Advaita Vedanta, Science, and Jagadish Chandra Bose - Part I

Apr 5, 2024, THE RAMAKRISHNA MISSION INSTITUTE OF CULTURE, GOLPARK

Achintya Kumar Tapadar and Pranabesh Chakraborty Memorial Lecture

Speaker: Sudipto Das

Venue: Shivananda Hall

***

The topic of our discussion is “Advaita Vedanta, Science, and Jagadish Chandra Bose.” All three elements—Advaita Vedanta, Science, and Jagadish Chandra Bose—are profound, perhaps too profound for someone like me not only to talk about in one evening but also to connect them all with a common thread and create a garland. I will attempt it with my limited knowledge and understanding, often over-simplifying a complicated concept and resorting to an older or classical version rather than the more accurate modern one. 

For example, we will still use “ether” to explain radio waves, whereas Einstein pronounced more than 120 years ago that there’s nothing called ether. Sticking to “ether” simplifies our lives to a great extent and helps us understand many concepts and theories easily, even without knowing their technical nitty gritty. All we need is to somewhat understand the “operational principles” of a certain phenomenon based on a certain amount of “imagination.”

Say, we conceptualise ether as a sea of invisible fine matter, finer than water. Then, we consider the radio signal as waves in the sea of ether, very much like the waves in the other sea. That’s the source of the term “ঈথার তরঙ্গ” or “ether waves” in Bengali. Now, the waves can be created only by a disturbance or vibration somewhere. Someone should have thrown a stone into a placid pond and set the water into vibration. If that’s true, it is not too difficult to visualise that an electric charge, immersed in ether, has suddenly been set into vibration and that this vibration then propagates through the sea as “ether waves.” 

This is a very simplistic explanation of the creation and propagation of radio or electromagnetic waves without going into most of the technicalities. This explanation derives from certain “principles” we believe are at play: waves need a medium to propagate, waves are created by a disturbance, etc. We can take these “principles” as the Truth, Satyam, or, more simplistically, our “consciousness” about the Truth. But whether the Truth is “Absolute Right,” Ritam, and will stand the test of time is still not known. The Truth becomes the Absolute Right, Satyam Ritam Vrihat, only when the consciousness is at its highest level. Then, I myself become the TRUTH: I AM THAT Satyam Ritam Vrihat.

Let’s take an example. Millions of people would have seen an apple falling from a tree. But it only took Newton’s level of consciousness to see the truth about gravitation. But then, he believed that gravitation is an “Action at a Distance.” This means that whenever a new star pops up anywhere in the universe, we feel its gravitational pull instantaneously at any distance. But Einstein, with his level of consciousness, realised that this “Action at a Distance” is not the Absolute Right, Ritam. He pronounced that when a new star is born anywhere in the universe, its gravitation propagates through space at the speed of light, very much like an electromagnetic wave, and is felt on Earth not instantaneously but at a later point when the gravitational waves reach Earth. 

How did Einstein realise this Satyam Ritam Vrihat? He never did any calculations or experiments to discover this. Then, how did he “imagine” the gravitational waves a hundred years before they were first observed in September 2015? It is as though the absolute truth just became manifest to him all by itself, or he just “heard” it. When “inspiration” attains Einstein’s level, “truth” doesn’t reveal through any action, like “vision,” drishti, or experiment: it manifests through “hearing,” shruti. It is as though he Himself was That Absolute Truth, and, hence, he knew.

With this, we have set the premise of today’s discussion and introduced some of the terms that we will refer to again and again: imagination, Inspiration, Consciousness, chit; truth and the Absolute Right, Satyam Ritam Vrihat; I AM THAT, Soham.

Our basic thought process this evening would be that there’s always a simple explanation for everything and that we complicate things because, as Tagore said humorously, we are unable to say simple things in a simple way. সহজ কথায় লিখতে আমায় কহ যে, সহজ কথা যায় না লেখা সহজে। In pursuit of simplicity, we will go back to the beginning, the genesis. A human is simplest at the beginning when she is a child. Folk music is among the simplest forms of music because that was the first music created by humans. In Bengali, we call it লোক সংগীত, the music of the people.

So, for Advaita Vedanta, too, we will go back to the beginning, when the concept was first introduced to us in the Rig Veda. Sri Aurobindo felt that the Vedas were “insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical terms.” That’s a boon than a bane. Things are simple. You don’t need to break your head with the wordy term Madakranta to appreciate the meter of the Meghadutam. You don’t care if the Jana-Gana-Mana was written in a variation of dactylic-septameter.

The Rig Veda, the oldest of the Vedas, is the oldest surviving book created by humans, dating back to 1900 – 1500 BC. It’s close to 4000 years old. It’s also the oldest book of poetry and songs. Being the oldest literary work from a member of the Indo-European language family, where the ancient languages like Sanskrit, Farsi, Greek and Latin are siblings and cousins, the Rig Veda is a treasure trove to historians, linguists, linguistic palaeontologists, theologists, musicologists, poetry lovers, and many more. It’s unfortunate that the apotheosis of the book has made it alien to most Indians. Calling it God’s words, merely heard by humans, we have made sure that no one dares to touch them. Today, we will touch the Rig Veda.

We will also refer to the Atharva Veda, composed between 1200 and 1000 BC. It is 3000 years old and contemporaneous with the Zoroastrian Gatha from neighbouring Persia.

Among the modern writers, we will refer to Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, and Tagore. Among the scientists, we will, of course, talk about Jagadish Chandra Bose, the man of the evening, and a few others like Einstein, Nikola Tesla and Lord Kelvin. We will also talk a little bit about Comparative Linguistics, Quantum Physics, and Neuroscience.

***

Now, let’s directly get into Advaita Vedanta. First, let’s try to define it. As in science, everything starts with a definition. An example of a good definition is Newton’s third law of motion: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It’s simple, precise, devoid of any garnishing or ornamentation, and it calls out every aspect of the law. 

The simplest definition of Advaita Vedanta, to me, is a popular Rabindra Sangeet: We are All the King in Our This King’s Kingdom – How else should We Unite with Our King?

আমরা সবাই রাজা আমাদের এই রাজার রাজত্বে – নইলে মোদের রাজার সনে মিলব কী স্বত্বে?

What derives from the song is this: We do have a king, and the king does have his kingdom. But every one of us is that king, too. And only with that consciousness should we and the king all merge into That One. Finally, it’s only That One that exists, and we call it by different names: एकं सत् विप्रा बहुधा वदन्ति.

It’s incredible that Tagore has classified this as a patriotic song. Likewise, many other songs about That One, Tat Ekam, have a patriotic fervour. The “Jaya He” of our national anthem is also for That One, that which governs the mind of all and is the creator of happiness for all. In Advaita Vedanta, the country is not separated from the self and That One.

If this is the Absolute Truth, Satyam Ritam Vrihat, that only That One exists, and that we call it by different names, then what prevents us from seeing it? Is it a lower level of Consciousness, चित्, or Illusion, माया?

Again, let’s resort to a simple definition of Maya before we proceed any further. Now we will resort to another poet, Kabir: The diamond was lying in the market, covered with ashes. So many ignorant people, murakh, passed by me (the diamond), but only the examining or discerning one, parkhi, took me up.

हीरा पड़ा बाजार में, रहा छार लपटाय | कितेही मूरख पाछे मोहे, कोई परखी लिया उठाय ||

The term murakh refers to someone without consciousness or intelligence, and parkhi, deriving from the root iksh, to look, is the one who can discriminate between right and wrong, between truth—the diamond—and falsehood—the ashes. Parkhi is the discerning and conscious one only to whom the Satyam and Ritam manifest, as the gravitational waves did only to Einstein. 

Einstein “saw” something that no one else could see. In the context of “seeing,” it’s relevant to note that Newton had once said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Here, “seeing” is nothing but being conscious and discerning the Ritam. And, “standing on the shoulders of Giants” could very well refer to increasing the consciousness from the collective learning of others. Einstein, coming a few centuries later than Newton, benefitted from the Giants earlier than him.

One of Tagore’s poems comes to mind: I walked for miles for many days, I spent much money and visited many lands, to see the mountains, to see the oceans. But I forgot to take the two steps from my home and behold with my wide-open eyes, the drop of dew swinging from an ear of paddy.

“Wide-open eyes” are the most important sensory organs connected to consciousness – we will come to that later.

Now that we have defined Advaita Vedanta and that which keeps us from knowing That One, Tat Ekam, let’s go back to the Rig Veda and study the 46th verse of the 164th hymn of its 1st book that introduces the concept. The verse says: 

Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni they call – Him, the divine noble-winged Garut-man.

One exists; the wise call him variously. Agni, Yama, Matari-shvan they call.

Agni, Indra, and Mitra-Varuna, we will discuss later, are the levels of consciousness. 

Divya suparna Garut-man, the divine noble-winged Garut-man, is the epithet of the mythical bird Garuda. The word garut derives from the root गॄ, gri, to swallow, which is related to the Indian gala, गल, গলা, etc., and English gullet, all meaning throat, and Greek glossa, meaning tongue. Accordingly, Garuda’s visualisation in the mythology is that of swallowing the fire of the sun’s rays or, perhaps, symbolically, carrying the sunlight on its wings. Connecting it to Akasha, which roughly corresponds to the now-debunked ether, the superfine matter that fills all the empty space of the universe, Garut-man is identical to the ether, whose waves were believed to be the carriers of light and any electromagnetic radiation.

Matari of matari-shvan means “in the ether,” and shvan derives from the root श्वि, shvi, to breathe, thrive; to swell, grow; and is related to the Indian shwas, श्वास, শ্বাস, meaning breath, Latin cumulus and English accumulation, and Greek kineo, meaning movement (the “k” and “sh” sounds are connected by the Law of Palatalisation of phonetic evolution). So matari-shvan is that which breathes or moves in the ether. It can’t be anything but the light or energy, the Prana of Indian metaphysics, which propagates through ether waves.

If these conjectures are correct, then it’s indeed incredible that the Rig Vedic seers did have a somewhat realistic idea of the light waves and their propagation through the etheric space. They derived at the idea not through scientific analysis, but by their understanding of the possible “operational principles” of the propagation of light.

So, if Agni, Indra, and Mitra-Varuna all refer to consciousness, Garut-man is akasha the matter, and Matari-shvan prana the energy, then the verse simply alludes to the idea that the One that exists and that which is called variously is nothing but consciousness, matter, and energy. That matter and energy are inter-convertible is well known now, thanks to Einstein’s famous E = MC squared equation. Consciousness, we will see, is also related to energy. So, we are now quite close to realising how everything in the universe resolves back into That One, Tat Ekam. That’s what is the crux of Advaita Vedanta.

***

Before we dive deeper into Advaita Vedanta, let’s throw a glance at what our scientists and philosophers felt about matter and energy, Akasha and Prana.

First, let’s consider this verse from the Atharva Veda from the Prana Hymn.

The word Prana derives from the root अन्, an, to live, breathe, move, etc., and is related to the English animate; Latin animus, meaning mind, consciousness; and Greek anemos, meaning wind, in the sense that it moves and also supports breathing. So, across languages, life, breathing, moving, mind, and consciousness are connected through the same root. Then, conversely, anything that doesn’t move and breathe is inanimate and should be non-life, devoid of mind and consciousness. But the verse says Prana rules over all that moves and breathes and that doesn’t, यद् च प्राणति यद् च न. 

Does it imply that all that doesn’t seem to move is also governed or ruled by movements? Does it allude to the movements in the quantum realm at the sub-atomic level? Is, then, life still an exclusive vital agent associated only with living beings? Do non-living things, too, have life? “What is life” has bothered many, including the Nobel Laureate physicist Schrodinger, who wrote an eponymous book on the topic, quoting from the Upanishads at a few places.

Jagadish Chandra Bose, our man of the evening, almost paraphrased the Prana Hymn at the end of a lecture at the Royal Institution, London, in 1901. “Some property of matter,” he said, referring to electric response, “[is] common and persistent… Responsive processes seen in life have been fore-shadowed in non-life… There is no abrupt break, but a continuity…” This is indeed an oversimplification, for responsiveness could be a necessary but not sufficient parameter for life.

Let’s read one more verse from the same Prana Hymn:

The expression “existing and having existed, he’s born again” alludes to a repetitive formation, something that propagates infinitely, endlessly, like a wave. In the context of energy, it cannot be anything but electromagnetic waves. It could very well be, as we know now, the gravitational waves, too. But that was doubtless not what the composers of the Atharva Veda could have known. Nevertheless, the fact that they did visualise an endless wave like formation is in itself incredible.

Jagadish Chandra often talked about a Mahashakti, “by whom the non-living and the living, the atom and the universe are all powered…” It could only be conjectured that he was trying to unite the quantum and gravitational forces, which Einstein had envisaged but couldn’t prove during his lifetime. Fortunately, Penn State University’s Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry has been talking about unifying Einstein’s general relativity and quantum physics since 2007.

Jagadish and Einstein did meet in the 1920s when both were members of the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. But whether they discussed these topics is not known.

Around the same idea of the Mahashakti, “by whom the non-living and the living, the atom and the universe are all powered,” Tagore wrote a wonderful poem in Gitanjali, calling it the Stream of Life:

Since the Rig Vedic times, life has been associated with a stream or taranga, a wave. So, Prana, which means both life and energy, has always been connected with waves in the minds of the ancient sages.

“The idea of ether (Akasha),” Vivekananda said in a lecture in London in 1896, “is to be found in our ancient literature in forms much more developed than is the modern scientific theory…” It was on that day, after the lecture, that Jagadish Chandra and Vivekananda would have met for the first time, and the two would have developed an instant fondness for each other. In a few years, Jagadish’s research turned more and more towards Advaita Vedanta, seeking unity in everything, living and non-living, animals and plants. That also became his nemesis, in a way.

In the Raja Yoga, Vivekananda wrote, “At the beginning and at the end everything becomes Akasha, and all the forces in the universe resolve back into the Prana…” By “everything,” he meant all the matter of the universe, and by “forces,” energy. So, he clearly called out that all the matter and energy of the universe, at the beginning and end, resolve respectively into Akasha and Prana, the universal matter and energy, thus moving very close to That One.

Around the same time, Vivekananda referred to a meeting with Nikola Tesla, alluding to something that’s astounding, given its profound implication. “Mr. Tesla thinks,” Vivekananda wrote to E. T. Sturdy from New York in February 1896, “he can demonstrate mathematically that force and matter are reducible to potential energy…”

According to Vivekananda’s letter, Tesla claimed that force or energy and matter could be reducible to energy almost a decade before Einstein came up with the E = MC squared equation in 1905. If Tesla had really realised this, then it’s another example of using “operational principles” and imagination to visualize something, even without knowing the technical nitty-gritty. Imagination and visualisation, we will see, are related to consciousness.

Now, let’s turn towards Nikola Tesla. We do find a continuity in his thought about the convertibility of matter and energy. In a lecture just before the 1893 Chicago Exposition, where he met Vivekananda either during or before the Parliament of Religions, he said, “[Ether] has properties such that even a scientifically trained mind cannot help drawing a distinction between it and all that is called matter.” At that time, people believed ether to be superfine matter. However, Tesla felt that it had certain properties which made it appear like something else. Did he mean that it also appeared to him like energy, thus alluding to the matter-energy non-dualism?

A year earlier, Tesla had given a lecture at London’s Royal Institution. “The atom is tossed about in space eternally,” he said there. “Were it to stop its motion, it would die… There is no death of matter, for throughout the infinite universe, all has to move, to vibrate, that is, to live.” Here, he alludes to a universe that’s “alive,” always moving and vibrating. It’s almost a paraphrase of the Prana Hymn from the Atharva Veda: Prana rules over all. 

A very important thought that comes up here, and which we will come to again soon, is that the universe is all about being “alive,” about vibrating, moving. Conversely, it could be said that when the universe didn’t exist, there was no vibration, and everything was at absolute rest. More on this later.

At another place, Tesla said, “Lord Kelvin expressed his belief that life’s process is electrical.” And then, in 1899, in a seminal interview, he proclaimed, “Electricity I am. Or, if you wish, I am the electricity in the human form… I am part of a light…”

Here, he sounds very confident and speaks with absolute alacrity. “I AM THAT,” he says, replacing THAT with Electricity. He makes it very clear that not only is the universal life process electrical, but he himself is electricity and “part of a light,” thus resolving everything in the universe to THAT ONE. Simplistically, he calls THAT ONE electricity or light. To be a little more accurate, THAT ONE is a combination of electromagnetic, quantum, and gravitational force or energy, all of which, again, could be ONE, as Einstein had envisaged.

For the sake of simplicity, we will stick only to electromagnetic energy.

***

We have discussed Akasha and Prana, matter and energy. Let’s now move on to Consciousness.

“How would I know that I exist if I had not the eye?” Tesla said in a lecture. “For knowledge involves consciousness; consciousness involves conceptions; conceptions involve images, and images the sense of vision...”

Consciousness derives from conception, which is born out of images created when energy in the form of light stimulates the sensory organs, the eyes, resulting in vision. So, we have:

Consciousness <-- Conception <-- Image <-- Vision <-- Energy

Representing energy simplistically by electromagnetic waves, we get:

Consciousness <-- Imagination <-- Image <-- Electromagnetic Waves

So, if consciousness can be simply reduced to an after-effect of our sensory organs stimulated by electromagnetic waves, then do animals, plants, or even the apparently non-living objects possess consciousness? A verse from the Atharva Veda gives the answer to that, which we will analyse with modern neuroscience.

Righteousness, ritam; truth, satyam; great endeavours, tapas; empire, rasthtra; religion, dharma; and enterprise, karma; 

The past and future; heroism, virya; prosperity, lakshmi; strength, bala, [dwell] in the “strength of the superfluous,” ucchishta bala.

Referring to the verse, Tagore wrote in the article “The Sense of Art” for the 1928 French publication Feuilles de l'Inde, “All that is inert and inanimate is limited to the bare fact of existence. Ucchishta is the motive force of all that makes for perfection… Most of [what humans have] belong to the superfluous, that is needed only for self-expression and not for self-preservation…”

The “superfluous” is what enables humans to imagine something that almost no other living being is capable of doing. The rest can barely self-preserve and sustain their lives, whereas humans are the only ones who can imagine and self-express their imaginations and inspirations through speech.

To understand the “superfluous,” we must resort to neuroscience. We will use a technique that early humans adopted when they attempted to create abstract thoughts fuelled by their newly acquired imaginations. “In the early days of human civilisation, whenever man wished to have words for abstract things, like strength, power, etc.,” Sri Aurobindo pointed out, “his readiest method was to apply simplistic ideas of physical actions.”

Many words for strength across all languages, Aurobindo elaborated, had originally this idea of a force or injury because that was what it meant to the early humans to secure their existence and prove their strength and superiority in this world.

We will take the physical act of “biting” and analyse how imagination can convert that into abstract thoughts like “dexterity” and “wonderous deeds.” 

When I bite a chunk of meat, a series of related violent actions, like hurting, cutting, tearing, and separating, come into play. Accordingly, the similar sounding Sanskrit roots dams, damsh, and daksh all have hurting, cutting, tearing, and separating as one of their meanings. Related words in various languages with close-to-similar meanings are দংশন, damshan, in Bengali, डसना, dasna, in Hindi, dakno in Greek, and tang in English.

When I bite, light from the bitten, torn, and cut meat stimulates my eyes. Electric impulses from my retina travel to my brain through the nerve wires. The brain activates multiple sets or circuits of Motor Neurons, each set responsible for one kind of experience, which, in neuroscience parlance, is called Explicit Perception. One set of neurons could be activated, say, for the perception of the pressure felt on the teeth, another for the tearing off of a portion of the meat moments later, and one more for the pain when a bone hits the mouth’s palate.

Some other times, when I don’t bite myself but observe someone else doing so, circuits of Mirror Neurons, comprising most of the neurons activated earlier, get into action, and I have the same perception as before. The Mirror Neuron circuits are called Functional Modules, FMs.

Sometime later, when I neither bite nor observe someone else biting, a certain Functional Module still produces mental images of a previous experience, say, “tearing” apart a chunk of meat. This is Implicit Perception or Imagery. Another Functional Module produces the imagery of “separating” the flesh from the bones. 

So, Imagery is the capability of neural circuits to provide a representation of an act or object that is not currently present in the subject’s sensory environment, but of which the subject has had previous experience. Imagery provides the basic elements necessary for Imagination and is arguably present also in other species.

At this point, the power of the superfluous, ucchista bala, comes into play in humans, fuelling Imagination. For example, the FMs responsible for the imageries of “tearing” a chunk of meat and “separating” the flesh from the bones combine into innovative mosaics, resulting in the Imagination of separating the “good” from the “bad.” That’s when the word daksha, meaning dexter, someone with the power to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad, arises out of the root daksh, whose original meaning is to cut, hurt, etc.

Combining many more FMs into more complex mosaics, abstract and original concepts about, say, dasra, wonder worker, and puru-damsas, rich in wonderous deeds, evolve from “good” and “right” actions, all coming from the basic sense of hurting, cutting, biting, etc. The terms dasra and puru-damsas are found in the Rig Veda as epithets for the twin-Gods Ashvins. That’s when Imagination becomes Inspiration and Consciousness, Ritam-Satyam-Vrihat, the Absolute Right and Truth: more about that later.

Imagination is, then, the capability of neural circuits to combine in novel ways images with a direct perceptual origin and concepts to produce original images and speculations.

The FM mosaics of the Imagery Neuron Systems necessary for Imagination are nothing but complex neural circuits. With close to 30.000 synapses per neuron, only humans can create such complex circuits. In comparison, rats and mice have a third fewer synapses per neuron. So, ucchishta bala, or the power of the superfluous, is the excess electrical connections of the synapses that no other species have.

Today, we have established, though simplistically, an equivalence between consciousness and electromagnetic waves, energy in a more general sense, which is again connected to matter through Einstein’s E = MC squared equation. So, the three names – consciousness, energy, and matter – the vipra, the wise, call That One by, as seen in a verse from the Rig Veda, indeed converge to the same thing.

That’s Advaita-vaad, the theory of One-ness.

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.

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.

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.