediately
became the talk of the town.
 In Bhabha’s time chapati and rice were banned from the west canteen.
In a minor concession after Bhabha’s death, rice has been permitted,
but chapati still remains forbidden.

53. • At the professional level, TIFR had some very
constructive features.
• Bhabha believed in identifying persons and building
institutions around them.
• In contrast, CSIR first built buildings and then
scrambled to fill the posts.
• At least in the early years, TIFR offered higher salaries
than elsewhere in India.

54. • Bhabha’s greatest asset however was that he lay outside the
caste hierarchy and beyond regional or linguistic parochialism.
• He could thus build a truly Indian institution.
• Contrast this with the situation in the sisterly Indian Institute of
Science Bangalore, where ‘early in 1943, there was a serious
agitation by students against the construction of a common dining
hall, since they preferred the already existing four different
messes which were run almost on a regional basis.’

55. Mentoring
• An important difference between the university system
and the lab/institute system needs to be mentioned. In the
pre-career advancement era, once a person became
professor, there was no professional peak left to be
scaled. A professor could happily take up the role of
mentoring students and junior colleagues.

56. • In the lab/institute system, a scientist has always a higher pay
scale to aspire for. He may thus be more interested in
strengthening his own cv rather than that of his junior
colleagues.

57. INTERNATIONAL PHASE
• During this phase, at least in the earlier part, nation
building was a recurrent theme. Attempts at
industrialization, reverse engineering, irrigation dams,
agricultural production, strategic science, health-care and
desire for expansion of science and engineering all placed
science (including technology and engineering) in a
pivotal place.
• This rubbed onto basic scientific research also.

58.  Generally speaking, research in the International Phase was of
lesser quality than in the Nationalist Phase.
 This is understandable because in the interim science had
developed faster than India had.
 Indian science depended on foreign collaboration and visits; and
had an eye on the man-power needs of post-war West.
 Yet, it fitted in with the national desire to harness science for
economic development and as an instrument of national prestige.

59. • Although political power now vested in elected
representatives, the distance between them and the
middle class was still small.
• The distance has since increased to such an extent that
middle class has largely lost whatever sense of national
obligation it had cherished earlier.

60. GLOBALIZATION PHASE
 Globalization has transformed Indian economy as well as
the Indian middle class. Acting short-sightedly, India has
neglected agriculture and manufacture and focused on
service sector.
 Since the service sector is manifestly science-less, the
value of science in education and daily life has declined.

61. • Thus paradoxically while our dependence and fascination for new
technology has gone up, respect for science itself has gone down.
If the economy of a country becomes derivative, so will its
culture.
• Globalization has introduced Upper Class India to a consumerist
lifestyle that is beyond the intrinsic strength of Indian economy.
This lifestyle can only be maintained by servicing the Western
economy. Upper-class children therefore will generally be not
interested in a career in science, at least in India.

62. • Our state education system should rigorously train boys and
girls coming from socially disadvantaged sections, for
whom a science-related career in universities, defence,
national labs, public sector undertakings, etc., would be a
social step upward and would therefore be enthusiastically
accepted.

63. • Personally, I would like to judge a country not by the
quality of its researchers but by the quality of its
teachers.
• As things stand, a typical Indian B.Sc. does not know
enough science to be able to teach it at school .

64. • Science cannot flourish in a society whose economy does
not require science. The purpose of science is to produce
wealth and improve quality of life. The purpose of this
wealth is to support science.
• This symbiotic relationship needs to be established
because a country cannot sustain science as a purely
cultural activity for an extended period of time.

65. • If science is to survive, leave aside flourish, in India, it must
play a leading role in GDP.
• At the same time, fruits of rigorous state education should be
made available to those whose parents did not enjoy these
fruits.

66. Science belongs to its harnessers not its
worshippers.

67. Thank you