The one thing that must be disappointing many Indians while watching National Geography, Discovery Science , Animal Planet, Discovery channels is the absence of Indians? One may find many Indian doctors, scientists working in USA/ UK appearing on these channels but India is missing. Obviously the question then arises ; Are the Indians not doing any Research work ? If No, then why not? At times it appears ridiculous to watch an European doing research on the behavior pattern of Indian monkeys.
Science always been embedded in Indian Society.
Whether it was the-old Charaka Samhita or Sulbasutras of Baudhayana, or Sushruta Samhita or Pancha-siddhantika of Varahmira, or Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta of Brahmagupta, or Bhaskara I ‘s Mahābhāskarīya” and the the Jantar Mantars of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, science and technology has always been deeply embedded in the larger fabric of India well before British or even Muslims came to India.
There is a huge list of scientific achievements by ancient Indian scientists; calculating near accurate value of Pi(π). Calculating square root, Ayurveda, plastic surgery, calculating the orbits of planets, and scientifically explaining the Solar and lunar eclipses, phenomenon now called the Raman scattering, The Chandrashekhar effect, and discovering that Plants are living beings. Its not a mean achievement for a civilization.
Indian scientists have been engaged in science and contributing to the understanding of the natural world well before the Scientific Revolution that began in Europe in 1543.
Stagnation Due to Confirmists
Yet we were surprised by the artillery guns of Babur because we had none, we were surprised by the integration of artillery with cavalry by the British and looked at the muskets of that British Jhonny in awe.
Perhaps after a thousands of years of dynamism, the civilization on this land lost its steam and started stagnating, Nehruji in his book ; The Discovery of India talked about this stagnation. He said ; A small country might easily be overwhelmed by superior power, but a huge, well developed and highly civilised country like India can not succumb to external attack unless there is some internal decay which was clearly evident in India. He further emphasises that Shankracharya was the last greatest philospher(800AD) and Bhaskara II (12the century) was the last great Mathematician that this land produced. The Vedic Civilisation had lost its vigour and the political decline and cultural stagnation was quite visible by 8th century.
By the time Ghazni’s raids began, India had stopped producing scientists, scholars and philosophers and it was only producing the conformists, who would arrogantly and doggedly hold on to the glorious past but producing nothing new. So, its no wonder that Alberuni in his account about Indians mentioned that Indians are obstinate, stolid and stupid as they think theirs is the best king, theirs is the best culture , best science ….
So, once we lost the Political freedom there was no way the Indians could get back to the old ways of inventing and innovating.
The Advent of New Era.
Centuries of darkness that made the Indians lose their sense of inquisitiveness and enquiry once again rekindled after Independence when within one decade 32 new educational and scientific establishments were set up that are serving as model institutions today.
Besides the creation of research labs and infrastructure what was more important was to rekindle that lost sense of inquisitiveness and enquiry which was at display when Vedas were written.
That’s why Nehruji talked of encouraging a Scientific temper. For him Scientific temper was a way of life — an individual and social process of thinking and acting which uses a scientific method ; questioning, observing reality, testing, hypothesizing and analysing.” For him Science was not about studying Physics, Chemsitry, it was more to do with the Attitude and a sense of Inquisitiveness.
Why was this scientific temperament important ?
To answer this we need to go back to 1900s and understand a little bit about the society that existed then.
Gandhiji’s community had excommunicated him as he had travelled abroad. In September 1888, Mohandas Gandhi, then just short of his 20th birthday, decided to go over seas to study law. This horrified his orthodox community, whose head warned Mohandas that he would be excommunicated if he travelled overseas. But the boy defied him and went anyway. In the days before his departure, recalled Gandhiji in his autobiography, he was “hemmed in by all sides. I could not go out without being pointed and stared at by someone or other. At one time, while I was walking near the Town Hall, I was surrounded and hooted by them, and my poor brother had to look at the scene in silence”.
Dr Ambedkar himself, hailing from the 'untouchable' caste of Mahars in Maharashtra, was a social outcast in his early days. Even in his school, he was treated as an 'untouchable.' And his schoolmates would not eat beside him, his teachers did not touch his copies as he came from a family of low caste.
If this casteism and discrimination still exists in some parts of our society be it rural or urban , imagine what would be the situation way back some 80-100 years ago.
Therefore, science is not only about studying Physics and Chemistry but it is more about having a scientific temperament of questioning beliefs and traditions. That’s what Nehruji emphasised.
The term “scientific temper” might appear to some as peculiar but when considered deeply, is not new to Indian ethos. Mr Sashi Tharoor in his book ; Why I am a Hindu says that He is a Hindu because it is intellectual fit, implying that it encourages enquiry .
In view of the social evils, superstitions that had crept into our society, over a journey of some thousand years, it was necessary for the leadership to once again bring us back to the path of enquiry as our ancestors were who wrote Vedas and Upanishads. The aim was not to get back to Vedas or Upanishads but to develop that sense of inquisitiveness and enquiry that those great men who wrote Vedas displayed.
Therefore, Nehru’s vision of scientific temper should be seen in the context of understanding of science and religion for a better appreciation. Science has made it possible to view traditional beliefs in a new light based on facts. Religion, in its narrow sense discourage people in understanding natural processes rationally. One should not accept tradition simply because it is tradition. Nehru wanted scientists and Engineers to play more active role in spreading scientific temper in the country. Nehru’s legacy of scientific temper got reflected in its incorporation as a fundamental duty of every citizen in Indian constitution.
His speech given at the convocation ceremony of IIT Kharagpur, is a testimony of that belief, He said ;
Here in the place of that Hijli detention camp of British stands this fine monument of India. This picture seems to me symbolic of changes that are coming to India. Now you are Engineers and this world today...takes shape more and more under the hands of Engineers. The time has now come when the Engineer plays an infinitely greater role than anybody else. In fact, the division between administrator and engineer would gradually fade away because the major work of the country today deals with...engineering schemes of various types. We are building up a new India and the administrator who is completely ignorant of engineering does not help much in administering. This was already true of more technologically developed countries, where "engineers and scientists play a far more important role even outside their sphere of engineering and science." Given the precedent they had set, Nehruji concluded, "that is bound to happen in India also."
Nehru's pronouncement of engineering as the new technology of nation-building heralded its importance in building new India.
All this that he did, did not happen, without opposition as they kept questioning him as to why is he wasting money on setting up Research Facilities and Science Institutions. In her interesting book, Growing the Tree of Science, Indira Chowdhury mentions that at the stone laying ceremony of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (in 1954), Nehruji addressed a gathering of scientists and commoners and said;
“Lots of people ask me, why such an emphasis is being put on science and why so much money is being spent? The big countries have more power while our country has remained poor….If we wish to empower our country, which is now independent, we have to create a strong base–so we can learn the basics…This may not show immediate results but finally result in the uplift of the country.”
In 1939 the then Indian National Congress appointed a National Planning committee and invited the Indian scientists ; MN Shah, Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar and JC Ghosh for a serious thinking on post war organization that can help India in its scientific and technological growth. Under this National Planning committee almost 29 other expert subcommittees were formed to address areas like Energy, communication, agriculture, industries etc. Nehruji later on wrote describing ; How one led to another and how each subject was interrelated to each other and how it was impossible to progress on one aspect without taking the other ahead. Nothing could be done in isolation.( NEHRU AND DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE IN INDIA by Debashis Mandal)
On December 26, 1937. In his address Nehruji said:
“It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people.”
India which has in its long history of 5000 years or may be more has seen ups and downs and when we look back we find that development of science and technology is not a process that takes place in isolation, but it is shaped by a socio-economic and political structure and needs of the society. Institutionalizing scientific and technological activities is a lengthy process which needs financial support and also depends on the kind of Govt. Earlier it depended on the King and now on the democratically elected Govt.
The Emergence of New India.
The country that we got in 1947 from the British colonisers had a huge paucity of infrastructure meant to harness science to benefit the society at large. New-born India had to therefore build the necessary infrastructure from scratch. Nehruji brought in important scientists of the time and gave them freedom in setting up institutes which subsequently became temples of India’s scientific research. Some of the greatest names of the time, including Homi J Bhabha, Sir C.V. Raman, Satish Dhawan, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, J.C. Ghosh, Meghnad Saha and S.S. Bhatnagar, were given a free hand in establishing the country’s best institutes of scientific learning.
His untiring efforts and determination led to the creation of the 5 iconic Indian Institutes of Technology in Kharagpur (1950), Bombay (1958), Madras (1959), Kanpur (1959), and Delhi (1961),induct the greatest scientific names of the times into nation-building ; Vikram Sarabhai, Sir C V Raman, Homi J Bhabha, Sathish Dhawan, S S Bhatnagar and many others who were allowed to run the premium institutes of scientific learning and research.
His limitless tenacity enabled in creating bureaucracies into engines of scientific advancement best exemplified by the creation of Department of Atomic Energy (1954), the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (1954), the Physical Research Laboratory (1947), Indian Space Research Organisation (1962), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (1942).
In addition to above, Under the stewardship of Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar, the National Chemical Laboratory, the National Physical Laboratory, the Fuel Research Station, the Glass & Ceramics Research Institute and the National Metallurgical Laboratory were set up.
Like any other Leader Nehruji also had his share of detractors then, who brought in Pseudo-nationalism to subvert the scientific mission ; Bhartiya Science. He responded to them “Science has no frontiers. Nobody needs to categorise Science as ; English science, French science, Chinese Science ... Science is bigger than the countries, There is no such thing as Indian science”.
Today the same IITs , the TIFR, IISc, Atomic Energy Commission, ISRO, National Physical Laboratory etc are serving the Nation and have brought laurels to the country.
All these reforms in the world , that have come over a period of hundreds of years ; women having voting rights, end of monarchy and emergence of democracy, courts, legal system, social reforms like end of sati and opposition to caste system, end of slavery in western world, concept of equal rights and so on have come in our lives not because of Confirmists but because some determined people Who questioned the past norms and practices and thought differently. We have reached moon because some questioned and had the desire to reach there otherwise had the conformists had their way we would have still been serving the Kings, happy calling Moon as Chanda mama and believing that scar on the moon ; an old woman spinning a wheel.
Cultivating a scientific outlook should be part of the educated individual’s personal development, it is also a social cause; it is a public duty, not confined to scientists, to help society to think and act in ways that is rational and progressive.
India’s Achievements.
Although India as a nation has many achievements up its sleeve in recent years , But as a society, India is yet to achieve scientific temper that was envisioned in 1950s. Serious attempts should be made to remove the obstacles that undermine scientific temper. This can start happening only when Indian universities become hub of scientific invention. Science is not about just Physics and Chemistry even subjects like psychology and history need to be studied with a scientific temper.
Hence if we look at the situation that prevailed in 1900s, we have although come a long way and we have many achievements to show .
Although these individuals received Nobel award for the work they did in US, but they received initial education in India tells us that we have the finest brains but lack the right environment needed for research work.
Har Gobind Khorana was an American molecular biologist of Indian origin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in the year 1968 for his work on the interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis. He also receieved Distinguished Service Award, American academy of achievement awards, , Padma Vibhushan, Presidential Award, J C Bose Medal and Willard Gibbs medal of the Chicago section of American Chemical Society. He was also elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1971, he became a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and in 1974, an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Chemical Society.
C.V. Raman: He was one of the most famous scientists in India. He had done a pioneering work on scattering of light, C.V. Raman won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930. He was the first Asian and first non-White to receive any Nobel Prize in the sciences. Raman also worked on the acoustics of musical instruments. He was the first to investigate the harmonic nature of the sound of the Indian drums such as the tabla and the mridangam. He discovered that, when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called the Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman Effect.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar : He was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He did commendable work in astrophysics, physics and applied mathematics. Chandrasekhar has bestowed the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his mathematical theory of black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.
JC Bose. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was a biologist, physicist and a botanist and also a science fiction writer. is considered the father of Bengali science fiction, and also invented the crescograph, a device for measuring the growth of plants. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour. Bose made a number of pioneering discoveries in plant physiology. He used his own invention, the Crescograph, to measure plant response to various stimuli, and thereby scientifically proved parallelism between animal and plant tissues. During a public demonstration at Town Hall of Kolkata, in Nov 1894/95 Bose ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a distance using millimetre range wavelength microwaves. On 14 September 2012, Bose's experimental work in millimetre-band radio was recognised as an IEEE Milestone in Electrical and Computer Engineering, the first such recognition of a discovery in India.
At rank 48, India stands among the top 50 countries in the Global Innovation Index 2020.
A team of Indian astronomers has discovered an extremely large super cluster of galaxies. This is one of the largest known structures in the neighbourhood of the universe - as big as 20 million billion suns. It is a path-breaking discovery and the cluster has been named 'Saraswati'.
An atomic clock has made ISRO one of the few space organisations in the world to have gained this sophisticated technology. ISRO has developed an atomic clock that will be used in navigation satellites to measure precise location data. The space agency currently imports atomic clocks from European aerospace manufacturer Astrium.
ISRO demonstrated its capability of handling complex missions by successfully launching a record 104 satellites on a single rocket. This is the highest number of satellites ever launched in a single mission by any other country in the world.
It the country's heaviest rocket GSLV-Mk III whose cryogenic engine was developed indigenously. The rocket is described as a “game-changer” in the first of its kind space mission and is yet another major step towards being self reliant in the country’s space programme.
Rifath Sharook, an 18-year-old from Karur in Tamil Nadu, made history by designing the world's smallest satellite.The tiny 3D-printed satellite is called Kalamsat, after former President Abdul Kalam, and was flown by NASA into space in one of its missions.
PARAM - India’s first ever indigenous Super Computer was a major milestone in modern India’s technological journey. India faced a technology-denial regime in the 80s. It was then that the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) was set up with the clear mandate to develop an indigenous supercomputer to meet high-speed computational needs.
The Mars Orbiter Mission made India the only nation in the world to reach Mars in its first attempt.Mangalyaan-1, the indigenously built space probe marked India's first venture into the interplanetary space. It also made India first in Asia, and fourth in the world to reach the surface of Mars.
Chandrayaan-1, India's first lunar exploration mission, made it possible for ISRO to go beyond the Geostationary Orbit. With this mission, India emerged as the fourth country in the world to hoist its flag on a lunar surface. It also provided the needed thrust to basic science and engineering research in the country.
ISRO successfully test-fired its Scramjet Rocket Engine, a breakthrough technology in air-breathing propulsion.Air-breathing rocket systems use atmospheric oxygen from their surroundings, burn it with the stored fuel to produce a forward thrust in contrast to the conventional chemical rocket systems which carry both the oxygen and the fuel. The development of this high-technology system will go a big way in meeting India’s futuristic space transportation needs.
The successful demonstration of the use of cryogenic engine technology has put India among a league of only five other such nations.With the successful launch of GSLV-D5, India has gained the capability to launch heavy satellites without foreign assistance.
India's INSAT system is one of the largest domestic communication satellite systems owned by any country in the Asia-Pacific region. It initiated a major revolution in India’s communications sector. At present, it is serving several crucial sectors of our economy, including telecommunication, education, and meteorology.
Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) helped India realize its dream of having an independent satellite navigation capability. It has freed India from its dependence on navigation satellite systems operated by other countries. By all means, a home grown GPS system like IRNSS could serve as a strategic asset of tremendous significance for the military too.
Conclusion
It is once again the time to develop the same sense of inquisitiveness and enquiry and questioning and desire as was displayed in Rigveda (Rig Veda, X.129 1 );
“Who knows whence this creation had its origin?
whether He fashioned it or whether He did not,
He, who surveys it all from the highest heaven,
He knows—or maybe even He does not know.”