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.

Bangalore Launch of "Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist"

The Indian Express, 4 Dec 2023

By: Express News Service

Bengaluru | December 4, 2023 20:48 IST

A fresh biographical release by a Bangalore-based author was ‘Jagadish Chandra Bose – The Reluctant Physicist’ by Sudipto Das. With his previous three works being fiction, this was his first foray into biographical non-fiction.

Das, an engineer, said, “Bose has almost been forgotten outside the academic world. Even a lot of Bengalis don’t know about him anymore. But his contribution to practical science and innovation is immense. Any technical paper on 5G will mention him.”

Referring to the reason for the book’s title, Das explained that despite the fact that his work in physics was best known (such as his collaboration with Einstein), his true passion for many years had been in the field of botany.

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Calcutta launch of "Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist"

Telegraph, 16 Jan 2024

Times of India, 12 Jan 2024

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Transcript of the launch of "Jagadish Chandra - The Reluctant Physicist" at the Bangalore Lit-Fest 2023

 [The book "Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist" was launched at the Bangalore Lit-Fest on 3 Dec 2023.]

[Shevlin Sebastian] Welcome dear friends for this interaction with Sudipto. We'll be starting this interaction with Keerti Ramachandra, who is one of the finest translators from vernacular to English and one of the finest editors. She has edited Sudipto’s first and current book and Sudipto will be presenting the first copy to her.

[Keerti Ramachandra] I’d just like to say how much I enjoyed reading this book because it was a subject, I knew nothing about. I barely got 35 out of 100 when I studied physics in college in the first year… But his first book, which has remained with me, The Ekkos Clan, was also marvellous, because he dealt with, apart from many other things, Linguistic Palaeontology… and it was so close to my heart because language is something I deal with, I work with, I love. It’s my passion, it’s my profession… Working with Sudipto was very easy. I would insist that he came personally, and explained to me every experiment, every aspect of Jagadish Chandra Bose’s work, because only then would I be able to edit, in the sense, make it easy for the reader to understand… And, dealing with me was like dealing with the lowest common denominator, and therefore the book has come out extremely well… He does so much research and so much reading. There’s so much material in him that I think he can write 100 books on any subject and I wish him all the very best. I hope this book really goes a long way and I hope The Ekkos Clan is revived… and you do lots of other things as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sudipto.

[Shevlin] A brief intro of Sudipto: he’s a writer and a musician, who also happens to be an engineer, having done his undergrad at IIT Kharagpur. Regarding his background, Sudipto himself wants to talk about it.

[Sudipto] I have a sort of ancestry, which is interesting, and I take extreme pride in its historical aspects. It so happened that in 1947, at the stroke of midnight, the Bengal Province was partitioned, and overnight around 10 million people were rendered homeless. And, over the next many decades: 10 million is one crore, and, just for the perspective, World War II created 15 million refugees and the Bengal partition alone created around 10 million – my father happens to be one of those 10 million people, who gradually trickled into India over the next many years… My father – he was around seven years old – he alone, with his elder brother, who was around 14 years old, and another elder sister, who was nine years old, somehow managed to come to India after a 14-day-ordeal, which included waiting for a ferry for seven days… And, he landed up in Calcutta with broken ribs, [marks of] which he still has as a memento of his past. But that is not unique because there are around 10 million stories like that, which you, none of you, might have heard. The Bengalis, who moved to India from Bangladesh, happen to be the single largest displaced community in the world, more than the Jews. And the reason you don’t know this is what I am proud of: none of these 10 million people actually resorted to violence, and that is the reason I’m here. I believe, I am the chalta-firta-jeeta-jagta saboot of what happens if one generation sacrifices and doesn’t take to violence. I think, apart from being an Indian, being a Bengali, being a Bangalorean, being a musician, the identity, [in] which I take maximum pride is this: I’m the son of somebody who didn’t become a terrorist but who could have become one. (applause)

[Shevlin] That’s super that. This aspect of the migration, it has been described beautifully in Sudipto’s remarkable first novel, which I’ve read. It’s called The Ekkos Clan. It has also been brought out by Niyogi Books, who have brought out this book. So, Sudipto, should we start?

[Sudipto] Before that, [I should say] how I know Shevlin. So, you know, my first book was about the Bengal partition, which, I think, nobody knew [much about] outside Bengal. And, as I said, that we have not been conspicuous is actually the [real] achievement, because we never resorted to violence and only if you are violent do people know of you, right? So, I am proud that we [and our partition story] are not known. It so happened that I went to Cochin for a book event, and then I was wondering. I knew that outside Bengal nobody knew of the Bengal partition. So, I was wondering what I should talk about there. 

And then, Shevlin comes [to me] and speaks to me in a Bengali, which is even more correct than what my son, who was born and brought up in Bangalore, speaks. He said in fluent Bangla that the chapters on the Bengal partition were very well written. I got the first Mallu I’d come across who speaks Bengali better than my son – I knew of other connections between the Bongs and Mallus, like fish and communism. (laughter) So, that’s about Shevlin. He has stayed in Calcutta more than me Since then, for the last, I think, 10 years, we have been friends.

[Shevlin] I was born and brought up in Calcutta. So, I’m a half Bong, and I’m a Malayali, and my children call me Baba in tribute to my Bong roots.

[Sudipto] Also, you would have noticed that he introduced me as Shudipto, not Sudipto. That’s a typical Bong thing. 

[Shevlin] Yes, Shudipto was Bengali. Okay, so, Sudipto, my first question is: how did you get the idea to do a biography of Dr JC Bose?

[Sudipto] An interesting anecdote: Yesterday, I was there at the bookstore. I was trying to set up my books, and then somebody saw this book, and then he spoke in Hindi to his friend, “Dude, who’s this Jagadish Chandra Bose?” 

His friend said, “Wasn’t there someone by the name of Chandra Shekhar Bose?”

“Idiot, that’s Subhas Chandra Bose and Chandra Shekhar is Azad.”

“That’s fine, but who’s this one?”

So, I believe, that’s why I wrote the book.

I’m keeping aside his scientific achievements, which…, I don’t want to go into [in detail]. But, just to give you a snippet: he is modern India’s first scientist and, now we know, he’s a co-inventor of radio, which Marconi… well, I don’t want to go into that [now]. He’s a co-inventor of radio and, also, had set up one of the first practical working wireless solutions in the world in the Presidency College in Calcutta. He also holds the patent for the [world’s] first semiconductor device. A semiconductor device is… [to put it simplistically] the chip that you see in all electronics. Wireless and semiconductors are something which drive our life today from the morning, when you wake up, till the time you sleep, in your phone, in your office, in your car…, everywhere. So, this guy in India, he and his work, creates the foundation for both Wireless and electronics, which is [made of] semiconductor devices. 

But that is not something which attracted me. What attracted me was his life, which appeared to be more interesting than fiction. First of all, he’s a scientist but then he’s also an avid hunter. I mean, how many scientists do you know, who, at the age of 19, go to the Himalayas and hunt tigers? He was a hunter. He was a horse rider. He was a professional sculler – rowing in England is called sculling. He used to do professional sculling in Cambridge. Also, he was caught in a storm while doing deep sea rowing.

And, more interestingly, there are two important women, western women, in his life other than his own wife – one was a very rich American widow socialite, Mrs Sara Bull, and the other was an Irish revolutionary nun, called Margaret Elizabeth Noble, who was christened Sister Nivedita [by Swami Vivekananda]. Both these women were disciples of Swami Vivekananda who came to India to love India and to serve India. These two women play a very important role in Bose’s life. So, his life is “pati patni aur woh do” [husband wife and the other two].  (laughter) And, these three women were also on very good terms [with each other]. How these three women played a big role in his life is again a story of how the West and East can blend together – two Western women and an Indian scientist, who is also a spiritualist… 

Finally, what attracted me is that, if I have to plagiarize from Charles Dickens, the timeline of my bio – [that] is 1890 to 1910 – is the best of the times and also the worst of the times. The geopolitics of the world was going through tectonic changes, which finally formed the 20th century. World War I was going to happen in some time and there were [already] signs of that; India’s Swadeshi Movement was going to happen, and I think Bose’s life is entwined with all these things. So, I believe, it had all the characters and features of fiction; just not any villain – if you put the British as a villain that’s a different thing, but otherwise it had all the elements…

[Shevlin] Okay, next question is: what is the research that you did? 

[Sudipto] Well, I went to Bose Institute in Calcutta and Shantiniketan: Tagore [and Bose] had a very good relationship… A lot of archives are available online – I had to pay the subscription but all the 100-year-old archives of the New York Times or the Times London were available. So, it’s mainly, I would say, online, some free and some paid subscriptions.

[Shevlin] Did you speak to the descendants of Bose?

[Sudipto] There is no descendant of Bose. He didn’t have any children. I mean, his [only] girl child died during birth and he didn’t have anybody. He had nephews, though. I couldn’t figure out any direct descendant of Bose. In fact, the Bose Institute also doesn’t know of anybody who can claim to be his [direct] descendant, so his royalties don’t go to anybody. So, there is no descendant.

[Shevlin] Okay, so if you [were] growing up in Calcutta like me the only way you remember J C Bose is because there’s an AJC Bose Road. There’s no other way you remember him. So, my next question is: why do you think Bose is not as famous as, say, Rabindranath Tagore or Satyajit Ray?

[Sudipto] That’s also one of the very interesting things. In the 1920s, Bose was so popular… I’ll just give one incident: he was a member of the League of Nations, which later became the United Nations. He was the Indian representative of the League of Nations and [the] other members in his committee were Einstein, Nobel Laureate, Hendrik Lorentz – he was also Nobel [Laureate] – and then Mary Curie: there are five-six people, who are all Nobel Laureates. The first time he went to Geneva to attend one of the League of Nations's functions, it was so crowded that even Einstein had to jostle for a seat. Einstein was so damn impressed with this guy… 

So, from that [level of] popularity, [to] now “Chandra Bose kaun hai,” I believe, a lot of things would have happened. One is, what I feel, is his extra dependence on these two women, who contributed a lot to his life as long as they were alive. They did everything for Bose, being his publicist, being his editor… So, I think, that when they died, Bose, for the rest of his life, which is almost 30 years after the death of Mrs Sara Bull and Sister Nivedita, somehow stayed a confused person. 

He didn’t have any disciple. So that is also another reason [why his legacy didn’t survive]. And, finally, I think his writings, his scientific papers, became a little spiritual. However, it is not that his experiments were forged. He used to do a tremendous amount of experiments but his language became spiritual. He used to quote verses from the Rig Veda, from the Upanishads. He was extremely influenced by this one verse from the Rig Veda, which in Sanskrit goes like this: ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti, which means, there is only One and the wise call it in various ways. So, his entire life was in the search of this One… Einstein also spent the last 30 years of his life searching for One Unified theory, which will combine quantum mechanics, electromagnetic waves and gravity. He died in [the] search of this. 

Bose also became too spiritual and the scientific community never liked that. Even today, the moment you talk about the Rig Veda, people will brand you either as a bhakt or a right hand – sorry, what [do] they call, right-wing? (laughter) Whatever. That was the case then, too. So, the moment he started quoting the Rig Veda, chalo, isko kuchh nahin ata, [lo, he knows nothing]. So, I think, all these were reasons why he was lost, and it’s, I think, up to people like us to resurrect him.

[Shevlin] One of the most remarkable things about the book is that Sudipto [has] humanized some legendary figures, and one of them is Swami Vivekananda. I was a member of the Ramakrishna Library in Golpark. There, you know, Swami Vivekananda was really deified. But Sudipto writes about Swami Vivekananda as someone who loses his temper. He gets angry. So, that is one of the more remarkable things, how you humanized legendary figures.

[Sudipto] I think the problem with, not only the Bongs, even in [the rest of] India is [that] anybody who becomes famous, you actually make him a prophet and the moment you make somebody God you actually kill that personality. So, Vivekananda, the moment you think of him as a God, there’s nothing to learn from a God. Only you can learn from humans. In most of the Bengali literature and also in [the] South, Vivekananda is so damn popular that if you say something which the Ramakrishnaites might not like, they’ll become wild. But I myself studied in Ramakrishna Mission my whole life. I thought that a very analytical literature about their personal life [is needed]. It’s not possible that Vivekananda was a God, right? I mean, he was a human being. He had virtues and vices. So why not talk about that. Though it’s a biography I tried to get under the skin of all the characters, mainly Tagore, Jagadish Bose, and Vivekananda – these two [personalities: Tagore and Vivekananda] are very closely related to Bose. I don’t know if people might like it, and, again, some real bhakts might get a little angry.

Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist

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My latest book, Jagadish Chandra Bose - The Reluctant Physicist, was released at the Bangalore Lit-Fest 2023 in Bangalore on 3 Dec, 2023. Before the event, I had a chat with Shevlin Sebastian, with whom I was to converse during the book launch. Here is the summary of the chat, which throws a good amount of light on the "behind-the-scene" things of the book.

[Shevlin] How did you get the idea to do a biography of JC Bose? 

[Sudipto] It so happened that I had to deliver a lecture on 5G at a seminar sometime in early 2019. To make the lecture a little more engaging I wanted to delve a bit into the history of 5G, sharing some interesting facts and figures. That’s when I chanced upon a paper published in a European journal divulging this intriguing tidbit that millimetre waves were first used for wireless communication close to 125 years ago in Calcutta by the Indian scientist JC Bose – that was more than a year before Marconi demonstrated “radio” in London. Incidentally, 5G is again using millimetre waves for wireless communication, more than a century later than Bose did. Knowing that was quite embarrassing for me, especially when I am a communication engineer, who takes pride in India and her history and culture. More embarrassment awaited me when I figured out that the world’s first patent on a semiconductor device was granted to none other than the same guy – JC Bose – in 1904. Today, we can’t even think of a world without wireless and semiconductors, which are at the heart of almost everything that controls our lives, from the phone to the laptop to the car, even the FASTag sticker. And, here is an Indian scientist who is at the core of both, almost unknown to everyone. That is not all. Totally orthogonal to wireless and semiconductors, Bose also happens to be the father of biophysics and some of the very latest research areas like plant neurobiology, plant cognition, etc. He also happens to be the first Indian scientist of the modern times, and the first Indian professor of Science in India. My ignorance about Bose pulled me to knowing him more, learning about him more, reading his papers, his books, his lectures.

But what attracted me more is not Bose the scientist – the Nobel Laureate CV Raman, the other Bose of the Bose-Einstein fame, the Rocket Boys Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai are much more celebrated scientists. What attracted me more was the man that JC Bose was, a scientist who hunted tigers in the Terai jungles, rode horses, participated in rowing competitions on the Cam River in Cambridge, was an avid Himalayan trekker and the writer of the first-ever Himalayan travelogue in any language, and especially the time he lived in, and the people around him. As Charles Dickens said, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times: the timeline of my book – mainly between 1890 and 1911. 

The British empire is past its zenith – the Boer War in South Africa almost brought them to their knees. For the first time in more than a hundred years, they were on the verge of losing a war, and that was the beginning of the end of the Empire. The same is happening in their science. For centuries it has been British science that has ruled the world with the Newtons, the Maxwells, the Faradays, and the Kelvins. But suddenly now there is German science, Italian science too. In geopolitics, the British as well as European Empires are battling for global domination and hurtling unwittingly towards devastating wars, leading to the First World War in a decade. Bose’s life is some sort of a mirror of what’s happening around the world, every major event having a bearing on him in some way or the other.

Back home, the Swadeshi movement took shape, with the Partition of Bengal in 1905. Here, Bose emerges as a Universalist, Pacifist, and advocate of self-rule or self-reliance not through terrorism and violence, but through science and innovation. Incidentally, the British have made all efforts to deprive Indians of scientific research and innovation, the very thing that has catapulted the West to a sudden growth trajectory.

I felt awareness about Bose, what he did, and what he stood for are more relevant now than it was perhaps during his lifetime. Unfortunately, there’s very little written about him for a non-academic audience. Hence the urge to write a bio that would go under his skin and reveal the man with all his virtues and vices.

[Shevlin] Why do you think Bose is almost forgotten now? As you mentioned, eminent psychologist Ashis Nandy termed Bose a “lapsed scientist.” Why is it so?

[Sudipto] It’s an act of serendipity that the person who was one of the two most popular Indians in the West – the other being Tagore – in the 1920s was suddenly forgotten both in the West and in his own country – India. My book is meant to delve into this. 

It’s well acknowledged now that Bose was a co-inventor of radio, alongside Marconi and Nikola Tesla. In fact, Tesla was granted priority over Marconi in what became the first-ever patent litigation to have reached the Supreme Court in the US in the 1940s – by then both Marconi and Tesla were already dead. In the 1990s, it was proved beyond doubt that Marconi, in his much-publicized first trans-Atlantic wireless transmission between Cornwall in South West England and Newfoundland in Canada in 1901, had actually used Tesla’s transmitter and Bose’s receiver. How the Marconi Company managed to propagate a totally different narrative for so long is indeed a chilling account of all that an extractive and monopolistic institution can do in collusion with a corrupt and duped government machinery, in this case, the British. National Geographic did an investigative story recently that had the other wireless companies in the world not been so threatened by the Marconi Company of costly legal battles that had already killed most of the competition distress calls from Titanic fitted with Marconi wireless could have been picked up by non-Marconi wireless sets from the nearby German ships, which didn’t even dare to read a Marconi-wireless message.

But interestingly, Bose was not forgotten because of Marconi. Tesla was, till he was resurrected in the 1980s. Bose was forgotten because of many things, and his own countrymen, too, played a role in it. I personally feel he himself was responsible to a great extent for his own oblivion. First and foremost was perhaps his over-dependence on this remarkable and multi-faceted personality, Sister Nivedita, Margaret Noble, who shielded him like a child to such an extent from the external world that when she suddenly died in 1911, Bose was left almost orphan for the rest of his life. Had she been alive, things would have been totally different.

[Shevlin] Talking about Sister Nivedita, a few people played a very important role in Bose’s life. They include Sr. Nivedita, Sara Chapman Bull, Swami Vivekananda, and Tagore. What were their influences on Bose?

[Sudipto] Sister Nivedita’s influence on Bose was paramount, as was Mrs. Sara Chapman Bull’s, both western disciples of Swami Vivekananda – Nivedita Irish and Mrs. Bull American, a rich widow of the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull. Ashis Nandy, elder brother of Pritish Nandy, did Bose’s psycho-analysis. He concluded that both Sister Nivedita and Mrs. Bull filled the void of a much-needed tender but tough mother figure that Bose’s mother had been in his life. Bose’s relationship with these two women – Nivedita a decade younger than him and Mrs Bull close to a decade older – raised eyebrows after Mrs Bull’s death. Leading newspapers and tabloids in the US ran titillating stories about them. That Bose called Mrs. Bull Mother, and Nivedita privately referred to Bose as her “child” added enough fodder to these stories.

In reality, these two women created a safety net around Bose. It was only under Mrs. Bull’s persuasion that he finally agreed to file a few patents, making her his co-applicant. Sister Nivedita acted as Bose’s secretary, editor, and even writer, to a great extent, of most of his papers till she lived – Bose would often demonstrate an experiment to Nivedita and she would then write the paper. She promoted Bose vociferously in the West, as she did for Swami Vivekananda as well. She pursued leading journalists in England and the US to write favourably about Bose. She fought with anyone who said anything not-so-good about him. She once wrote to the manager of a hotel, where Bose was supposed to stay in the US, insisting that the manager ensure Bose, being unaccustomed to the American ways, didn’t face any problem, whatsoever. 

I think Bose was so much used to this pampering and caregiving that when both the women died almost simultaneously, he never managed to deal with many worldly things alone – one of those being creating followers that would keep him alive, and carry on with his unfinished tasks. Even the eponymous Bose Institute that he founded didn’t have a battalion of his followers. So, he faded away soon.

Tagore was Bose’s closest friend for many years, though they drifted apart a bit later in their lives. Bose made Nivedita translate one of Tagore’s short stories, making that his first work to be translated into English. In fact, Tagore started writing short stories when Bose demanded he create one every day during one of Bose’s trips to Shilaidaha, Tagore’s estate in Bangladesh. Both the poet and the scientist strongly felt that India must be awakened with tales of selfless love and heroic sacrifices found in old ballads, fables and mythologies from all across the country. They sifted through Buddhist, Maratha, and Sikh histories and thus came into being “Katha,” an anthology of long poems curated from all ages and regions of India, perhaps the first of its kind intended to integrate the whole country through a common cultural thread. That was also a template for what the Indian resistance should be – not through arms or terrorism or hatred, but through inner strength, self-reliance, resilience, selflessness, sacrifices, and love. Tagore dedicated “Katha” to Bose.

[Shevlin] What was Bose’s view of the Swadeshi Movement, and the Partition of Bengal in 1905? 

[Sudipto] Bose believed that science and innovation were the keys to self-reliance. Complimenting that was Tagore’s idea of a self-reliant, self-driven, self-sustained Swadeshi Samaj, built on the foundations of true education that would arouse and awaken inner strength, self-esteem, determination and righteousness. Bose fought through his entire career trying to convince the British administration to set up a world-class physical laboratory in Presidency College. It’s really incredible that at a time when the Swadeshi Movement was taking shape in the aftermath of the Partition of Bengal in 1905, and people were starting to seriously think of liberation from British rule, Bose was thinking of liberation in the form of autonomy and self-reliance through science and innovation. It’s well known now that powerful and prosperous nations like the US, France, Germany, Japan, and others are so only because of their edge over others in science and innovation. India’s track record in scientific innovation is abysmal, which poses a big threat towards making India a self-reliant and powerful nation. We’ve become the service provider to the world, but for many of the basic things, for example, the semiconductors, of which Bose holds the first patent in the world, we can’t but rely on others. Bose’s thrust on scientific innovation is still relevant and remains the only solution for many of India’s problems.

[Shevlin] Did science become a mainstream subject in India, because of Bose, as you have said?

[Sudipto] Yes, that’s true. Higher studies in science wouldn’t have been possible in India without Bose. The Imperial British Government allowed Indians to study medicine, engineering, law, and civil service because all that was needed to run the government machinery. But, science, they already knew, would make the Indians innovative, and self-reliant. Hence, that was very tactfully kept out of reach. There was no employment for a science grad, as is evident from the fact that C V Raman, with a degree in science, came to Calcutta to work as an assistant accountant general in the Indian Finance Department. Presidency College finally got its first laboratory when Bose was on the verge of retirement. Bose made science a mainstream subject and profession.

[Shevlin] You talk a lot about Prana, the universal energy? Can you elaborate a bit on it in the context of Bose’s works?

[Sudipto] Prana in Indian philosophy is the universal energy, complimenting Akasha, the universal matter. Modern concepts of matter and energy and the fact that both are convertible to one another ushered in the quantum age, with Einstein’s famous E = mc2 equation, which came into being in 1905. 12 years before that, Vivekananda had met Nikola Tesla in Chicago, where Vivekananda delivered his world-famous lecture at the World Religion Conference and Tesla lighted the entire city with AC for the first time. Both Tesla and Vivekananda were attracted towards each other and would have discussed Prana and Akasha. Referring to these interactions, Vivekananda later wrote in a letter that Tesla believed he could demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy, which, given the pre-Einstein era, was actually incredible. That was perhaps the first time someone was talking about the convertibility of matter and energy before Einstein. Vivekananda saw in Tesla a scientific validation of Indian concepts from the Vedas and Upanishads. 

When Vivekananda met Bose a few years later, he became a major inspiration for Bose for connecting science with the Indian Knowledge System. Being a firm believer in Advaita Vedanta, like Tagore, Aurobindo and many others, the driving force behind Bose’s science became this verse from the Rig Veda: Ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti, only “One” exists, and the wise call it variously. Simplistically put, it means, whether it’s the energy or matter, it’s all “That One,” Tat Ekam. This gave Bose a sort of purpose for his science, to prove, with elaborate experiments, that plants and also sentient beings, to a great extent like humans and animals, and that it’s our ignorance that we are not able to realize that. That plants can also have some form of consciousness, might not be at the same level as humans, was a radical thought 125 years ago, but not anymore as “Plant Cognition” is a mainstream thing now. Back then, when Bose started talking about all this, many secular scientists, and even non-scientific people, felt that he was dragging Indian spirituality and philosophy too much into the realm of science. This became a nemesis for him, distancing him from the scientific fraternity. And, there was no one to fight for him after Nivedita.

In today’s world of Artificial Intelligence and the fear about what might become of the world when machines become “conscious,” Bose’s views on intelligence and consciousness are very relevant. But we might not have time to discuss that today – some other time.