India was the first country outside the Western world to take to modern science. Within India the lead came from Bengal. JC Bose and PC Ray are the non-West’s first modern scientists. MN Saha’s and SN Bose’s theoretical contributions are fundamental and at the Nobel-prize level. The first Nobel science prize to go outside the West went to the physicist CV Raman for his work in Calcutta. Normally, an activity begins modestly, reaches a peak, declines somewhat and settles on a plateau. Indian science started at the top and had no place to go except downwards. India had an early start but it frittered away the advantage. It would be instructive to find out what happened.

1. Bangiya Bijnan Parishad National-Level Seminar
on the occasion of 125th birth anniversary of Prof SN Bose
Kolkata 24-25 March 2018
Bengal and Modern Science:
Beginnings, accomplishments, and shortcomings
Rajesh Kochhar
Panjab University Mathematics Department
Chandigarh
rkochhar2000@gmail.com

2. India was the first country outside the Western
world to take to modern science. Within India the
lead came from Bengal. JC Bose and PC Ray are
the non-West’s first modern scientists. MN Saha’s
and SN Bose’s theoretical contributions are
fundamental and at the Nobel-prize level. The first
Nobel science prize to go outside the West went to
the physicist CV Raman for his work in Calcutta.
Normally, an activity begins modestly, reaches a
peak, declines somewhat and settles on a plateau.
Indian science started at the top and had no place
to go except downwards. India had an early start
but it frittered away the advantage. It would be
instructive to find out what happened.

3. A number of factors facilitated Bengal’s
early pre-eminence in science. Calcutta with
its vast hinterland was enthusiastic about
English education from the very beginning.
In Bengal the old landed aristocracy was
destroyed and its place taken by a new
mercantile class which owed its wealth and
social prestige to the British, and which now
projected itself as patrons of new learning.
Since Calcutta was the imperial capital,
colonial interest and investment in western
education were much higher here than
elsewhere.

4. The British were in general not interested in the
scientific development of India, but a small
exception had to be made in the case of chemistry
because of its role in commerce, administration
and good governance. From the colonialists’ point
of view mint was the first institution where
chemical knowledge was required.
Half-hearted attempts were made to introduce
science education under colonial and missionary
auspices. In 1824 the foreman of the Calcutta
mint, David Ross, was additionally appointed
professor of chemistry at Hindu College.

5. The experiment however was a failure because
the professor’s own knowledge did not go beyond
soda. In any case, it is not clear what use Indian
students would have been put to if they had
learnt chemistry.
In July 1823, the British India Society in London
presented a large collection of scientific
instruments along with a ‘considerable number of
books on scientific subjects’ for use at the
{Government} Sanskrit College Calcutta, which
came into existence in 1824. The instruments
included a telescope; terrestrial and celestial
globes; and lab and workshop apparatus. The
books included Ure's Chemical Dictionary, and
Mackenzie's 1,000 Chemical Experiments.

6. The government was even ready to appoint a
lecturer or a professor, but expecting the pandits
enrolled at the College for Sanskrit to show
enthusiasm for European scientific gadgetry and
literature was an exercise in naïveté. If the books
and the apparatus had been preserved, even if
not used, they would have been priceless
museum pieces.
Chemistry in Bengali
A Christian Mission was set up at Serampore (the
Danish enclave near Calcutta) in 1800 by the
famed trio, Carey, Marshman, and Ward.
Serampore College, opened in 1818, was
primarily meant for Christian youth but admitted
others as well.

7. The missionaries were very keen ‘to allure the
natives to the love of natural science’. Rev. John
Mack (1797-1845) was hand-picked in Britain
for the College and sent to Edinburgh University
for further studies in natural philosophy,
especially Chemistry as preparation for his
Indian assignment. He arrived in September
1821 and set up a well-equipped science lab. He
would serve as Principal from 1837 till death in
1845. Mack taught geography at the college and
prepared the first ever map in Bengali as a
class-room aid.
For his course on chemistry he prepared
notes with scientific content derived from
well known authors of the day such as
Murray, Henry, Brande, Ure, and Turner.

8. Twice he gave lectures in English at Calcutta in a
room belonging to the Asiatic Society. The hope
was ‘that such a Course of Lectures’ ‘would tend
to interest the minds of the wealthy and
intelligent among the Natives’, ‘especially if they
saw’ it ‘attended by respectable Europeans, whose
example they so much regard’. Indians may have
attended the lectures because Europeans were
attending them. But, most Indians would not have
followed the language. Also the enthusiasm which
the India-based Europeans presumably showed
for Western science would have left Indians at
large untouched.

9. A short-lived Calcutta periodical The Trifler wrote
on 14 December 1823 that on one occasion Mack
failed to freeze water and to produce light.
However, ‘Among the several performances of the
evening the produce of steam by sulphuric acid
and that of brilliant and change of other colours
were attended by success’.
Mack’s class-room lectures at Serampore were in Bengali
and English. The course was repeated a number of times,
giving Mack an opportunity to continually revise his
notes. Finally in 1834 Mack published his lecture notes as
Principles of Chemistry, Volume 1. He hoped to bring out
the second volume on metals and organic chemistry, but
that never saw the light of the day.

10. In 1834 itself a 337-page bilingual edition was
brought out with English and Bengali texts on
facing pages with the Bengali version being
called Kimiya Bidyara Sara. In an appendix, the
book gave an account of the steam engine.
In the obituary of William Carey’s son Felix Carey it was
recorded that he carried out ‘Translation into the
Bengalee language of a Chemical Work, by the Rev. John
Mack…; the work is partly brought through the press’.
This statement has been repeated by latter authors, but
it cannot be true in its entirety.

11. Mack’s book including the Bengali version was
published 11 years after Felix Carey’s death.
During this period Mack kept on revising the
text. It is likely that Felix was involved in the
translation of an early draft of Mack’s notes,
and subsequent revisions were carried out by
Mack himself. Nowhere else except in Felix Carey’s
obituary is his role in translation mentioned.
Those were the days when education was no more
than a means of gaining employment. Did the students
benefit from the course? There were four categories of
students at Serampore College.

12. It is unlikely that ‘native Christians’ or ‘natives
not Christians’ would have found the course
useful. The Europeans (with both parents
White), half-castes, and boys of Portuguese
extraction might have benefited, but no details
are available. In any case, after the death of the
last of the trio Joshua Marshman, in 1837, the
College ‘dwindled down’.
While Serampore missionary work on Sanskrit and
Bengali won appreciation, their efforts in science do not
seem to have made any large-scale or wide-spread
impact. It was too early for general science
education. Also since the missionaries packaged
Christianity and western science together, people
tended to reject the entire package.

15. The only place where science was successfully
taught was the Calcutta Medical College (estd
1835). Dr Mahendralal Sircar who obtained
his MD in 1863 but became a homeopath four
years later was the first Indian public figure to
appreciate the value of modern science. In
December 1869 Sircar mooted the idea of the
Indian Association for the Cultivation of
Science. The prospectus was issued in
January 1870 asking for subscriptions and
donations; and the institution finally opened
on 29 July 1876 after a campaign that lasted
six and a half long uneven years.

16. The 1870s were conflicting times for Bengal. After
fifty years of English education there were now a
significant number of well-educated, articulate,
bright young men who could look the empire in
the eye and who wanted a community leadership
role by displacing the landed class. On its part the
government for its own reasons was keen to
reform the extant municipal corporations. The
1876 Act which allowed for elections to the
Calcutta Municipal Corporation saw the formation
of the new-middle class political organizations;
Indian League ( set up 25 September 1875) and
Indian Association ( 26 July 1876).The people
involved in the latter were also supporters of
Sircar; hence the similarity in names.

17. Sircar’s 1870 prospectus was the first ever
Initiative for a middle-class organization.
Remarkably it was in the name of science. He was
the first person to employ the Aryan race theory,
which so far had been used to legitimize the
British rule, from an Indian point of view.
Sircar argued that ‘The Hindu mind’ ‘has lost much or its
original Aryan vigor and energy’. ‘[T]he only method’ … by
which it can be ‘developed to its full proportions is… by
the cultivation of the Physical Sciences’. Even though the
Indians were ‘now fallen and degraded’, still they were the
‘brethren’ of the English. The English should now ‘take us
by hand’ and elevate us ‘in the scale of nations’.

18. It is however not clear what type of help Sircar
expected from the British. Because at the same
time he asserted that ‘we wish that this Institution
be entirely under native management and control’
so that ‘we may begin to learn the value of self-
reliance without any serious risk’.
Since the pre-eminent position that the West enjoyed was
because of science, it had vibrant science organizations.
Sircar wished a similar success for his Association. But his
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.

19. 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.
Science Association was instrumental in
compelling the Calcutta University to introduce
science subjects in FA and BA examinations. It
also made Bengalis in general aware of modern
scientific developments. The Bengali youth now
came to appreciate the value of science as a
career option in addition to public service or law.

20. A number of Indians availed of Gilchrist
scholarships (instituted in 1869) to go to UK for
studies, but only Bengalis chose basic science:
Aghorenath Chattopadhyay (1871 scholar),
Pramatha Nath Bose (1874), and PC Ray (1882)
both had a distinguished career. In 1880 JC Bose
went to England on his family money to begin
with.
The fact that Science Association was the lab for Raman’s
Noble prize work has created such great dazzle that an
objective study of the Association has become well nigh
impossible. It should be kept in mind that the prize came
50 years after the establishment of the Association, and
that Raman could easily have missed it.

21. Sircar was at the helm of affairs of the Association
as its Secretary from its inception till his death in
1904. Sadly, he died a disappointed man.
The momentum that the issuance of Prospectus
had generated in early 1870 had vanished by
1873. No subscription or donation was received in
1874. What revived Association’s fortunes was his
meeting with the Lieutenant- Governor Richard
Temple on 10 March 1875. (The meeting was
probably arranged by Fr Eugene Lafont, professor
at St Xavier’s College.) Sircar claimed that Temple
had supported his project. This can be true only to
the extent that he did not reject it outright.

22. The relationship between the colonial government
and the native leadership had already become
quite complex. The government was wary of
opposing a cause that seemed to command public
support. Public support in turn was forthcoming if
the government seemed to be positively inclined.
By the 1870s the government was seriously
concerned with what it called the quasi-disloyal
discontent among the Bengali educated youth
which arose because of their having been
imparted law and literature oriented liberal
education. The remedy lay in starting polytechnics
which would create employment and in addition
ensure the middle class’ dependence on the
Europeans.

23. The Lt-Gov chose to operate through the Indian
League leaders. It is not that they were genuinely
interested in large-scale skill development. They
were supporting the Lt-Gov because they were
opposing the Indian Association.
The supporters of Association overwhelmingly
rejected the polytechnic idea on the ground that
this would ‘transform the Hindus into a number of
mechanics requiring for ever European
supervision’. If the Indians drawn from the artisan
castes had been consulted, they would not have
minded European supervision for one or two
generations as a price for the upgrade of their
traditional skills. But the Indian leadership was in
the hands of the upper castes well known for their

24. It had taken them two generations of study of
western law and literature to claim equality with
the rulers. They wanted science to be cultivated at
the same level with support from and as an
extension of the British effort.
Not giving up, the Lt-Gov Richard Temple tried through the
Indian League to muster independent public support for
polytechnics, but such support was not forthcoming.
The government now fell in line. It purchased a suitable
building (for Rs 40000), and made it available free of
charge to the Association. It is noteworthy that the
government saw the Association as a science college.

25. As the Annual Report on Public Instruction for
1875-76 in Bengal put it (para 451): ‘The objects
of the institution are to provide lectures of a
superior kind in science, especially general
physics, chemistry and geology, mainly for
students who have already passed through
school or college or have otherwise attained
some proficiency in these respects’.
Hindu College had started as a private body but six years
later accepted government control by accepting grant-in-
aid. But retrogressively, the Science Association began as
a government aided body but chose to go private four
years later.

26. In 1881, the Association purchased the premises
from the government for Rs 30000. This meant
the end of any government control or supervision
and the transformation of the Association into a
private club. It was decided to spend another
15000 rupees to construct a 500-capacity lecture
theatre and a tower the upper part of which
would house an astronomical observatory.
Rajendralal Mitra the Vice-president resigned his
office in protest, rightly arguing that the amount
should be utilized to create lecturerships. Sircar
had hoped that he would be able to raise more
money for faculty positions but that was not to
be. The course of science in India would have been
different if Sircar had got his priorities right.

27. (The government monitoring was restored half a
century later in 1935 when a government
representative was provided with a seat on the
management council in return for an assured
government grant.)
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.

28. 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. He
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 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
hand decorated with a ring and won a
photography prize for the effort.

29. Sporadic scientific work was carried out in the
Association labs by Dr Sarasi Lal Sarkar, Assistant
Chemical Examiner to the Government of Bengal;
and under Dr Chunilal Bose. The 19th century
Calcutta however failed to produce a full-time
researcher. To sum up so far:
 Given the caste composition of the Hindu
leadership, no support was forthcoming for
industrial education or skill development which
the government was keen to promote for its
own reasons.

30.  Even in the framework of pure science there
were mis-steps. Benefit of government aid was
refused in 1881 and whatever corpus the
institution had built was squandered on
buildings rather than be prudently used for
teaching and lab work. If Science Association
had continued as a government-aided science
college (like Hindu College) it would have gone
from strength to strength.
Modern scientific research was initiated in the
1890s at Presidency College Calcutta by UK-trained
physical scientists.

31. Science at Presidency College: J.C. Bose and P.C.
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. Jagadis passed the natural science
Tripos examination from Cambridge University in
1884. One of his teachers was Lord Rayleigh who
remained his life-long well-wisher. In 1884 or 1885
‘without further work’ he additionally obtained BSc
degree from London University.

32. Returning home in 1885 he was appointed a
professor in Presidency College Calcutta in the
superior grade, otherwise reserved for Europeans,
on personal intervention by Lord Ripon and to
the great annoyance of his immediate superiors.
Presidency College at the time had a well-
equipped library, but no physics lab worth the
name. In 1894 JC Bose set up a lab of his own,
hired a tinsmith and began his experiments with
short wave -length radio waves. His guide was a
little book written by Oliver Lodge which
‘provided very simple and precise instructions’
whereby radio ‘detectors could readily be
duplicated, even by unskilled hands’.

33. The results that Jagadis Bose obtained were
quick, spectacular and beyond his own wildest
imagination. He presented his first results at the
Asiatic Society which published them in the May
1895 issue of its Journal. According to his
colleague Ray ‘It appears that he had not then
realized the importance of the new line of
research he had hit upon’.
Bose sent a reprint to Rayleigh who immediately
saw its worth and got it republished in The
Electrician (Ray 1932 I: 153). Thus encouraged
Bose launched into a phase of inspired activity
that lasted only 5-6 years but produced a
substantial body of well recognized work on the
optical properties of radio waves.

34. Bose’s innovation was at two levels. He worked
with waves of extremely short wavelengths. For
this ‘he had to invent a large number of new
apparatus and instruments’, all ‘distinguished by
simplicity, directness, and ingenuity’
Bose’s second innovation was more fundamental,
driven as it was by ecology. 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.

35. In 1901, Dr Alexander Muirhead, 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
USA 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.

36. 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.
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.

37. But at the time India was looking for a counter-
example and not a role model in the Western
mold.
Enthused by the praise heaped on Jagadis by The
Times London and others, Rabindranath Tagore
whose own world fame was still into the future
wrote to Bose 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’. In the
heyday of European colonialism it would not
cross anybody’s mind to ask why God had to
operate through the West.
With poetic excess, in 1901 itself Tagore wrote a
poem in Bengali, titled To Jagadishchandra Bose,
which dramatically opened with the lines:

38. ‘Young image of what old Rishi of Ind/Art thou, O
Arya savant, Jagadis?
Production of wealth through science was not part
of national consciousness; new learning as a
revival of the ancient glory and Western
recognition were. As it is, Bose abandoned radio
physics altogether after a few years 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.

39. Creativity wise P.C. Ray’s 1895 discovery of
mercurous nitrite though immediately hailed in the
West was not in the same league as Bose’s radio
work. His personal researches however remained
sustained and focused. Thanks to his well-rounded
personality and an institutional laboratory at his
disposal he went on to found an internationally
recognized school of chemistry, and also set up
chemical and pharmaceutical industry.
Ray had the advantage that chemistry was already
well-established in the College. Alexander Pedler
had joined the College as chemistry professor as
early as 1874 and built a lab.

40. Very far-sightedly, PCRay while returning from
Edinburgh after his DSc brought with him the plans
of their new lab. Ray’s own work and the
establishment of school were made possible by
their having a world-class lab to work in.
As a mild digression the following documented
story may be noted. Pedler used to get imported
wine bottles from traders for chemical tests for
which he was paid Rs 32 per bottle. He kept the
money and passed on the bottle and the task to his
lab assistant. He in turn enjoyed the contents of
the bottle except for a small sample which was
passed on to a guest student for testing. Everyone
was happy.

41. The professor got the money, the assistant got to
drink good wine, and the visiting student gained
valuable practical experience.
While Ray is justly hailed for his nationalist
approach, for the sake of completeness it must be
kept in mind that ER Watson set up a flourishing
chemistry school at Dacca University under
colonial auspices.
Transformation of Calcutta University into a
research centre under Sir Asutosh Mookerjee’s
leadership is well known.

42. Interestingly, it was a physician (sircar) and a
barrister/judge (Asutosh) who were able to raise
funds for science .
-
Also well known is the scientific contribution of
Saha and SN Bose. I would now confine myself to
a few comments by way of conclusion.

43. In the early days of modern science, cutting edge
research was just a short step ahead of MSc-level
studies, and its infrastructural requirements were
so modest that they were available at the level of a
college lab. At the same time there was a national
desire to show the world. All these factors
disappeared as time progressed.
Critique
Even at the best of times, Indian science was
never self-assessing. It has always looked up to
the West for support, encouragement and
recognition. This may have been understandable
during colonial times, when India’s own science
community was small, but the phenomenon has
persisted.

44. SN Bose’s name is immortalized in the term
‘Boson’ which is now textbook stuff. What more
honour can a scientist aspire for? Bose was a
Reader at Dacca University, when he published his
path-breaking paper. As a candidate for Professor’s
post, he was advised by his friends and well-
wishers to obtain a letter of recommendation from
Einstein, which was considered necessary because
Bose did not have a doctorate. Einstein was
astonished that even after the world recognition
Bose could need his personal recommendation.
Einstein, of course, did as he was asked. This part
of the story is well known. What is not is the fact
that even after his authorship of the Bose-Einstein
statistics and Einstein’s testimonial, he was not
selected for the post.

45. The Professorship was offered to DM. Bose and
Satyen Bose was placed on the waiting list. Since
DM Bose declined the offer, Satyen got the
Professorship in 1927.
On the creation of East Pakistan, he was
transferred to Calcutta University. In the early
1950s, when the celebrated British physicist Paul
Dirac visited India, he found to his horror that
Bose was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. Such
a glaring omission showed the Society in poor
light. Dirac promptly arranged to have Bose
elected as a Fellow, in 1958. Interestingly, at the
time, there were already a number of Indian
Fellows, but none of them chose to propose
Bose’s name.

46. We have here at work what we may call the
Sultan’s Harem Syndrome. Inmates of a harem
compete with one another to catch the eye of the
Sultan. In the case of the scientists, the Sultan is
the West.
There is a clear lesson from Indian experience.
High-quality science cannot be sustained as a
purely cultural activity
The main function of science is to create wealth
and improve quality of life. The duty of this wealth
is to support science. If

47. such a symbiotic relationship does not emerge,
science will not flourish. For some time after
independence, sciencewas considered to be the
instrument of nation building. However, in the
globalization era, India’s economic growth is being
driven by the services sector, which is manifestly
science-less. That is why not only interest in
science but also respect for science has gone
down.
West Bengal seems to be the solitary 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

48. The roots of this trend go back to the advent and
early growth of modern science in Bengal./
_________________
1. Marshman, JC (1823) Third Report relative to
Serampore College for the year ending 31 December
1822 (London: Cox and Baylis), pp. 6-7.
2. Baptist Quarterly (1969) Vol. 23, p. 74.
3. Asiatic Journal 1823 Vol. 15, p. 529.
4. Nowhere else except in Felix Carey’s obituary is his role
in translation mentioned.