Abstract
Professor Indira Chowdhury has produced an excellent book that deals with institutionalisation of science in India in the era of transition from dependence to independence. It traces the evolution of an exceptional institute, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and the role and vision of its founder Homi Bhabha. This is no hagiography but a nuanced academic work based on archival data, personal interviews and an objective insight. Here, both individual memory and institutional memory coalesce. Thanks to a deft use of oral history, the book comes out with several ‘little histories’. The focus is not on meta-science but on science as practice and what doing science meant to the community involved in it.
The book begins with a useful prologue wherein not only the objectives are laid out and other biographical-cum-institutional accounts are briefly mentioned but also a personal note on how this pursuit began has been given. Someday, the author may like to publish her notebooks for the years 2002–2007 and this would be no less interesting. Chapter 1 begins with a scientist’s utopia which envisioned ‘a world that resembled a laboratory with permeable walls’. Scientific research and the resultant technologies were expected to fight poverty and disease. A ‘new brave world’ was imagined almost universally and the Indian scientists claimed their place and role. A colonial government, torn between two world wars, could give them only limited support. Fortunately, there was an industrial house of J.N. Tata which thought differently. At the turn of the century, it had established an institute of science at Bangalore and was known for philanthropy. Homi Bhabha was a close relative of the Tata family and the clan had seen in him ‘something unusual, to be proud of’. Here was a brilliant scientist struggling to house his ideas, and the Dorabji Tata Trust promptly agreed to support the initiative. It funded his Cosmic Ray Unit at Bangalore. Even in the midst of the strains of the Second World War, Bhabha was receiving accolades (an FRS at an exceptional investiture ceremony held in Delhi in 1944!). He now envisaged the creation of a school of theoretical research and experimental physics comparable to the best in the world.
Thus was born the TIFR in December 1945. It took almost a decade to find a proper and permanent place for the institute despite its founder’s personal friendship with Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. There was a huge disjunction between the dreams and the ground realities. Even after independence, Indian universities and institutions continued to remain in what a scholar calls ‘pre-research cultures’. The second chapter deals with Bhabha’s cosmopolitanism, his meticulous planning and creation of a unique institutional ethos. This account is almost uncritical. But in the third chapter one finds the tensions that normally surface in building a scientific community. Kosambi–Bhabha correspondences show this so clearly. Other than the questions of academic directions, this chapter tells also about the technological edge that the TIFR acquired during the 1950s. No wonder, it was the first institute in India to build its own computer. But this was also the period when Bhabha as a theoretical physicist had virtually ‘given up on new research’. He was no longer ‘doing science’, he was now ‘building for science’. Full responsibility of the Atomic Energy Establishment at Trombay took him further away from fundamental research and even the TIFR itself. Harnessing atomic energy was now his passion. The author has left this part of Bhabha relatively neglected, may be because this book is more about TIFR than any other institution. One wonders, there should have been a separate chapter devoted to Bhabha and the Atomic Energy Commission. But the story moves to the international networks in which Bhabha obviously excelled. This networking helped the students of TIFR to visit big laboratories abroad, and bring home new techniques. It also helped find young recruits for the upcoming nuclear tasks. An ‘invisible college’ had grown around Bhabha. But in this enterprise, as was the practice those days, female scholars were left out. The author has mentioned the case of Bibha Chowdhury who was not regarded as ‘a first class physicist’ even though she had ‘almost discovered the Pi meson in her work in Calcutta’.
The chapter on international networks and institutional life is important and perhaps the best in the book because it brings forth the contributions of several budding and not-so-established scientists. It talks about not only cosmic ray physics which was Bhabha’s area but also how mathematics grew and how biophysics and molecular biology were introduced. In 1962, Bhabha invited a young Obaid Siddiqi and this had far-reaching consequences for modern biology in India. Similar role was played by Govind Swarup in radio astronomy. So much was happening at TIFR and as its renowned mathematician M.S. Narasimhan said, ‘Research is not just your own intelligence, it is not just the opportunities that are made available—it is the atmosphere.’ It is in the ambience that ‘the tree of science’ grows. Unfortunately, ‘the master gardener’ left early in a tragic plane crash, yet the legacy continues to inspire. Professor Chowdhury brings forth the predicaments as well and tries to provide a balanced account of Bhabha’s contribution and success, his vision and dilemmas, the birth-pangs and the maturation of an institution which is still looked upon with great pride and hope. For the benefit of non-science readers, she could have given some explanatory notes on certain concepts, such as ‘S-matrix approach’ or ‘bootstrap principle’ (p. 144). Also missing is how did the ordinary people look at big science and its practitioners. For example, was the Kosambi issue noticed by the English or Marathi press? Well, Nehru was always there but did Bhabha figure in Shankar or Laxman’s cartoons?