"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.
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