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.

1. Inaugural Address at National Seminar on Scientists who Dared anda
made the Difference, Asiatic Society, Kolkata, 3 March 2015
Modern science in Bengal:
Cultivation and early
accomplishments
Rajesh Kochhar
President IAU Commission 41: History of Astronomy
Hon. Prof., Panjab University, Mathematics Department, Chandigarh
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, Punjab
rkochhar2000@yahoo.com

2. 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.

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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

20. 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.

21. 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.

23. 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.

24. 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.’

25. 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’.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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.’

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. 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.

36. 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.

37. 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

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. 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

42. 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.

43. 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

44. 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’ .

45. 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.

46. 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.

47. 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’.

48. 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

49. 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.

50. 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.

51. 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:

52. ‘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.

53. 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.

54. 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.

55. 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.

56. 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.

57. 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.

58. 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.

59. 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

60. 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!

61. 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.

62. 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.

63. 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.

64. 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.//

65. Thank you