Thursday, February 15, 2024

The Reluctant Physicist: Sudipto Das in conversation with Debanjan Chakrabarti at the AKLF 2024.

 

Jagadish Chandra Bose’s new biography demystifies the Bosean myth.

Dr Debanjan Chakrabarti is the Director of the British Council, East and Northeast India. He has over 20 years of experience in leading education, development and cultural collaboration programmes in the UK-India corridor and internationally. A triple gold medallist in English literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Debanjan was awarded the prestigious Felix Scholarship from India for his PhD - in literature and media studies - from the University of Reading, UK. In his substantive role as the Area Director for East and Northeast India, he leads all of the British Council's education and cultural relations work in East and Northeast India, covering 13 states and Bhutan. Debanjan is a trustee of the International Language and Development Conference and sits on the education and heritage committees of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

[Debanjan] Namaskar. Good evening. Thank you for being here with us this evening for a fascinating conversation, I hope, [about] one of the doyens of Indian science and much more. I have with me Sudipto, Sudipto Das. Sudipto is the writer of four books. Three of them are fiction before this. This is his first non-fiction. The previous ones were fiction, The Ekkos Clan, The Aryabhata Clan, and The Broken Amoretti. And this, his latest book, is a brilliant biography of Jagdish Chandra Bose. And it's got a very intriguing subtitle – The Reluctant Physicist. 

Sudipto and I went to the same school. The first two schools and colleges were the same. But the similarity ends right there, and he went on to do many more exciting things. As you heard, he is a doyen of India's semiconductor industry. He is a brilliant musician, and he has harnessed the power of tech for good for those who are socio-economically marginalised, particularly during the pandemic.

Sudipto, if I may just kick things off: First, a huge thanks for this fantastic biography you wrote. I think it brings out the nuances of the kind of polymath of a personality JC Bose was. He lived in the best of times and the worst of times in some ways. Could you tell us a little bit about the very interesting cusp of history when Jagdish Chandra Bose started his fantastic career?

[Sudipto] Jagdish Chandra Bose lived for almost 80 years, from 1858 to 1937. But the two decades of his life, mainly the 1890s and 1900s that I have covered extensively in my book, truly symbolise "the best of times and the worst of times" in many ways. They stand at a crucial juncture in the history of humanity, ushering in not only a new century but an altogether new era. We can call it the era of science and technology. Perhaps, the most critical aspect of these 20 years was the invention of wireless and electricity. That was doubtless the most significant thing since the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century when the steam engine was invented. After that, the entire geopolitics of the world, from imperial security to warfare, was somehow related to wireless and electricity.

There were also ominous signs during these two decades of the tectonic changes that would shape the next two centuries. It was imminent that a World War was not far off. England fought the Dutch (Boer War, 1899-1902, Ref. page 227) and the French (Fashoda Incident, 1898) in Africa. They were also confronting the Russians in Afghanistan, in what was called the Great Game (stretching till the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907).

More importantly, the extractive and non-inclusive practices of the colonial rulers across the world had attained such an oppressive level that it was undeniable that there would soon be a tipping point. Consequently, India gained independence in 1947, and most of the erstwhile European colonies were freed by the 50s. The ominous signs of the last leg of India's struggle for freedom were visible between 1890 and 1910 in the form of the Swadeshi Movement.

[Debanjan] The great thing about Sudipto's biography of Jagdish Bose is that he brilliantly weaves this grand historical background into the narrative. Just staying on that historical question, Sudipto, you know, Jagdish Bose also represents, within the flow of Indian history and Bengal's history, almost the pinnacle of Bengal's Renaissance, one which starts with Raja Rammohun Roy and carries on right through Rabindranath. And Rabindranath and Jagadish Bose were contemporaries. Would you like to throw some light on this and how Jagadish Bose was also a product of this Bengal Renaissance and not just a scientist?

[Sudipto] The period between 1890 and 1910 saw the confluence of many a luminary and their incredible acts. Swami Vivekananda reinvigorated a modern Indian nation through his epoch-creating speech in Chicago in 1893. Rabindranath Tagore became more than a poet; his social activism and entrepreneurship finally led to India's self-reliance movement. And Jagadish Chandra Bose resurrected Indian Science.

Today, science or science education is taken for granted in India. But the British government, very consciously, had kept higher education in science out of reach for the Indians. Jagadish Bose was the first Indian scientist in modern India. He was also the first Indian science professor. Before him, only the whites could teach science in the Presidency College. 

Bose realised quite early that India would never attain self-reliance without science and innovation. He wanted India to gain its position in science, which it had in ancient times, but not being exclusive of the West. At a time when Indians were not even allowed to do science, he envisaged that Western and Indian science should go hand in hand. That was, indeed, the pinnacle of Renaissance, which is all about rebirth, reinventing the past, and using that as a unifying force to create a modern nation out of diverse sets of people of various creeds, colours and cultures sharing a common ancestry and cultural and civilisational heritage.

Bose wanted to unite India on a cultural basis. The unique poetry collection Katha (The Fables, 1900, Ref. page 207), dedicated to Jagadish Chandra Bose, was a collaboration between the poet and the scientist. That was the first time such a literary work had been created, binding the vast expanse of India with a cultural thread. Katha had inspiring stories of love, sacrifice, and dharma curated from history, mythologies, and folklore around the Buddha, Shivaji, the Sikh Gurus, Kabir, and many others, uniting the Marathas with Rajputana, the Punjab with the ancient Magadha of the Buddha's time, comprising the present-day Bihar and West Bengal, the East with the West, the North with the South. It created a sphere where the entire India could be united.

[Debanjan] This is not a very well-known facet – the collaboration of Rabindranath Thakur and Jagdish Chandra Bose on such an essential book of pedagogy, almost nationalist pedagogy. In one of your recent Instagram reels, you have also spoken about Jagdish Chandra Bose's house and Jagadish Chandra Bose's institute, Bose Institute, incorporating elements of Indian design or Buddhist design, etcetera…

[Sudipto] Jagadish Bose organised the world's first exhibition of the Ajanta paintings at his Circular Road home in Calcutta. The world did not know about the Ajanta paintings until an English woman took the pain of leading an expedition to Ajanta (December 1909, Ref. page 351) with many young and enthusiastic painters. Nandalal Bose was part of that group, camping there for a few months and painstakingly recreating the paintings. Jagdish Chandra Bose was there, too, for a few weeks with Sister Nivedita. When the paintings were brought back to Calcutta, he organised the exhibition at his home, inviting the Viceroy's wife. These are the different facets that define Jagadish Bose – a scientist but, at the same time, a very nationalistic art aficionado who wanted to revive the ancient Indian art form. Doubtless, the inspiration came from Sister Nivedita, the mother of the modern Indian School of Art. The Bose Institute looks like an Art Museum, with all its artefacts, motifs, and symbols, especially the Vajra, the institute's logo, a typical Buddhist motif.

[Debanjan] We will dive into Bose the Scientist in a moment… In one of your previous interviews, you have mentioned that Sunil Ganguli's Prothom Alo (First Light) and Shei Samay (Those Days) were sort of influences or inspirations behind your approach to Jagadish Bose's biography, and I think it shows in the exquisite research that you have done on this book. Tell us a little bit more about the literary influences that have inspired you.

[Sudipto] From the beginning, I wanted to write a biography that would read like Prothom Alo or Shei Samay. I didn't want to write a typical academic biography, many of which are already available. I wanted to write a biography, which would read like a story and would be for the non-scientific audience, too, but not do away with the references to science. Sunil Gangopadhyay has very nicely shown the way to do that.

The more challenging part of that is the background research. Prothom Alo reads so lovely because you actually visualise the background: the minutest detail of the setting, the food, the clothes, the music, etc. All the small, insignificant things around us, like what we have heard about the fragrance and food in the previous session, make a narrative enjoyable…

[Debanjan] I call it the Downton Abbey effect.

[Sudipto] Yeah!

[Debanjan] Because Downton Abbey, those of you who are Downton Abbey fans will realise the enormous amount of background details on cars, on food. Everything changes as the decades change. So again, it's a plus for Sudipto's book. It's beautifully written. It's a compelling read. You never get bored for a minute, and, I think, the way it flips back and forth between time, it's almost a novelistic-fictional device rather than kind of a straightforward chronological biography. So that's absolutely brilliantly done. Tell us a little bit about the very intriguing subtitle of your book: Reluctant Physicist. Why do you think Bose was a reluctant physicist? Was he a reluctant scientist, too?



[Sudipto] He was not a reluctant scientist, but he was indeed a reluctant physicist. He researched physics only for four years, from 1896 to 1900, dedicating the rest of his life to plants. He is the father of Plant Neurobiology and Plant Cognition. Lately, mainstream research has accepted that plants also have some form of nervous system. Non-human intelligence, which we now call Artificial Intelligence, has been gaining ground in recent years. Anything non-human is generally termed artificial. Almost 120 years back, Bose talked about plant intelligence as a form of non-human intelligence, which is not artificial but natural. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence in the past few decades has brought some focus on Plant Cognition.

Bose researched plants for more than thirty years. That's unsurprising because he had been a naturalist since childhood. He loved plants, animals, and rivers. He was a horse rider (Ref. page 31). He was a rower (Ref. page 48). He rowed in the Ganga and also in the deep sea in England. He was a hunter. He was a person who loved nature. He was introduced to physics in St. Xavier's when he came under the tutelage of Father Lafont, another amazing personality that Calcutta should be proud of (Ref. page 45). Father Lafont was a physics enthusiast. He influenced Jagdish Bose to take up physics.

As fate would have it, Bose went to England to study medicine, not physics. But as he had kala azar, the scent of chloroform on the dissection table troubled him a lot. He couldn't continue with medicine. Reluctantly, he went to Cambridge and took up the Natural Science Tripos, which included physics and botany. And there, too, he came across someone like Father Lafont – Lord Rayleigh, his physics teacher, who took the young, adventurous boy from rural Bengal under his tutelage (Ref. page 53). He studied physics there and worked in one of the best laboratories in the world. But he was a naturalist by heart. His heart and soul were in plants, animals and rivers. So, I think fate brought him back to the plants and animals…

[Debanjan] But, I think, for many Bengalis, many Indians, there is this feeling that Jagadish Chandra Bose was almost duped of the credit of having invented wireless or the radio. To what extent does your research throw light on it? Was it a myth? Or there is an element of truth in that.

[Sudipto] Marconi is no longer considered the inventor of the radio. The academic world has acknowledged that Nikola Tesla and Jagadish Bose are co-inventors of radio, along with Marconi and many others. Marconi's claim to fame was the first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission in 1901. After a detailed examination and forensic investigation in the 1990s, it was proved beyond doubt that Marconi had used Jagadish Bose's receiver and Nikola Tesla's transmitter in the trans-Atlantic feat. So, it is no longer a myth. 

Moreover, it has been widely acknowledged that the gigahertz frequency used in 5G communication, and for which we use something called the millimetre waves, which is nothing but the electromagnetic or radio waves a few millimetres in length, was first used by Jagadish Bose in the 1890s. So, the genesis of the wireless communication you see in 5G goes back to Jagadish Bose. These are well-known facts. But I feel the Bengalis, too, who are proud of their heritage, might not know about these facts.

[Debanjan] Before I open it out to the audience, I'm sure there are many questions bubbling away. A question that I really want to put to you is again going back to your very meticulous research… Our culture is not very focused on the preservation of documents or even… our buildings and monuments. We have a particular challenge. I mean, I'm not making a value statement. It's how some cultures are. Western culture places enormous value on written records and preserving buildings and monuments. We probably don't. From an academic researcher's perspective, did you face any challenges in collecting or locating materials, sourcing materials, and getting everything lined up?

[Sudipto] The only challenge was accessing old Indian newspapers. I don't know where to get the first edition of Times of India from 1838 or the first editions of Jugantar and Ananda Bazar Patrika. But I have access to all the editions of the New York Times, Times London, or any insignificant, small tabloid paper from Scotland. Yes, getting archival access to Indian newspapers is an unsurmountable problem.

[Debanjan] Yes, this is a really interesting thing you touch upon because during my PhD research, a lot of it is on 1930s newspapers in Britain, and everything is available at the click of a button. I mean, all of it, from, as you said, very insignificant journals to the Times, everything, it's searchable, and that's the beauty of it. So, there is something for us to consider here in Kolkata in a literature festival. I would like to invite questions. I'm sure the number of hands has gone up, so starting in the front row, we will take two quick questions: the lady in red and then the gentleman. Thank you.

[Audience 1] This was a very engaging session. I had read that Jagdish Chandra Bose was very interested in science fiction. He used to collect science fiction, and he tried writing some. Apparently, this was an interest encouraged by his Cambridge supervisor as well, so if you could throw some light on it.

[Sudipto] Jagdish Chandra Bose was also a mountaineer. He was a trekker. Apart from science fiction, he wrote the world's first Himalayan travelogue in any language. The travelogue was about a trek to the Pindari Glacier, the origin of the Pindar River, which, like Alakananda, Mandakini and Bhagirathi, is one of the channels that flows into the Ganges River. In Bangla, it's called Bhagirathir Utsa Sandhane (In Quest of the Ganges' Source, 1895, Ref. page 109). The next Himalayan travelogue in English (perhaps Francis Younghusband's "The Heart of a Continent," 1896) came at least a year later than this.

He also wrote one of the first science fiction in any Indian language. I tried discovering if that could be India's first science fiction. There are a few other contenders: one in Bangla (Hemlal Dutta, 1882) and one in Hindi (Pandit Ambika Dutt Vyas, 1884). 

[Audience 2] Your book is very interesting indeed, and I really enjoyed reading it. My question is also something that this discussion started with, which is the subtitle of "Reluctant Physicist." He transcended the narrow confines within which different disciplines used to be constrained, and he had an inter-disciplinary mind. And, as someone now recognised as one of the pioneering biophysicists and who taught physics in Presidency College throughout his professional life, would it then be correct to call him a reluctant physicist?

[Sudipto] Bose wrote his last paper on physics in 1902 (On Electromotive Wave accompanying Mechanical Disturbance in Metals in Contact with Electrolyte). After that, all his papers submitted to the Royal Society were in Botany. Sub-fields like Plant Neurobiology, Plant Cognition, and Biophysics were unknown, so he had to submit his papers under "Botany." But he was more interested in biophysics rather than botany. He totally dismissed the divisions between biology, botany, and physics. He researched plants but with instruments which used a lot of physics. He invented those intricate instruments, which were unheard of in botany. Yes, he taught physics because that was his vocation. He had to, for a living. He couldn't have got a lectureship in botany. But in Presidency College, too, his research from 1902 till he retired was all on plants.

[Audience 3] As a physics lover myself, I really liked the discussion. You have mentioned a lot of contemporaries, like Nikola Tesla and others. Was he in correspondence with these people or, for example, Tesla, Niels Bohr, Einstein? If you can share some stories, that would be amazing. Thank you.

[Sudipto] Bose didn't collaborate or communicate with Nikola Tesla. However, there is a very important link between the two: Swami Vivekananda. Swami Vivekananda and Tesla did meet (first in Chicago in 1893). Going through Swamiji's letters written after meeting Tesla, there's a subtle change in his, Swamiji's, perspective of science. He talks about Prana and Akasha: Prana is the universal energy in Indian philosophy, and Akasha is the matter. 

Swamiji writes in 1896 (Letter to E. T. Sturdy, 13 Feb), almost a decade before Einstein would publish the Special Theory of Relativity and the E = MC2 equation, that Tesla was very excited after hearing about Akasha and Prana. Swamiji then adds that Tesla had claimed, "I can prove mathematically that matter and energy are convertible." Incredibly, Swami Vivekananda is discussing with Nikola Tesla something that Einstein would do a decade later.

Vivekananda was very closely associated with Bose, too. Bose had read Nikola Tesla's books. (Ref. page 86). I haven't found any proof that Tesla and Jagadish Bose had interacted with each other. But Jagdish Bose would have learnt quite a bit about Tesla from Vivekananda.

Einstein did meet Jagadish Bose in 1926. Both Einstein and Jagdish Bose were members of a committee under the League of Nations. The committee, called the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, later became UNESCO. Jagadish Bose's co-members in the committee were Einstein, Mary Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, and the French philosopher Henri Bergson, all Nobel laureates. When Bose first went to Geneva in 1926 to attend the committee's meeting, he was so extremely popular that Einstein had to jostle for a seat in a lecture that Bose gave there. Bose spoke about the unity of life in plants, animals and human beings. Einstein was so excited that he told the newspapers that only for this research should Dr. Bose have his statue built in every European university (Ref. page 22).

[Debanjan] What a brilliant way to end this session. Everyone here, this is a brilliantly researched book, and as you can make out, Sudipto doesn't make any claim in the book that is not verifiable through data and, evidence and research. So, thank you, Sudipto, for presenting us with this brilliant book, making us all very proud as Indians and as Bangalis. So, thank you very much, and, as always, it is a great pleasure speaking to you; a big thanks to Apeejay Kolkata Literary Meet [AKLF], and a big thanks to Anjum for having us here.



Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (AKLF) 2024 - Transcript of "The Reluctant Physicist"


Jagadish Chandra Bose’s new biography demystifies the Bosean myth. Author Sudipto Das in conversation with Debanjan Chakrabarti.

Dr Debanjan Chakrabarti is the Director, British Council, East and Northeast India. He has over 20 years of experience in leading education, development and cultural collaboration programmes in the UK-India corridor and internationally. A triple gold medallist in English literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, Debanjan was awarded the prestigious Felix Scholarship from India for his PhD - in literature and media studies - from the University of Reading, UK. In his substantive role as the Area Director for East and Northeast India, he leads all of British Council's education and cultural relations work in East and Northeast India, covering 13 states and Bhutan. Debanjan is a trustee of the International Language and Development Conference and sits on the education and heritage committees of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

[Debanjan] Namaskar. Good evening. Thank you for being here with us, this evening, for a fascinating conversation, I hope, [about] one of the doyens of Indian science and much more. I have with me Sudipto, Sudipto Das. Sudipto is a writer of four books. Three of them are fictions, before this. This is his first non-fiction. The previous ones were fictions, The Ekkos Clan, The Aryabhata Clan, and The Broken Amoretti. And this, his latest book, is a brilliant biography of Jagdish Chandra Bose. And it’s got a very intriguing subtitle – The Reluctant Physicist


Sudipto and I went to the same school. The first two schools and colleges were the same. But the similarity ends right there, and he went on to do many more interesting things. As you heard, he is a doyen of India’s semiconductor industry. He is a brilliant musician and he has harnessed the power of tech for good, for those who are socio-economically marginalised, particularly during the pandemic. 
Sudipto, if I may just kick things off: first a very big thanks for this absolutely fantastic biography that you have written and I think it brings out the nuances of the kind of polymath of a personality that JC Bose was. 

He lived in the best of times and the worst of times in some ways. Could you tell us a little bit about the very interesting cusp of history when Jagdish Chandra Bose started out on his fantastic career?

[Sudipto] Jagdish Chandra Bose lived a very long life, almost 80 years. But the time period which I’ve covered, mainly 1890s till 1910, these two decades, I would say, in some way, symbolise a lot of things. First of all, I believe, the most important thing that happened during these 20 years was that wireless and electricity were invented. And, I believe, after the industrial revolution of the late 18th century, when the steam engine was invented, this was the biggest thing: wireless and electricity. 

If you see, after that, the entire geopolitics of the world was somehow related to wireless and electricity. 

If you just look back, everything that has happened in the world in the last 120 years, somehow, they are related to electricity or wireless. So, from that point of view, the second industrial revolution happened during this time.

Also, there were ominous signs during these two decades of several big events, which happened over the next 100 years. 

Like, the signs were very apparent that World War was going to happen because England was fighting with the Dutch (Boer War, 1899-1902, Ref. page 227) and the French (Fashoda Incident, 1898) in Africa. They were fighting with the Russians in Afghanistan, which is known as the Great Game (till the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907). And, I believe, there are other ominous signs that the world is not going in the right direction, meaning, there would be some multinational warfare, which eventually happened in 13-14 years, which is World War One (1914-1918).

And more importantly, also, across the world, the extractive and the non-inclusive colonial rules, that were happening across the world, had peaked up. 

Meaning, the extraction and the non-inclusiveness of all the colonial rules across the world [had] attained a certain level that it was very obvious that something was going to happen. And it happened. 

Like, India got independence. And, between the 40s and 50s, almost all the countries which were ruled by the European colonies were freed. The ominous signs of this revolution, or this freedom, was also visible – in India, between 1890 and 1910, we saw signs that the Swadeshi movement would happen. And it did happen…

[Debanjan] The great thing about Sudipto’s biography of Jagdish Bose is, he weaves in this grand historical background brilliantly into the narrative. Just staying on that historical question, Sudipto, you know, Jagdish Bose also represents, within the flow of Indian history and Bengal’s history, almost the pinnacle of Bengal’s Renaissance, one which starts with Raja Rammohun Roy and carries on right through Rabindranath. And Rabindranath and Jagadish Bose were contemporaries. 

Would you like to throw some light on this, and how Jagadish Bose was also a product of this Bengal Renaissance and not just a scientist?

[Sudipto] This [period of] 20 years (1890-1910): 

It was also a sort of the confluence of so many people – Swami Vivekananda going to Chicago in 1893, and Rabindranath Tagore also coming out as more than a poet, his social activism, his social entrepreneurship, [and a] lot of things, which finally lead to the self-reliance movement for India, and also, most importantly, Science.

Today science education is a lot, sort of, [taken for] granted. I mean, we cannot imagine our education system without science. But we don’t even know that the British government, very consciously, kept the higher education in science out of reach for Indians. Jagadish Bose was the first Indian scientist of modern India. He was also the first Indian science professor. Before him, the Presidency College had only non-Indian and white people, who could teach science. 

And he [Bose] was the first person, who had realised that self-reliance cannot come only through warfare and independence: self-reliance comes through science and innovation. 

During the 1880s or 1890s when, I believe, the first thing in people’s mind was how India can become independent, during that time, a person is thinking that science and technology is also important and, also, not in a way, which is exclusive of the West!

The most important thing about Jagdish Bose, and where the Renaissance effect comes into picture: he wanted to reinvent and look back. 

He wanted India to gain its position in science, which it had in ancient times, but not being exclusive of the West. He wanted the West and the Indian science to go hand in hand. 

At the time when Indians were not allowed to do science a person was thinking that Indians and the West should go hand in hand in science! I believe, of course, it was the epitome of the Renaissance because, you know, the Renaissance is all about rebirth, reinventing the past and also using that as a binding force to create modern nations – one of the impacts of the Renaissance is that we have the birth of nations, and, that (the aspect of the birth of modern Indian nation) was there. He [Bose] not only wanted to re-invent [Indian] science, he also wanted to unite the entire India on some cultural basis. 

A lot of us might not know that the amazing poetry collection, Katha (The Fables, 1900, Ref. page 207), which was dedicated to Jagadish Chandra Bose, was a collaboration between Rabindranath Tagore and Jagadish Bose. 

And, in my opinion – I mean, in whatever little I have studied, I have researched – that was the first time any literary work was created, which united the entire vast expanse of India from east to West and from north to South on a cultural basis. 

So, you had stories from Shivaji, from [Guru] Teg Bahadur, a lot of Buddhist stories, and, also, you had a story from Chitrangada from Manipur, during that time, uniting Maharashtra with Manipur, with Punjab, and also stories from the South…, creating a sphere, where the entire India can be united. So, that’s what Jagdish Chandra Bose did…

[Debanjan] This is not a very well-known facet – the collaboration of Rabindranath Thakur and Jagdish Chandra Bose on such an important book of pedagogy, almost nationalist pedagogy. 

In one of your recent Instagram reels you have also spoken about Jagdish Chandra Bose’s house and Jagadish Chandra Bose’s institute, Bose Institute, incorporating elements of Indian design or Buddhist design etcetera…

[Sudipto] The [world’s] first exhibition of the Ajanta paintings happened in Jagdish Bose’s home. In fact, the paintings of the Ajanta caves were not known. I mean, sometime around 1908 (December 1909, Ref. page 351), an English woman took the pain of doing a sort of expedition to Ajanta. Nandalal Bose was part of that group, who actually went there, stayed there for a few months, and painstakingly recreated the paintings. And then, Jagdish Chandra Bose was also there for a few weeks with Sister Nivedita. 

When the paintings were brought back to Calcutta, the first exhibition happened in his home and the Viceroy’s wife was also invited. 

So, I believe, these are the things which, sort of, define Jagadish Bose – a scientist but also, at the same time, a very nationalistic art aficionado, who wanted to revive the ancient Indian art form, where obviously the inspiration comes from Sister Nivedita, who, I would say, is the mother of the modern Indian School of Art. The Bose Institute, if you go and see now, it looks like an Art Museum: from the artefacts, from the motifs, from the symbols, the Vajra. The symbol of the Bose Institute is Vajra, which is a very typical Buddhist motif. 

So, I think, scientist is one of his identities. But apart from that there are a lot of other things, especially art and literature…

[Debanjan] We will dive into Bose the Scientist in a moment… In one of your previous interviews, you have mentioned that Sunil Ganguli’s especially Prothom Alo (First Light) and Shei Samay (Those Days) were sort of influences or inspirations behind your approach to Jagadish Bose’s biography and I think it shows in the exquisite research that you have done on this book. 

Tell us a little bit more about the literary influences that have inspired [you].

[Sudipto] Yes, absolutely. I think, from the very beginning, I wanted to write a biography which would read like Prothom Alo or Shei Samay, because I didn’t want to write a very academic form of biography, which was already available. 

I mean, there are some very technical, very academic biographies, but I wanted to write a biography, which would read like a story, and [would be] for the non-scientific audience. 

Though it is a biography of a scientist, and there would be some references to science, I think, Sunil Gangopadhyay has shown the way very nicely that you can write about anything yet it can be very lucid, it would read like a story. So, one was that (the style). But the tougher part of that is the background research. People, who have read Prothom Alo, it reads so nice because you actually visualise the background: what is happening in 1820s and 30s, what’s happening in Calcutta, what food they are eating, what type of cloth they are wearing, and what type of music they are listening to. 

All these very small insignificant things that happen around us, like [what] we heard about the history of fragrance and food in the previous session, those are the things, which make a thing appear very interesting…

[Debanjan] I call it the Downton Abbey effect.

[Sudipto] Yeah!

[Debanjan] Because Downton Abbey, those of you who are Downton Abbey fans will realise the enormous amount of background details on cars, on food. Everything changes as the decades change. So again, it’s a plus for Sudipto’s book. It’s beautifully written. It’s a compelling read. You never get bored for a minute, and, I think, the way it flips back and forth between time, it’s almost a novelistic-fictional device rather than kind of a straightforward chronological biography. So that's absolutely brilliantly done. 

Tell us a little bit about the very intriguing subtitle of your book: Reluctant Physicist. Why do you think Bose was a reluctant physicist? Was he a reluctant scientist, too?


[Sudipto] Of course, he was not a reluctant scientist, but yes, why [reluctant] physicist: 

He researched in physics only for four years, from 1896 to 1900, and the rest of the life he dedicated [himself] towards plants. He is the father of something called Plant Neurobiology. 

Now it’s an accepted field that plants also have a sort of nervous system. Now, Plant Cognition, which is: since the 90s, this thing of non-human intelligence, or [that] which we call now Artificial Intelligence [has been gaining ground]. Anything, [that] which is non-human, we generally term it as artificial. But Bose, almost 120 years back, he was talking about non-human intelligence, but which is not artificial, which is natural. 

So, since the last two-three decades, since we have this – Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence –, this Plant Cognition has become very important. 

30 or 30 plus years of his life, he [Bose] did just plants. Only four years he did physics. Since his childhood, he was a naturalist. He loved plants, animals, rivers. He was a horse rider (Ref. page 31). He was a rower (Ref. page 48). He rowed in the Ganga, and in oceans. He was a hunter. So, he was a person, who loved the nature. And incidentally, what happened: in St. Xavier's, he had somebody called Father Lafont, another amazing personality that Calcutta should be proud of (Ref. page 45). 

Father Lafont was a physics aficionado, and then, I think, he influenced a lot Jagdish Bose to take up physics. 

[But] again, as the luck might happen, he went to England to study medicine (and not physics). But he had kala azar, and the scent of chloroform and all those things on the dissection table created a problem for him. So, he couldn’t do medicine… Reluctantly, he went to Cambridge, and there he registered to study, what at that time used to be called the Natural Science Tripos, which includes physics, botany, and maths. So that’s how he went there [Cambridge]. And there also, he got somebody like Father Lafont, I mean, some physics teachers, who took this young, adventurous guy from rural Bengal under their tutelage Ref. 53). So, reluctantly, he studied physics. But he was a naturalist by heart. His heart, and soul, was in plants and animals and rivers and all these things. So, I think, the fate brought him back to the plants and animals… 

[Debanjan] But, I think, for many Bengalis, many Indians, there is this feeling that Jagadish Chandra post was almost duped of the credit of having invented wireless or the radio. 

To what extent does your research throw light on it? Was it a myth? Or there is an element of truth in that.

[Sudipto] Yes, it is true. Now, if you even go to the Wikipedia, now Marconi is no longer considered to be the inventor of radio. They have acknowledged that Nikola Tesla and Jagadish Bose are co-inventors of radio, along with Marconi, and many other people. In fact, interestingly, the first claim to fame of Marconi, was this trans-Atlantic wireless transmission in 1901… 

After a detailed examination and, also, after a lot of forensic investigation, it was proved that Marconi had used Jagadish Bose’s receiver and Nikola Tesla’s transmitter [in the trans-Atlantic feat]. 

So, this part is very clear. So, I believe, it is no longer a myth. 

Also, it has been acknowledged everywhere that the frequency that 5G communication uses, which, you know, is the gigahertz frequency, and for which they use something called millimetre waves, which is nothing but the electromagnetic or radio waves few millimetres in length, was also first used by Jagadish Bose in the 1890s. 

So, the 5G communication that, you know, the entire world is depending on, the genesis of the wireless communication which you see in 5G, also goes back to Jagadish Bose. 

And these are well known facts. I mean, I didn’t research all these things because in academic circle it is well known. But I feel that even the proud Bengalis, who are proud about the heritage, also don’t know about all these facts, which are well known and which have been academically acknowledged. So, I feel that bringing all these things out for a common layman – it would be nice. So, there it is: it’s not a myth anymore. I mean, this is true.

[Debanjan] Before I open it out to the audience, I’m sure there are many questions bubbling away, a question that I really want to put to you is again going back to your very meticulous research… Our culture is not very focused on preservation of documents, or even… our buildings, monuments. We have a particular challenge. I mean, I’m not making a value statement. It’s how some cultures are. Western culture places enormous value on written records and preserving buildings and monuments. We probably don’t. 

From an academic researcher’s perspective, did you face any challenge in terms of collecting materials or locating materials, sourcing materials, getting everything lined up?

[Sudipto] The only challenge was accessing old Indian newspapers. Like, till date, I don’t know where to get the first edition of Times of India from 1838, or the first edition of Jugantar, first edition of Ananda Bazar Patrika. But I have access to all the editions of New York Times, Times London, or any insignificant, small, some tabloid paper from Scotland. 

So, I believe, yes, getting archival access of India newspapers is a big problem. At least, I haven’t figured out a way to surmount that…

[Debanjan] Yes, this is a really interesting thing that you touch upon, because during my PhD research, lot of it is on 1930s newspapers of Britain, and everything is available at the click of a button. I mean, all of it, from, as you said, very insignificant journals to the Times, everything, it’s searchable, and that’s the beauty of it. So, there is something for us to consider here in Kolkata in a literature festival. Would like to invite questions. I’m sure number of hands have gone up, so starting in the front row and then we will take two quick questions, the lady in red, and then, the gentleman. Thank you.

[Audience 1] This was a very engaging session. 

I had read that Jagdish Chandra Bose was very interested in science fiction. He used to collect science fiction and he tried writing some. 

Apparently, this was an interest encouraged by his Cambridge supervisor as well. So, if you could throw some light on it.

[Debanjan] Let me just take three questions and then you respond, fine? Yeah, ma’am, if you could…

[Audience 2] Your book is very interesting indeed and I really enjoyed reading it. My question is also something, which this discussion was started with, which is the subtitle of the “Reluctant Physicist.” So, that’s what my question is about. Basically, he transcended, I think, the narrow confines within which different disciplines used to be constrained and he had an inter disciplinary mind. 

And, I think, as someone who is now recognised as one of the pioneering biophysicists, and who taught physics in Presidency College throughout his professional life, would it then be correct to call him a reluctant physicist? 

Because, his love for physics, and he was such a committed, dedicated researcher in physics as long as he was working on those four years, but he stayed with physics all his life. So that was my question. Thank you.

[Audience 3] I really liked the discussion as a physics lover myself. Somewhere related to your (pointing to audience 2) question. You (pointing to Sudipto) mentioned a lot of contemporaries, like Nikola Tesla and other people. 

If you could, maybe, share some information about: was he in correspondence with these people or, for example, may be, Tesla, Niels Bohr, Einstein, of course? So, if you can, maybe, share some stories that would be amazing. Thank you.

[Debanjan] (adding) Do buy the book. (laughter)

[Audience 3] I have not read the book. I plan on doing that, but if you could just share something.


[Sudipto] First, about the first question. 

Yes, Jagdish Chandra Bose was a mountaineer. He was a trekker. Apart from the science fiction, he also wrote world’s first Himalayan travelogue in any language in Bangla. 

The travelogue that he wrote was about his search [for the source of the Ganges River], and in Bangla it’s called Bhagirathir Utsha Sandhane ("In Quest of the Ganges’ Source," 1895, Ref. page 109). And, that was actually [about] a trek to the Pindari Glacier, which happens to be the origin of the Pindar River, which is one of the channels for Ganga, like Alakananda, Mandakini, Bhagirathi, and also Pindar. So, that’s one, (about Bose's Himalayan travelogue). 

And, also, he wrote one of the first science fictions in any Indian languages. 

I was trying to figure out if that can be the first science fiction in India, but there are few other contenders: one in Bangla (Hemlal Dutta, 1882), and one in Hindi (Pandit Ambika Dutt Vyas, 1884). Of course, he wrote one of the first science fictions in Indian languages. 

But he did write the first ever Himalayan travelogue in any language. The next Himalayan travelogue in English (perhaps Francis Younghusband’s “The Heart of a Continent,” 1896) came at least a year later than this Bhagirathir Utsha Sandhane.

Now about the physics thing. 

Yes, the last paper that he [Bose] wrote on physics was in 1901. After that, he never wrote any paper [in physics]. If you go and see the papers submitted to the Royal Society, after 1901, all his papers were in, what used to be called, [Botany]. 

See, at that time, this plant neurobiology or all these things (biophysics, plant cognition, etc.) were not there, so he had to submit the things (papers) in Botany. But the problem is that, he was more interested in biophysics. He totally dismissed the division between biology and botany and physics. He used to research in botany, but using instruments, which used a lot of the principles from physics. He invented a lot of very intricate instruments, which were absolutely unheard of in the research of botany. 

So, I think, and also, seeing his letters, and also, seeing his lectures, it’s very apparent that his love is plants, animals, nature throughout his life. 

Yes, he taught physics because that was his vocation. He had to, for earning. He couldn’t have got a lectureship for botany. He had his job to do. But in Presidency College also, the researches he did from 1901 till 1915, when he retired, were all on plants. From that point of view, I think, yes, only for four years, he was a serious physics researcher, but he used physics throughout his life…

And now, a very interesting thing. 

He [Bose] didn’t collaborate or communicate with Nikola Tesla. But there was a very important link between the two, which is Swami Vivekananda. 

Swami Vivekananda and Tesla had met (first in Chicago 1893). And, in fact, if you go through Swamiji's letters, written after meeting Tesla, his [Swamiji’s] perspective of science suddenly changes. He is talking about Prana and Akasha, which is: Prana is the energy in Indian philosophy and Akasha is matter. And, in fact, there is an amazing conversation, which Vivekananda quotes. He quotes that, actually, Tesla was very excited after hearing about Akasha and Prana, and Vivekananda writes in 1896 (Letter to E. T. Sturdy, 13 Feb), which is [almost] 10 years before Einstein brought out the Special Theory of Relativity and the E = MC square equation. In 1896 Swamiji is writing, and he is quoting Tesla as having said that “I can prove mathematically that matter and energy are convertible.” That is exactly like E = MC square. 

That’s amazing that Swami Vivekananda is interacting with Nikola Tesla on something which Einstein would do after 10 years. 

The same Vivekananda was also very closely associated with Bose. And Bose had read Nikola Tesla’s books, because one of the inspirations for doing research on radio [waves] was also Nikola Tesla’s books (Ref. page 86). But I haven’t found any proof that Tesla and Jagadish Bose would have interacted with each other. But, of course, through Vivekananda, they knew. At least, Jagdish Bose knew enough of Tesla through Vivekananda. But the other way round, I don’t think it’s true.

Einstein did meet Jagadish Bose in 1926. 

Einstein and Jagdish Bose both were members of a committee under the League of Nations. The committee was known as International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, which later became UNESCO, and in that committee Jagadish Bose’s other members were Einstein, then, Mary Curie, Hendrik Lorentz, again a physicist and a Nobel laureate, and also the philosopher Henri Bergson, the French philosopher. Jagdish Bose was also a member of that. And, in Geneva, when he first went there, he was so extremely popular that in the lecture, which he gave, Einstein had to jostle for a seat. 

And after hearing the lecture, where he [Bose] talked about unity, about life in plants and animals and human beings, he [Einstein] was so thrilled that he told the newspapers that only for this research this guy should have a statue in every European university (Ref. page 22). 

So, that’s about it.

[Debanjan] What a brilliant way to end this session. Everyone here, this is a brilliantly researched book and as you could make out that Sudipto doesn’t make any claim in the book that is not verifiable through data and evidence and research. So, thank you Sudipto for presenting us with this brilliant book, making us all very proud as Indians and as Bangalis. So, thank you very much and, as always, a great pleasure speaking to you and a big thanks to Apeejay Kolkata Literary meet [AKLF], big thanks to Anjum for having us here.

Sunday, January 28, 2024

Some Historical Background of "Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist"


Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist

Socio-political scenario in England in the 19th century, in the context of Marconi and wireless/radio

Radio was born at a critical moment in the development of the British warfare state when colonial and industrial rivalries kept a diplomatically isolated Britain at the brink of conflict. Events like the Fashoda Incident of 1898 (conflict between England and France over control over Africa) fed a sense of imminent European war, as did the Great Game with Russia (over Afghanistan). In the shadow of a global arms race and a growing conviction that new technologies conferred military and imperial advantages to whoever was first in the field, the turn-of-the-century British state invested more deeply in scientific research, and scientists, in turn, relied increasingly on state support. In this time of science and technology for and by the nation, Marconi was an interloper. Despite his mother's British ancestry, he was a foreigner and, worse, a tinkerer, not a theoretician like Newton and Maxwell the British were so proud of. Transmitting across the imperial map enabled Marconi to prove his bona fides as a servant of the British state and style himself nostalgically as a "tinkerer-explorer" of the dark continent of space.

With his pursuit of bringing long distances under control through radio, Marconi played on a related set of security concerns that were more political-economic in nature: Britain’s diplomatic isolation at a time of long-distance military conflict intensified calls for strengthening imperial ties, particularly among the “white” colonies of settlement, leading to Chamberlain’s post-war calls for a tariff federation (Tariff Reform League & Tariff Commission). While critics harped on the "technical security" weaknesses (Marconi for a very long time couldn't figure out how to tune his systems, thus making them susceptible to tapping and interference from other's transmissions) of Marconi's device for military use, he traded on the multiple valences of the security concern as he explored other avenues for sustaining his commercial venture. Having failed to find contracts among state departments, he redirected his energies toward the creation of a wireless network that would capture the communication market of the empire itself, fuelled by the need for "imperial security." A sympathetic non-technical press continued to couch this application of the technology in terms of "imperial security," overlooking "technical security." So, very subtly, Marconi stoked the fear and insecurity of the imperial British and got away with pushing his inferior wireless.

The Titanic debacle again brought the topic of Marconi's technical weaknesses to the fore.

Marconi had designated a new audience to adjudicate his claim to priority. The technical press’s implacable scepticism drove him into the arms of the lay press, where he strove to secure an alternative source of legitimacy as a businessman and scientist. In shifting the scene of the contest, he endeavoured not only to evade the biases of the scientific press but to exploit those of the lay press, which was seeking escape from the cable companies' stranglehold on its ability to fulfil growing demands for up-to-date news. The lay press also fell prey to Marconi's strategy of stoking fear and creating an urgency for "imperial security," totally ignoring quality.

These non-technical press reports styled Marconi as an imperial hero battling on the frontier of time and space itself. He filled the increasingly apparent iconographic void created by the Livingstones, Rhodes, and Cooks of the past, as the press hailed his “conquest of the air” and taming of the “trackless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.” The Conservative Member of Parliament, journalist, and postal reformer J. Henniker Heaton reminded Times readers that “[Marconi] has devoted his youth to working for England. Every one of his 130 patents benefits the Empire. The magical quality of electrical science in an age of occult fascinations, together with Marconi’s exotic origins and personal reserve, created an aura of the mystical genius conjuring knowledge from the void.

Clearly, some wider context shaped the path of radio's development.

If military needs had nevertheless remained the primary factor shaping early radio, we would have expected secrecy and directionality of transmission (Marconi's system was very easy to tap from any direction, hence provided zero secrecy, an absolute no-no for military use) to become Marconi’s primary preoccupations. But Marconi manipulated the narrative completely. He created a story around Radio being entrusted with the task of securing the ocean for imperial commerce and bridging the continental distances of an empire in the throes of long-distance warfare. Even after Marconi lost his institutional affiliation with the state, wireless remained tied to the notion of imperial security, albeit in the more allegorical form of an empire more closely knit, its constituents less autarkic, its form less fanciful.

Boer War (1899)

At the peak of the bloodshed, Rudyard Kipling wrote that “the ‘simple and pastoral’ Boer… seems to be having us on toast.”

The Anglo-Boer War was a pyrrhic victory that cost British taxpayers more than £200m; 22,000 troops never came home to a hero’s welcome, and more than 400,000 army horses, donkeys and mules were killed.

Mobile wireless was first attempted in this war. The mixed success in the war was also a matter of concern for the British - a major setback somehow averted in the history of their colonial expansion. In 50 years they lost almost all their colonies across the world, bringing the curtains down for a colonial era that had lasted more than 2 centuries (from British America in the 18th century to mid 20th century)

British science facing competition from the continent

Till the 19th century, British science had not much competition from anywhere else, especially from the continent. Newton ruled over everything and then the entire Industrial Revolution was propelled by James Watt's steam engine. England was the centre of all science and technology. With steam engines came the trains and maritime power - the two vital things for colonial expansion. Till the 19th century, the only competition to Newton was Rene Descartes. Even in the 19th century, people like James Maxwell were perhaps the most celebrated theoretician of the world - he discovered the existence of radio waves, and electromagnetic waves, and claimed that light is also a form of electromagnetic waves. But the end of the 19th century was also the end of the age of British supremacy/monopoly in science.

A letter from Fitzgerald to Heaviside (both Maxwellians) in 1896, about Marconi clearly shows the sentiment of the day: On the last day but one (that was actually after Bose's lecture at the meeting of the British Association in Liverpool), Preece surprised us all by saying that he had taken up an Italian adventurer (Marconi) who had done no more than Lodge & others (all British) had done in observing Hertzian (German physicist who experimentally proved that Maxwell's prediction about the existence of radio waves is correct) radiations at a distance. Many of us were very indignant at this overlooking of British work for an Italian manufacturer. Science “made in Germany” we are accustomed to but “made in Italy” by an unknown firm was too bad.

The entire quantum age was hijacked by Germany - Einstein (1905 - Special Theory of Relativity), Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Max Plank (1910) etc.

Marconi's challenges - technical, social and political

William Preece, a leading “practician,” was in a bitter dispute with academic scientists working on electromagnetic questions, particularly the distinguished professor Oliver Lodge. This was a moment in which the cosmopolitan “tinkerers” of an older era were engaged in a rearguard action against “theoreticians,” who disparaged them as mercenary relics oblivious to notions of intellectual property and national propriety.

When Marconi, a "tinkerer," contrasting to the rich British legacy of "theoreticians," found himself cornered by sceptics and critics, he took the debate to another venue—the popular press, where he traded on the shifting valences of the concern with "imperial security" and the press’s resentment of dependence on expensively cabled news.  The press that Marconi relied on were: the conservative gentleman’s Pall Mall Gazette; the liberal provincial tradesman’s Manchester Guardian; the paper of record, the Times; the fashionable Illustrated London News; the liberal local Westminster Gazette; the cheap, mass, conservative Daily Telegraph; and the conservative, highbrow Spectator magazine.

Urge to claim cultural superiority in 19th-Century England

British history was not as old as that of the Germans or the French. The oldest people in England were the Celts, and the Irish and their language was older than English. The Anglo-Saxon period, the oldest part of English history was called the Dark Age due to the lacuna of historical records. Also, the Anglo-Saxons were considered mercenaries, not with any great culture or art. The Sutton Hoo (archaeological site that proved that the Anglo-Saxons were not mere barbarians) was yet to be discovered. Comparatively, India's history and languages were much older. The discovery of the new field "Indo Indo-European linguistics" placed Sanskrit as the oldest member of the clan. Germany appropriated the Sanskrit heritage and claimed they were the original Indo-Europeans and that Germany was the Indo-European Urheimat. So, the British had to invent an extreme form of Indo-phobia to paint Indian history as lowly and inferior. Hence Macaulay and others. Interestingly, the rest of the European continent didn’t see India in that light, mainly because the Germans were obsessed with Sanskrit, and people like Voltaire claimed that the Greeks learned from the Brahmins of Varanasi.

The Indo-European studies made many Europeans claim superiority in some way or the other - it was of course led by the Germans, which eventually degenerated into Nazism. But similar feelings germinated across the world. Nikola Tesla was openly anti-Semitic. Many in England had anti-Semitic feelings. And perhaps all this came from the Indo-European studies, which suddenly made the rest of the languages and races appear secondary when looked at narrowly. Domestication of horses and the introduction of chariots - the two most important symbols of power since the Iron Age civilizations (Persian, Greek, Roman, Indian) - were substantially proved to be of Indo-European origin. The same feeling fuelled the Indo-phobic viewpoints, which also helped a section of the British administration to rule over India.

In India, there were two schools - Orientalists, like William Jones (Asiatic Society), Princep (though an engineer, in charge of the Taratala mint, he deciphered the Brahmi script of Ashoka's inscription, the mother of all scripts in India and the far east), who wanted to give priority to Indian heritage and languages. The Anglicists wanted to replace everything with English, for various reasons, mainly administrative, to facilitate the running of the empire. A new generation of Indians - Rammohan, Dwarakanath, Vidyasagar etc - wanted both, English and also the Indian languages, and culture.

Few orientalists appreciated Indian culture, heritage, and languages, but felt Indians lacked scientific aptitude. This might be a vestige of East India Company's propaganda  (Macaulay et al), or even the inherent view that "science is power" and that Indians should be deprived of science education forever. Medicine, engineering, and law were allowed just for administrative reasons.

As late as 1905, during the Partition of Bengal, Bombay and Madras Provinces didn’t yet have science at the university level. Bengal had, just because of Bose and PC Ray. There was no scope for employment with science. CV Raman in the 1910s came to Calcutta and joined a non-science job. Presidency College got India's first world standard science lab around 1915 when Bose was retiring. All researches of Bose and PC Roy were done privately. Even CV Raman did his entire research in Calcutta at the Association for the Cultivation of Science - even then, there were not enough labs.

Main characters: Marconi, Bose, Tesla, Nivedita/Mrs. Sara Bull & Tagore

Marconi

Homeschooled, no formal education. Son of a rich Italian landlord father and Irish aristocrat mother - the Jamesons, his mother's family, owned one of the oldest Irish whiskey brands in England (predating the popularization of the Scotch whiskeys). From the beginning, Marconi had access to politicians, high government officials, and of course huge money. Marconi's ventures, though publicly traded companies, were majorly funded by his rich relatives who didn't put any pressure for immediate profits - that was a huge commercial advantage against most other companies.

He had people to lobby within the parliament, influence the Admiralty, manipulate government, create chasms between different government departments, and of course all the money to hire the best lawyers, file costly lawsuits across countries, influence non-scientific media houses, spread rumours, run propaganda, etc.

He was a womaniser and used yachts for his revelries. Ditched his American fiancé to marry an Irish woman from a well-connected family. He amassed huge money at a very early age. At ripe age he even had an affair with an 18-year-old, and later married someone else, after divorcing his Irish wife. Became part of the fascist regime in Italy - but that would be out of our scope/timeline.

There are very strong reasons to believe that he used Tesla's transmitter and Bose's receiver for his first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission. Tesla's systems were well tuned, Marconi even stole that, and finally, the US Supreme Court ruled in Tesla's favour in 1943, in the first patent litigation to have reached the Supreme Court of the USA. He had died by that time, and the world politics had also changed hugely. US and Italy were warring sides and there was no way the Marconi side would have welded any influence by then. But till then, he repeatedly won most patent litigations, though they were quite blatant. This is where we would take some poetic license, connect some dots and explore how Marconi and his team would have manipulated the system.

Marconi's lawyer: J. Fletcher Moulton. He was a polymath - Cambridge Wrangler, mathematician, barrister, and Fellow of the Royal Society, experimented on electricity. Moulton became a Liberal Party Member of Parliament successively for Clapham 1885–86, South Hackney 1894–95, and Launceston 1898–1906. He backed the attempts of Gladstone to solve the problems in Ireland through Irish Home Rule. I have a strong feeling he was the main brain behind all of Marconi's strategies, which were mainly based on manipulation. We can use him like a Chanakya. A recent paper published by the Royal Society of London has pointed out his role in Marconi's success.

Tesla

Serbian by birth, bachelor, influenced by Vivekananda, both had met many times between 1893-96, was present at Vivekananda's Chicago lectures at Columbia Exposition. Was an admirer of Buddhism, and had a strong spiritual bent of mind. Interestingly, he had promised Vivekananda that he would prove that Akash (matter) and prana (energy) were convertible - Vivekananda referred to this in a letter. That's quite incredible because it would be a decade later that Einstein would talk about E=mc2.

Tesla knew many languages and knew Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe etc. by heart. Never married, few say he might have been gay. Had a platonic relationship with a friend's wife.

Invented AC machines, and fought the devastating Current War with Edison (backed by JP Morgan) to establish the primacy of AC over DC.  Invented some of the most important aspects of wireless transmission. Though filed many patents, somehow, Maroni managed to file the first radio patent in the world appropriating the works of Tesla and a few others. Henceforth, made multiple attempts to prove his priority over Tesla's in prolonged legal suits, and even steal his works. Here also, some extrapolations can be made to connect many unfortunate things in Tesla's life with Marconi's diabolic efforts. There are at least two recorded instances of their meeting in person.

Tesla had a grand vision of transmitting energy, not just messages,  wirelessly. That was much ahead of age. (Only a few years back a start-up in New Zealand was able to achieve finally something close to that) But Marconi caught the public imagination with wireless telegraphy.

Bose

A darling of the who's who of British science, highly promoted and supported by his teachers and friends in England. But faced immense challenges in India from the same British, mainly because they were not in favour of exposing the Indians to modern science.

Bose was also an experimentalist, like Marconi, not much of a theoretician. But was very methodical, had a scientific approach and regularly published his papers in the Royal Society, one of the best scientific journals in the world. His experiments on functional wireless systems in Calcutta predate Marconi. His first paper is at least a year before Marconi's first recorded experiment on wireless. Bose's speciality was in the receiver design - during his time, he had the best receiver in the world, at least for some time. It has been acknowledged formally in the electronics world that Marconi used Bose's receiver for the first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission but never gave him the credit. Rather, he made sure that Bose's name never came out.

It can be said quite conclusively that Bose was aware that Marconi had used his receiver. But why Bose kept quiet could be a matter of conjecture. We can connect dots here too - take some freedom to create some suspense. In fact, I think the climax could be the revelation that Bose had known all the time, but never said anything.

Like Tesla, Bose was also very spiritual. He started using Sanskrit names in scientific literature, moving away from the common practice of using Greek and Latin. I don’t know if anyone did that again in India. He used to quote from the Rig Veda, Upanishads even in lectures in London. Was highly inspired by the Indian concept that everything is that "One", and that all different things we see around us are only different manifestations of that same "One." This is the common Brahmo thought. This belief led him to "prove" that metals also have life, like plants and animals. He suddenly shifted from radio to this and it became very easy for Marconi to push him to oblivion, as the scientific fraternity that had hailed him a few years back now started feeling that he was mixing Indian metascience and spirituality with modern science. It took many decades to realise that he was the father of biophysics, plant neurobiology and plant cognition, among others.

Bose also played a pretty strong role, though indirectly, in the Swadeshi movement that sprung up around the partition of Bengal in 1905. But very interestingly, he never opposed the British openly, and Tagore and Nivedita supported him in that - they all felt that was the sacrifice for the sake of Indian science - Calcutta was the only place in India that had science at the university level and that too would have been stopped if Bose had opposed the British.

Unlike Tagore and Vivekananda, the strongest two Bengali personalities in the 19-20th century Bengal-India landscape, who couldn't be bridged, Bose was rather a bridge between many apparently divergent counterpoints. His mother was a staunch Kali worshipper, his father was Brahmo, and he was a Brahmo, too, but still maintained a very good relationship with the Ramakrishna Mission and other "Hindu" groups. Finding a bridge reflected in his works too - when he wanted to bridge the non-living with the living. This deep spiritualism impacted his science and came in very handy for Marconi to literally wipe him out of the scene.

Bose's relationship with Sara Bull and Nivedita was complicated. There's a good psycho-analysis done by Ashish Nandi on this. Bose used to call her "Mother" though she was eight years older. Nivedita had openly asked Vivekananda once if he thought anything was going on between her and Bose. And fortunately, Vivekananda didn't suspect anything. But Nivedita had once asked Bose if she was a temptation to him. Though Bose never said anything openly, he reacted jealously and childishly when Nivedita got close very to Okakura. Nivedita sort of broke up with Okakura, for various reasons and remained Bose's secretary, editor, collaborator and main motivation and inspiration till her last day.

Sara Bull forced Bose to file a few patents, with her as the co-applicant, both in London and the US. She would also pay Nivedita for the secretarial work she did for Bose. She paid for the land for the Bose Institute. She also left behind a good amount of money for Bose in her will - this was challenged by her daughter. It became a major scandal after Mrs Sara Bull died in 1911, a few months before Nivedita's death.


Transcript of the launch of "Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist" in Calcutta

 

"The launch of Sudipto Das’s latest novel, Jagadish Chandra Bose: The Reluctant Physicist, at Starmark, Quest Mall, was an enlightening affair, marked by discussions on art, literature, and the life and science of the eminent polymath.

Moderated by Debanjan Chakrabarti, director, East and Northeast India, British Council, the conversation started with a discussion on Bose’s life with author Sudipto Das, molecular biophysicist Gautam Basu and theoretical physicist Palash Baran Pal.

Supriya Roy, novelist, former teacher at Modern High School for Girls and grandniece of Jagadish Chandra Bose, shared some personal anecdotes about how the J.C. Bose Memorial in Giridih was founded." 

The Telegraph, 16 Jan 2024

[Debanjan] Congratulations on your brilliant biography that brings alive the nuances, complexities and vast interests of the maverick and the polymath genius that was JC Bose. From the long lens of history, do you think he represents the apogee of the Bengal Renaissance movement that was ushered in by the likes of Raja Rammohan Roy?

[Sudipto] “Renaissance” is a French word that means “rebirth.” It refers to a period in European history that saw a revival of classical learning and wisdom. Broadly, the Renaissance refers to any period in history, mainly modern history, when there has been a revival, or rather resurrection, of old values and wisdom, art and culture, literature, etc. Renaissance has often been a uniting force towards creating a modern “nation,” of which there’s no word in any of the ancient Indian languages, including Sanskrit. Talking about “nation,” which he never translated to Bengali, Tagore had once said, quoting an ancient Spartan song, “We are only that what you were.” That, in his view, was the national song of all countries. The “nation,” Tagore elaborates, gives the people a unified purpose to be prepared to stay together through sacrifices and sorrows as their ancestors did in the past. Renaissance is all about finding that unified purpose for a group of people to stay together, irrespective of their apparent diversities, by identifying them all with their shared past, where their ancestors, through sacrifices and sorrows, had created a cultural and civilizational heritage all have inherited in diverse forms. 

Finding a unity, a unified force that would awaken and arouse his countrymen was aligned with Bose’s spiritual ideology, which was the driving force behind his science, too. Uniting the present with the past was natural to him. Through science, he wanted to re-establish India at the high podium of scientific achievement where she had stood in ancient times. His ardent wish was to compel people from all over the world to come and acquire knowledge from India as they had done at the universities of Taxila and Nalanda in the past. He believed Indian science must go hand-in-hand with Western science, which was a very radical thought at a time when the British doubted our capabilities in the field. Hence, we see, that in his science, too, he was seeking a “rebirth.”

Bose and Tagore discussed enthusiastically the importance of retelling India’s fascinating history and reproducing her equally exciting and inspiring literature, full of tales of devotion, sacrifice and valour, for the present generation. Both the scientist and the poet concurred that the awakening of a nation could happen only with the appreciation of its own legacy, its past. They discussed the two books Tagore had been fascinated by lately—Rajendra Lal Mitra’s The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal and the History of the Sikhs by Joseph Davey Cunningham. Together they chose the most suitable stories that would have a direct bearing on the current situation and galvanise the nation out of its stupor. Thus, came about Tagore’s Katha (The Fables), a collection of poems derived from Indian history and mythology from all across the country. There was a story from Shivaji’s life, one about the Sikhs, quite a few from Buddhist lore, and many more. 

It was perhaps the first such attempt to unite the vast and richly diverse country, that India is, through her past saga sharing the common cultural and spiritual theme of love and sacrifice, a template that was later used many times by multiple people to arouse the countrymen. In a way, Bose and Tagore were torchbearers. Very fittingly, Tagore had dedicated Katha to Bose.

When Mrs Herringham organised an artistic expedition to the Ajanta caves in the winter of 1909, Bose and Nivedita were there, too. Among Mrs Herringham's assistants detailed to copy the wall paintings was Nandalal Bose. He was inspired by Nivedita’s exhortations to Indian artists to give up the imitation of the Greek and Roman styles and create a new indigenous one reminiscent of ancient Indian art. Nandalal was one of the pioneers of Modern Indian Art, and many elements of the Ajanta paintings were reflected in his later artworks, especially the ones still visible in the Bose Institute. Bose held one of the first exhibitions of Ajanta paintings in his home, shortly after Mrs Herringham’s expedition.

So, as we can see, it’s not only Indian science but literature and art, too, that Jagadish Bose wanted to revive. What fascinated me about him is not just the fact that he was a scientist - many books celebrate his ground-breaking work in science. Rather, it’s his contribution to the Bengal Renaissance.

More interesting was his personal relationships with Rabindranath Tagore and Sister Nivedita, and how he helped resurrect literature and art while simultaneously indulging in science during the Bengal Renaissance. He was a revolutionary in the truest sense of the term.

[Debanjan] You highlight Sunil Ganguly’s Prothom Alo as one of the three books that influenced you most. To what extent was your interest in Bose and research methodology influenced by Sunil Ganguly’s books like Prothom Alo and Shei Somoy?

[Sudipto] To a large extent. The narrative of my book is highly inspired by Sunil Ganguly’s style. Narrating history like a story, for a non-academic audience is what I intended to do and in that, I didn’t find any other better benchmark.

[Debanjan] A common question for both Gautam Basu and Palash Baran Pal: Apart from being cutting-edge scientists, both of you are brilliant science communicators. What do you think is the value of biographies such as the one Sudipto has written for our society? 

[Gautam Basu] There are many biographies on Bose, and his first biography was published while he was alive. Over the years, critical analyses have emerged, but Sudipto’s approach towards Bose was very different. In Sudipto’s work, Jagadish Bose comes alive in flesh and blood. I realised I’m not used to reading about him in this manner, and this is the first well-researched biography. The biography starts with a hunting trip to the Himalayan foothills. In writing the story, Sudipto rightly recognises that without a historical context, it is futile to understand the man, both his scientific journey and his personal life.

Of 26 major characters in the book, as explicitly declared at the beginning, 18 are from the West, and a majority of them are from the scientific world. This isn’t surprising because as the first Indian scientist in colonial India, Bose hardly had any Indian colleagues whom he could effectively engage with intellectually when sharing his never-ending discoveries.

[Palash Baran Pal] The book reads like a novel. From my academic perspective, I wish to see more references from the field of science and so on. I was truly impressed by the extent of sources he has consulted.

[Debanjan] Gautam Babu: You've had a hand/say in the subtitle of Sudipto 's book. Tell us more about this story.

[Gautam Basu] Since childhood, Bose had always been a Naturalist. Though, for a short while, at the very beginning of his scientific career, he was a physicist, he was actually a “Reluctant Physicist.” Physics was not his core penchant. His first love was nature – discovery and understanding of how nature worked. 

Bose was born and brought up in a very rural setting in Faridpur in undivided Bengal. His formative years were spent with children of farmers, fishermen and other working-class people for whom nature – not the manicured type – was the playground. Bose reminisced, “In the vernacular school, to which I was sent, the son of the Muslim attendant of my father sat on my right side, and the son of a fisherman sat on my left. They were my playmates. I listened spellbound to their stories of birds, animals and aquatic creatures. Perhaps these stories created in my mind a keen interest in investigating the workings of Nature.”

Although initiated into Physics by Father Lafont in St. Xavier’s, it is interesting to note that he moved to England to study Medicine and not Physics. It was only when a nagging illness made it very difficult for him to pursue Medicine, that he moved to Christ’s College in Cambridge to pursue a degree in Natural Sciences, where he was heavily influenced by Lord Rayleigh, his Physics teacher and mentor. But unlike in St. Xavier’s College, he formally trained himself in Botany at Christ’s under eminent scientists like Sydney Vines and Francis Darwin, in addition to Physics. Formal exposure to the Biology of Plants revived in him what had innately been instilled in his heart since his childhood – the Naturalist Bose. So, the shift to plants and animals was a natural or, rather, spontaneous thing for Bose.

[Debanjan] Palash Babu: Why do you think was JC Bose the Physicist forgotten by history?

[Palash Baran Pal] It’s not true that Bose the Physicist has been forgotten…

[Gautam Basu] (Interrupting) Most eminent physicists of his times, and later, didn’t consider him a serious physicist. In fact, most would mock him. When I was entrusted with sifting through piles of old papers and journals in Jagadish Bose’s residence, I came across an edition of The Indian Express from the 70s with an article on Bose written by the eminent psychologist Ashish Nandy. There, he had quoted Bose’s student, Satyendranath Bose, of the Bose-Einstein fame, as snubbing Jagadish Bose and remarking that he was no physicist, but a mere mechanic. I called up Ashish Nandy one evening and he did confirm the same. (laughter)

[Palash Baran Pal] I have a list of 16 books written in Bengali on Bose by various authors. So, I can definitely say that he hasn’t been forgotten. I can say that Sudipto’s book is a fresh attempt at telling Bose’s life story.

[Debanjan] Sudipto, tell us a bit about the challenges of researching a biography, especially in a culture which is not too bothered about the preservation of historical records, and personal effects and this attitude extends to our built heritage as well.

[Sudipto] When it comes to Indian archives, I must admit that we cut a sorry figure. I can access online all the editions of even the most nondescript newspaper from a remote European town, but I have no access to, say, even a 50-year-old edition of the most widely circulated Indian newspaper – The Times of India, which has been in publication since 1838, close to 200 years. I didn’t find online archives of the earlier editions of Ananda Bazar Patrika, Amrita Bazar Patrika, Jugantar, Hindustan Times, etc. That’s really sad. There must be a concerted effort, both by the Government and private enterprises, to scan all Indian newspapers in all languages and make them available to all at a nominal cost. One of the old periodicals that has been quite well archived is Modern Review, started by Ramananda Chatterjee, a student of Bose. That, apart from the many letters written by Bose himself, Nivedita, Vivekananda, Tagore, and a few others, comprised my main source of information about Bose from India. Newspapers and journals from Europe and America in various languages were plenty. I wish I had more sources from India, too.

[Debanjan] This is your fourth published work. You're a busy IT professional and entrepreneur. How do you switch these hats? What are your writing habits?

[Sudipto] I don’t have a deadline. Neither do I have any fixed outcome in mind. That always keeps the entire thing joyful and stress-free. But I do try to maintain some discipline when it comes to reading and writing. It’s like anything else that improves with practice. I try to spend a few hours daily, mainly on reading, as that’s what I do most of the time. Writing takes a very small part of the whole book. I do have to make some compromises, like cutting down on social activities during weekends. I also never took a job, since I started writing seriously in 2008, that necessitated late-night calls or weekend work. That way, consciously I chalked out my own path that was supportive of my writing habits.

[Debanjan] Question for all three: Did that culture of being “Jack of many trades, masters of some” inspire subsequent generations, including your own? Am thinking of the likes of JC Bose’s student Satyen Bose to name just one. Is that culture of cultivating many diverse interests among students and young people in crisis today, with the current societal obsession/anxiety with education as only a means to careers, that are too often restricted to engineering and medicine?

[Sudipto] Yes, especially in India, there’s no concept of Multiple Intelligence, something that has been found very effective in many other places. The craze for becoming an engineer or doctor is so high that most parents even feel studying literature and language is a waste of time. Only a few streams get all the focus. Even in engineering, only Computer Science, AI and anything related to those get the best and most students, with the core engineering streams like Mechanical, Chemical, etc. rarely attracting the good ones. I feel parents are mostly responsible for this sorry state of affairs. I’ve seen many wanting to take up unconventional streams, but they are more often than not discouraged by their parents. Such is the state of language skills among engineers, that even a senior Vice President sometimes can’t even write one sentence of correct English in emails. The fact that liberal arts and humanities are becoming more and more important now, especially with the advent of AI, is still not being realised by many. I hope this changes soon – the sooner the better. Given this, it’s remarkable that what Jagadish Bose – and, of course, many of his contemporaries, notably Tagore – did was to experiment with the idea of what later came to be known as Multiple Intelligence.

[Debanjan] What role do good, well-researched biographies play in our culture: educational, societal, political and national.

[Sudipto] A good biography is the best teacher for all.