I
In the past 35-40 years, i.e. since we regained freedom from foreign
political dominance, India has made substantial headway in many spheres of
economic and technological activity. Our agricultural production itself
has more than doubled during this period. The increase in the industrial
sphere is perhaps even more impressive. We are said today to have the
third largest pool of scientific and technological man-power in the world
; we can also well claim to have established a very large network of
institutions which impart scientific and technological education and
training ; we have built up an extensive complex of scientific and
technological laboratories devoted to industrial research as well as
research in agriculture and fields allied to it. This however has to be
qualified by the fact that we constitute about a fifth or sixth of
mankind, and geographically we are as large as the whole of Europe taken
together.
Despite this economic and technological headway we, as a people, seem to
be in rather a despondent mood. True, there are short moments of euphoria
when we feel that we are on top of our problems, that we are on our way to
catching up with the powerful in the world as was the case only last year.
It was also a time of high hope when, around 1947, some of our leading
industrialists, if I remember right, even said that we may replace Japan
as a great industrial nation and take over its markets. But since about
1960 we seem to have begun to feel that we have some how gone astray, that
even in comparison to peoples and nations who have been geographically and
historically close to us, like China and Korea, and perhaps even Malaysia
and Indonesia, we have been left behind in matters of economic and
technological growth. And taking another sphere of endeavour, if one is to
judge by the results of the present Asiad, or of that held in Delhi in
1982, or our participation in the last Olympic games, our position there
does not look too different to that in technology and
industry.
It is well known, in fact often exaggerated and deplored, that a
substantial proportion of the young scientists and technologists whom we
train, especially those from the IIT’s, etc., migrate to the USA, or other
western industrialised countries. Most of them initially go to these
countries for the purpose of advanced research but only a small proportion
of them so far ever return to work in India. It is said that most of these
migrants make successful careers in the scientific and technological
fields in the countries of their adoption, and that the work many of
them do there is of fairly high competence. Yet, some of those who should
know seem to be of the view that it is a rare individual from amongst them
who is able to be scientifically or technologically creative, or be able
to produce anything which may be termed new.¹
II
A great movement was initiated for the promotion in India of western
science and technology nearly a century ago. The main centre of this
movement was Calcutta itself. As far as my meagre knowledge goes those
intimately associated with this movement, in its early phase, included
such illustrious names as Mahendra Lal Sircar, Jagdish Chandra Bose,
Prafulla Chandra Ray, Gooroodas Banerjee, Ashutosh Mukerjee, Taraknath
Palit, C. V. Raman, and they were followed by J. C. Ghosh, Meghnad Saha,
J. N. Mukerjee, S. N. Bose, and many others.² While reasons of patriotism,
devotion to swadeshi, etc., played major roles in leading Mahender Lal
Sircar and others to the promotion of the new science and technology, men
like Sir Richard Temple, the British Governor of Bengal around this time,
felt that the teaching of science in India will help in curbing the
ambition and self-confidence of the educated Indian. Writing to the then
British Viceroy Northbrook, Temple observed, ‘‘No doubt the alumni of our
schools and colleges do become as a class discontented. But this arises
partly from our higher education being too much in the direction of law,
public administration, and prose literature, where they may possibly
imagine, however erroneously, that they may approach to competition with
us. But we shall do more and more to direct their thoughts towards
practical science, where they must inevitably feel their utter inferiority
to us.’’³ Temple wrote this in 1875. In 1876 Mahender Lal Sircar and his
friends established the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
at Calcutta.⁴ In 1885 J. C. Bose was appointed junior professor of physics
at Calcutta Presidency College,⁵ while in 1889 Prafulla Chandra Ray was
appointed as assistant professor in chemistry ⁶
While all of them, except men like Governor Temple, agreed about the need
and value of modern science and technology to India, the early promoters
of it differed considerably with regard to the methodology of its
promotion. Mahendra Lal Sircar subscribed to the priority of science over
technology⁷ and in fact wished that the word ‘applied science’ had not been
invented.⁸ Prafulla Chandra Ray however thought that “industry as a rule had
preceded science” in the progress of western society.⁹ Attracted as he was, alongwith Jagdish Chandra Bose, to the
integration of cultural, and economic nationalism his early efforts were
devoted to the promotion of industrial entrepreneurship wherever he could.
He also “began writing a number of primers in chemistry, botany, and
geology"10 towards the same end, while Gooroodas Banerjee “suggested the use
of the mother tongue’’¹¹ in the teaching of science and technology. Curiously during
his early days as he stated in his address to the Khadi Exhibition at
Kakinada, in December 1923, Prafulla Chandra Ray believed in Liebig’s
dictum “that the index of the civilization of a country is the amount of
soap it consumed and ... that the industrial progress of a country was
measured by the output of its sulphuric acid.”¹² It may be interesting prehaps to mention here that Europeans who knew southern India well around 1700 had great admiration
for the quality of clothes-washing by the washermen in southern India and
felt much could be learnt in this respect from them by Europe. There
possibly may be a link somewhere between such admiration for south Indian
clothes-washing and Liebig’s fascination with soap.
In his later period however Acharya Ray felt that the Charkha represented
"an easy, healthy, natural process of increasing the wealth of the country
and smooth way of universalizing the incidence of wealth.”¹³ Most of his students and younger colleagues, like Meghanad Saha, in
one way or another agreed with Acharya Ray’s earlier position rather than
with his belief in Charkha. They felt that what India required was heavy
industrialisation and big science accompanied by state planning.¹⁴
The promotion of western science and technology was also widely
considered during 1916-18 by the Indian Industrial Commission. Its Indian
members were Madan Mohan Malaviya, Dorabji Tata, and Fuzulbhoy Currimbhoy
Ebrahim.¹⁵ The Commission examined a very large number of witnesses whose evidence
fills five volumes of the Commission’s seven volume report.¹⁶ In his minute of dissent to the Report and in his cross-examination
of witnesses Pandit Malaviya “questioned the view that it was the West
that had provided the great traditions of technology. Such,
a statement, he remarked, denied the long history of Indian
achievements in ship-building, smelting, weaving, etc.”¹⁷ According to him, ‘the de-industrialization of India and the history of the
industrial revolution in the West were integral parts of one process, that
colonialism preceded and helped create industrialism in Britain.”¹⁸ Pandit Malaviya also suggested that it was education which promoted
intelligence and thus technology, and dismissed the view, then popular
amongst the British in India, that intelligence was related to race and
heredity.¹⁹ Many who gave evidence before the Commission, as also Pandit
Malaviya, felt that the better modei for Indian scientific and
technological development was provided by Germany and Japan rather than by Great Britain.²0 One witness, B. N. Basu felt that the scientific and technological
backwardness of India was in part a result of English scholasticism which
dominated British directed Indian education. According to him, ‘‘where
practical men are wanted we have been given a race of pandits with this
difference, that instead of studying the ancient literature of their own
country, which might be of some use, they have learnt with considerable
assiduity numerous parts like the conjugation and declension of
Anglo-saxon verbs."’²¹
The secretary of the Visvakarma Mahajan Conference Commitee, probably
from Andhra and quite possibly the only representive of the artisians in
India who appeared before the Commission, stated that the artisans who
were ‘‘the industrial backbone of the country, were not going to be the
beneficiaries of the new policy regarding (the proposed) technical
schools.” He pointed out to “the complete dissociation of the intellectual
class in the country from its industries” and felt that “the selection of
students to go to foreign countries for training, from communities other
than industrial or artisan classes who posses the initial aptitude for
manual labour, which a university gradute of any other class despised as a
derogation of his caste dignity or literary merit”²² had done irreparable harm. An English witness did refer to the
beneficial role which caste could have played in technological development
and industrialisation. He wondered whether caste groups could serye as
functional equivalents to trade unions and felt that an opportunity had
been lost. According to him, “Had caste been adopted as an educational
unit in the first instance the result might have been different. It is in
many ways a valuable social organisation of which use might have been
made.” His English upbringing however re-asserted itself and he said that
caste was un-British and unnatural and observed ihat ” there never was a
possibility of a constructive attitude towards it.”²³
III
Despite patriotic pride, the urge for the integration of economic and
cultural life, and the memory of ancient industrial grandeur, it seems
that by the end of the 19th century little trace had been left in Indian
intellectual and scholarly consciousness of the sciences and technologies
which had been fairly successfully practised in India till about the end
of the 18th century. It is possible that even at this earlier peried,
i.e., the latter part of the 18th century, the scholary Indian elite of
the time was not consciously aware (though he benefitted from their
products and the specific knowledge and information they provided) of
their existence. He probably took them as part of his landscape, as some
amongst tens of thousands of the constituents of the structute of the
society which supported his elite life, only noticed, if at all, when
absent.
Whether the late 18th century Indian elite was consciously aware of the
then existing sciences and technologies of India or not, these were taken
serious note of by European specialists during the 16th, 17th and 18th
centuries, as and when they were looking for knowledge, information,
design, technique, etc., in any particular fields. The examples of such
European search, attention, study and borrowing are innumerable. The
collection of Indian botanical texts by the Portuguese and the Dutch goes
back to the early 16th century. The Hortus Malabaricus, in 12
volumes, with illustrations of 750 species of Indian plants was published
in Europe during 1678-93, and is said to contain certificates from four
Kerala and Konkan Pandits about the authenticity of the information in the
12 volumes.²⁴ The design and function of indian agricultural implements,
especially the drill plough was as important to late 18th century British
agriculture, as was the Indian practice of inoculation against the
smallpox and its rationale, or as the method and rationale of the
artificial manufacture of ice in the Allahabad-Varanasi region had been a
few decades earlier. Similar or perhaps even greater attention was devoted
to an understanding of Indian building materials and techiques, to various chemicals used in Indian industry and other processes and
their sources, in Indian steel and its technology, in the prevailing
Indian surgery,²⁵ and even in the method of teaching in schools in India especially
in those in the south.²⁶ The existence of petroleum wells and the use to which the oil was
put to was first observed in Burma around 1797. The number of wells, in
the area visited, was said to be 520, and their annual oil production
about one lakh tons valued at over ten lakhs of the Indian rupees, The oil
was used for lighting lamps, for the painting of timber and the bottoms of
ships and boats, and also used medicinally as a lotion in cutaneous
eruptions, as an embrocation in bruises, and in rheumatic
afflictions.²⁷
A curious example of the transfer of technology from Pune to London in
the 1790's is provided by the Indian practice of plastic surgery. It is
perhaps best that I describe it in the words of a founder of modern
British plastic surgery, J. C. Carpue, FRS. This is what he wrote in 1816
:
“It was in this manner that the nasal operation had become forgotten or
despised, in at least the west of Europe ; when, at the close of the last
century, it was once more heard of in England, from a quarter whence
mankind’ will yet, perhaps, derive many lights, as well in science, as in
learning and in arts. A periodical publication, for the year 1794,
contains the following communication from a correspondent in India, which
is accompanied by a portrait of the person mentioned, explanatory of the
operation : “Cowasjee, a Mahratta, of the caste of husbandman, was a
bullock-driver with the English army, in the war of 1792, and was made a
prisoner by Tippoo, who cut off his nose, and one of his hands. In this
state, he joined the Bombay army near Seringapatam, and is now a pensioner
of the Honourable East India Company. For above twelve months, he was
wholly without a nose ; when he had a new one put on, by a Mahratta
surgeon, a Kumar, near Poona. This operation is not uncommon in India, and
has been practised from time immemorial. Two of the medical gentlemen, Mr.
Thomas Cruse, and Mr. James Findlay, of Bombay, have seen it performed as
follows : A thin plate of wax is fitted to the stump of the nose, so as to
make a nose of good appearance ; it is then flattened, and laid on the
forehead. A line is drawn round the wax, which is then of no further use ;
and the operator then dissects off as much skin as it covered, leaving
undivided a small slip between the eyes. This slip preserves the
circulation, till an union has taken place between tne new and old parts.
The cicatrix of the stump of the nose, is next pared off ; and,
immediately behind this raw part, an incision is made through the skin,
which passes round both alae, and goes along the upper lip. The skin is
now brought down from the forehead ; and, being twisted half round, its
edge is inserted into this incision ; so that a nose is formed with a
double hold, above, and with its alae and septum below, fixed in the
incision. A little Terra Japonica is softened with water, and, being
spread on slips of cloth, five or six of these are placed over each other,
to secure the joining. No other dressing than this cement is used for four
days ; it is then removed, and cloths, dipped in ghee (a
kind of butter), are aupplied. The connecting slip of skin is divided
about the twenty-fifth day ; when a little more dissecting is necessary to
improve the appearance of the new nose. For five or six days after the
operation, the patient is made to lie on his back ; and, on the tenth day,
bits of soft cloth are put into the nostrils, to keep them sufficiently
open. This operation is always successful. The artificial nose is secure,
and looks nearly as well as the natural one ; nor is the scar on the
forehead very observable, after a length of time.”²⁸
On the basis of the above and other information J.C. Carpue started his
own experiments. But before starting then he made more enquiries. About
these enquiries he wrote :
“On undertaking the first of the two cases to be hereafter narrated, I
was induced to make such personal inquiries as were within my reach in
this country, concerning the Indian method. I did myself the honour to
write to Sir Charles Mallet, who had resided many years in India, and who
obligingly confirmed to me the report, that this had been a common
operation in India, from time immemorial ; adding, that it had always been
performed by the cast of potters or brick-makers, and that though not
invariably, it was usually successful.”
“Mr. James Stuart Hall, a gentleman who was many years in India, assured
me, that he had seen the operation performed, and that it was of tedious
length. From Dr. Barry, of the India service, I learned, that he had also
seen the operation ; that it occupied an hour and a half, and was
performed with an old razor, the edge of which, being continually blunted
in dissection, was every moment re-set. Tow was introduced to support the
nose, but no attempt to form nostrills, by adding a septum, was
made.”
“I am obligingly informed by Major Heitland, of the India service, that
in India, several years ago, in the time of Hyder Ali, Mr. Lucas, an
English surgeon, was, in several instances, successful in the operation,
which he copied from the Hindoo practitioners.”²⁹
Summing up this inforamation J. C. Carpue observed :
“ It will be observed, that the whole of the foregoing accounts are
agreed upon these points, that the performance of the operation is
confined to a particular cast of Hindoos, and that this cast is said to be
the Koomas, or potters, or brick makers. The combination appear, at
first sight, to be singular ; but an explanation is not difficult, and may
not be unacceptable. Most of the Hindoo casts, though fixed within
positive limits, as to professions, trades, or other occupations, are yet
allowed a certain range, a certain variety of pursuit, among which the
individual is free to make his choice. The casts are known to be divided
into sub-casts ; and there are degraded casts, making branches of the pure
casts, with respect to whom a still greater laxity is allowed : “The
profession of astrology, and the task of making almanacs,”
says a late writer on India, “belong to degraded Brahmins ; and the occupation of teaching military exercises,
and physic, as well as the trade of potters,
weavers, brasiers, fishermen, and workers in shells, belang also to the
descendants (meaning the outcasts) of Brahmins. “ Thus, astrology,
medicine, and pottery are among the several pursuits
allowed to one and the same cast.”
“That astrology and medicine should be thrown into the same lot, excites
no surprise. ... It is hence that our ancient almanacs contained
instructions concerning the health of the body; and, at this day, ‘Francis
Moore’, though he calls himself “Physician” is plainly an astrologer. The
adjuncts of pottery, weaving etc. in the same cast with the former, appear
to evince, that the Indian institutions are less restrictive on the
particular genius or disposition of individuals, than may have been
commonly supposed.''30
J. C. Carpue then goes into a discussion of the origin of plastic
surgery, its knowledge in ancient times in Asia as also in ancient Greece,
the difference between the tater Italian and Indian method, and
adds:
“We have now seen that the nasal operation, and all the
physiological facts upon which it depends, were known in
Europe at least as early as the date of the Christian era ; that
the fact of adhesion was known to Hippocrates, and that
where our history fails us, is simply the point beyond which we have no
records. We have now, also, before us, the greater part, if not the whole
of the information which was possessed by Taliacotius; and, beside
satisfying ourselves that this eminent person was not (what he never
pretended to be) the inventor of the art, we may venture to judge in what
degree he advanced it.”
“That the art has subsisted from the most ancient period in India, and
other southern parts of Asia, and was at no time carried thither from
Europe, is probable from further evidence than the simplicity of the
Indian method, as compared with the Italian; the ordinary recourse which
is had to it in India; its practice by a particular cast, and its junction
with religious observances : it is probable, likewise, from the frequent
occasions for it, from the favourableness of the climate, from the
temperance of the people, and from the plainness of the road by which
Nature leads to the invention. The adhesion of divided parts, however,
little understood, till lately, in France or England, was one of the first
spectacles presented to mankind. If we fancy that we are entitled to
refuse to the Orientals the reputation of science, this makes no
alteration in the case; for no depth of science, but involuntary
observation, was all that was wanted here.”³¹
As we now well know such an operation is described in detail in Susruta.
Though perhaps less dramatically put the narratives about the Indian
method of inoculation, on the manufacture of ice, on Indian agricultural
implements, regarding the technical details and economics of the
manufacture of Indian steel, on Indian chemicals and dyes more or less
follow a similar strian. The narratives seem to have been responses to
urgent and contemporary British or European need, and it may be assumed
that India was one amongst several places where such enqiries were
conducted. The manner the narratives were analysed, discussed, published
for specialists and scholars seem to suggest that what was relevant in
them to contemporary British or European requirement was incorporated in
the corresponding practice of the borrower, in time internalised and
thereafter, perhaps within a period of fifty years, the origin of the
incorporated, at least in practice, quite forgotten.
The above does not necessarily imply that post-1800 British and Europeon
technology owes a great deal to the information and knowledge which it
received from India. From about the 13th century there was much flow of
ideas, knowledge, and technologies to Europe particularly from Asia. All
this took time to be absorbed and internalised and by stages Europe seems
to have been able to integrate or graft what it felt important on to its
own technological frame, and its stock of knowledge. By about 1820, or
1830 Europe had far surpassed in matters which interested it, all those
who had contributed to its scientific and technogical growth and had
therefore no need to remember details of the sources from which the
borrowings had been made.
However the erosion and decline of indian industry and technology in the late
18th and the first half of the 19th century had, as is well recognised
today, little to do with factors relating to Indian technological
practices and their economic efficiency. In these respects many of them
could have withstood foreign competition as Indian cotton textiles did for
many decades till about 1850. The decline and destruction was politically
and fiscally induced by deliberate British policy. The way this decline
happened in the Indian textile Industry is well mapped out amongst others
by Dr. Jitendra Gopal Borpujari in his recent study.³²
IV
For some 70-80 years efforts have been made in India, and more so since
1947, to industrialise India on the western pattern. There has been much
debate on how to go about such industrialisation, whether
industrialisation, at least initially, grows out of earlier
technologies of an area and only later gets linked up with high science,
or whether it is high science, which really converts so-called ‘Primitive’
forms of technology into modern. industrialisation. We seem to have played
around with such ideas and their various permutations and combinations but
the major result so far seems to be that we find it faster and cheaper
rather to buy technology from the international market than to invent or
innovate it ourselves. It is true we have produced quite a number of
industrial items in the past three decades on our own. But if we could,
quite some of us may perhaps prefer to replace even most of these by their
international equivalents. One of the explanations for such a possible
preference may arise from the fact that most of what we have produced in
the past 30-40 years is not any new basic technology but largely
adaptations of what prevails elsewhere. Even much more we seem to be taken
up merely with the production of parts for the technology and machines
received by us from the modern industrial countries. Such a course is
bound to effectively exclude us from any improvisatations of our own even
when these occurred to us.
Simultaneous to this industrial development our people at large have also
continued, though less and less as years pass, with some of their age-old
but rather wornout and rusted indigenous technology. The indigenous
manufacture of iron and steel has of course gone completely, overboard, as
also the artifical manufacture of ice by the method used in Allahabad two
centuries ago and about which the Royal Society of Great Britain was then
so serious as to seek a scientific explanation. Even the ‘making of most
agricultural implements is on a decline at the village level, so also is
the manufacture of looms, of charkhas (of which Mahatma Gandhi got
produced twenty lakhs between April-June 1921), of dyes and chemicals, of
oil-pressing by the bullocks-driven ghani, of the making of compost manure
for agriculture, and even of ploughing by bullocks. Products of modern
industry are fast taking the place of the village and small town product,
and those who cannot afford even the cheaper though grosser modern
industrial product, perhaps the much mourned 50% of India’s population who
are said to be below the widely debated poverty line, have slowly learnt
to do without even the little that was thought necessary before. The local
building meterials are fast disappearing, unless of course some of them
are being used in great modern palaces, to give them a touch of Indian
authenticity. Yet, while there is a certain glitter in the metropolises,
etc., it seems that what we are saddled with today in the way of science,
technology and industry though it helps us somehow survive at a very low
level, does not lead us anywhere as a people. Even our elite are not too
pleased with the situation and given reasonable chance a high proprotion
of them would migrate to industrially prosperous and functioning areas.
One cannot really blame them. At least they show some initiative though of
the wrong kind. At any rate, credit, perhaps, can be given to them that
they do not seem to wish to be forever directly riding on the backs of
their own people.
It seems that we have to start afresh. Not that we immediately give up
modern science, technology and industry altogether, We keep what seems to
us basically necessary for our security and survival in the present
world and that which after careful deliberation seems to us, at least for
the next decade or two, crucial as basic material, etc., in the creation
of the groundwork of an indigenous network of industrial production. We
also don't have to give up all products of high-science, or of
high-technology. For example, if we were properly ambitious we would work
out a plan of providing power from the energy from the sun (in the form of
electricity, steam. etc, and not just solar-cookers !) to every habitation
in India, say within a generation. And till this goal is reached all the
fuel-gas we have from our various gas deposits, supplemented by what
little we can get from the much celebrated gobar-gas plants, should be
supplied to the ordinary rural and small town family, at least in the
areas where such gas can be reached, for their daily fuel needs. Such a
step may also produce a certain acquaintance between modern technology and
its gadgetry and the ordinary people of India, like the bicycle has done.
The way the wasteland development programme which planned to create
50,00,000 hectares of fuel wood plantations every year and which was
announced with such fanfare has gone haywire, and the leisurely way the
departments and agencies of non- conventional sources of energy work is
confirmation enough that most citizens of India will be starved of even
domestic fuel unless the fuel that is available today goes directly, for
fuel purposes, to the ordinary people irrespective of the consequences of
such policy on the rest of the Indian economy and industry. On the fact of
it such suggestions may seem rather wild. But it seems that only any
serious disruption, or real threat of it which seam to disrupt our own
lives and much more our equanimity will, under the circumstances, take us
out of our sloth, our tamas, and force us to take steps which
will also clear the way for our bright and accomplished young scientists
and technologists, and lead at least some of them to the much awaited
creativity and inventions and innovations relevant to our
society.
Though it is only a small beginning the work of the Bangalore scientists,
like Prof. Vasudev Murty, in inventing a process for the indigenous
manufacture of hyper-pure silicon, used in making solar cells as also
electronic devices, is greatly to be welcomed. It is more than probable
that many more scientists and tecnhologists, despite the general
despondency, and quite unknown to others, are similarly exercised in the
various other problems of science and technology. If they succeed, what
they achieve could be equally path-breaking.
V
Our task essentially is to bring the innovative and technological skills
of our people, those who professed them for millineas and till at least
1800, back to the rebuilding of our primary economy and our industry. This
we have ignored so far and instead have tried to create a new economy and
industry to which the primary economy has been subordinated. There
would be little serious complaint, at least in the short run, if this
latter effort had succeeded and created some ferment at the primary
levels, or at least seemed to be moving towards success. But the whole
effort seems bogged down and even the initiators of it seem to have given
up hope. That they now talk of a new electronic revolution, etc., which
could deliver prosperity in the 21st century is more or less on the same
level as passionate arguments about worldpeace, ecology, the bio-sphere,
the environment, etc. One of the causes of our failure may be that we
attempted the creation of new economy and industry largely on poor
uncomprehending imitation, and with the help of talent which was drawn
form no more than two percent of our people. In retrospect, at least, the
observation of the representative of the Visvakarma Community before the
Industrial Commission 1916-18, that keeping the technically competent
artisan classes out of the new scientific and technological education has
done great harm,33 seems to have come true.
During the past several years much work has been done by some of our
historians on the role of the subaltern classes in Indian society. So far
such studies have been concerned largely with the post-1850 period, a
period according to some of great stress for the subaltern classes or
according to others of much future hope, depending from which ideological
stand one viewed it. It should be most valuable for our understanding of
India if the subaltern were also to be studied in the period just before
British rule, or just at its beginning. Such studies may also throw much
more light on the daily life of the subaltern, his productions,
technologies and his crafts, and the manner in which these were organised
and interlinked about 200 years ago.
The much celebrated simplicity of Indian technology has lead us greatly
astray. Simplicity was equated with crudeness as was done for instance by
James Mill. The alleged Simplicity was also made into a great abstraction
during the freedom battle. We of course were taught all this in the 19th
century and its aftermath when most of our British masters would have
prized ugly and heavy victorian furniture and treated delicate-seeming
British Georgian furniture as at least not very utilitarian. Having
accepted such judgements we did not think of examining the reality which
would have told us that the seeming simplicity of Indian technology or
theory was a result of high degree of sophistication and exact
measurements. The design of the Indian steel furnace which was in
extensive use till about the early 19th century, is a fair representation
of this sophistication.
As an example, I think, we should do whatever we can in the way of
resource allocation, supporting structures and laws, subsidies at
necessary points, and market support, to bring back to life the old Indian
method of smelting iron ore and the manufacture of iron and steel. Such an
attempt however need not interfere with the great steel plants. Around
1800, a movable furnace of that time could on an average produce
about 20 tons of fine-grade steel if worked for some 35-40 weeks in the
year. I had roughly estimated on the basis of available data for various
areas that the number of such furnances around 1800 might have been around
10,000. It is quite possible that the number was far larger but that most
of them only worked for 10-20 weeks in the year. It is probable that in
today’s circumstances these furnances may be found highly wasteful of both
ore and fuel, and to start with the steel that they will produce may be of
relatively poor quality. To some an attempt of this kind may seem a great
waste. But to the same people a loss of a few hundred crores here and
there because of hasty decisions, or defective technology, etc., may look
like ordinary hazards of modern economy and industry, and a loss of 10 to
20 or 50 crores on a project of this type seem unpardonable.
The point however is how do we enable our ordinary people, and especially
those who have some familiarity and instinctive understanding of the
industrial and production process to contribute whatever they can to the
national effort. It cannot at all be done by making them into mere
labourers where only their muscular power can make any contribution.
Admitting a sufficient number of them to institutions like the IITs if
such institutions and their courses are so altered that these institutions
don’t overwhelm them and scope is provided for interchange between men of
mere theory and others who judge a technical situation through their
experience and instinct, can be another way of making their talents and
innovative capacities contribute to a regeneration of Indian technology
and industry.
By restoring the old smelting furnances, say in about a hundred selected
localities where good raw material is readily available and where there is
still some memory of the old method in those who used to be engaged in it
decades ago or had observed it working when young, we quite possibly will
help the old technical and innovative skills to come alive. Any superior
guidance, etc., by modern experts, or administrative busybodies, till it
was actually sought as man to man will have to be strictly avoided in such
an attempt. It is possible that success may not be achieved in every
instance, but say only in a half or quarter of them. But even such partial
success would provide us a starting point where the successful smelter
will be able to look the qualified metallurgist straight in the face and
the two can then have a useful technical interchange. The old smelting
furnance ultimately may have to be discarded in its old form or modified
in many ways in today’s circumstances. But its recreation in hundreds of
localities and the taking of it through the production process would have
taught a variety of lessons not only to our high-science and high-tech men
but also to those who had for generations been engaged in this particular
technology. It should also restore the confidence of the smelters, as also
their sense of dignity, but even more make them examine the process anew
in today’s situation. That smelting furnances like these were tried
in China in the 1950s is well-known. Why they were initiated, what
happened to them afterwards, and what lessons were drawn from their
reworking is not known however. Even if our attempt turns out to be on
similar lines as that of China it need cause no mental disturbance. Every
civilization has to do its own learning and in its own way. The knowledge
of what others did can only serve as one pointer amongst many.
Similar understanding can be initiated in many other long neglected
technologies and industries, and it may not be surprising if at least some
of them with minor modifications here and there prove to be as productive
and cost-efficient as the new technologies which we have borrowed from
modern world industry, and technology.
Another way of understanding the process of innovation and invention will
be to diligently and in detail investigate the past of particular older
western technologies and industries. Such a task can of course only be
undertaken by highly qualified and research minded Indian scientists and
technologists who are fairly familiar with the west as well as the older
technologies of India. How bits and pieces and ideas from a variety of
cultural backgrounds got joined together over a long period to form the
particular modern technology, or what this technology was around 1900 when
another major break might have occurred into it, can then be understood.
It may tell us much about the nature of the innovative process and about
the sort of mind and conditions that foster it.
Lastly, the National Council of Science Museums, and the Indian state
which will ultimately have to finance any such nation-wide plan, should
consider the early setting up of technological museums, if not in every
taluk, at least in every district of India. While such museums will also
display products of modern western science and technology, to start with,
their main display should be of indigenous artifacts from the respective
area, or the region surrounding it. If original objects were somehow
unavailable for particular technologies these could be represented through
models, pictures, sketches, plans, etc. Each museum, to the extent
possible, should also have a library which should include literature on
the older practices of the area, and of course be provided with literature
and equipped with demonstration facilities regarding how the new could be
integrated, wherever that could be done, with older practices, and with
the local environment. The museum will of course require a well - oriented
young scientist and technologist with abundant interest and patience to
explain to those who visit it from within the region, the relevance of the
museum and its display. Even if such museums do not greatly help in the
regeneration of science and technology directly, they could in time act as
a sort of ferment and evoke questions in younger minds on the subject of
science and technology. They would also serve as places where the
artifacts of India’s heritage, pertaining to the given locality could
be viewed and appreciated by the people of the area. If no one else at
least students from schools and colleges of the area would be the
beneficiaries of such museums.
It should not be necessary, at least initially, in a large number of
places, to construct new buildings for such museums. Taking the whole
country, there are quite possibly around 10,000 inspection houses, rest
houses, circuit houses, etc, not counting similar places built by newer
state and semi-state enterprises or academic institutions, and these are
largely a part of the Indian ‘heritage’ from the days of the British raj.
As ordinary people have little access to them, the occupancy rate of at
least 90% of them would be no more than 5% - 10% in any one year. Most of
such bunglows, etc, have to be sooner for later used for more pressing
public purposes or sold over to the people at large for purposes of
residence, or work, or to run as hotels, etc. A beginning in this
direction can be made by using some of the more suitable amongst them to
house such museums of Indian artifacts.
Other buildings which could be used to house the museums, and possibly
various other institutions like art centres, research institutes, etc.,
are old historical monuments, including some of our large and gracious
temples, like the Vaishnav temple at Mannargudi (in Thanjavur district),
which because of a multiplicity of causes are rarely visited by pilgrims
and other visitors. These however are still more or less as good as new
and have plenty of well and aesthetically designed space and should be
rather appropriate as repositories of our artifacts and other symbols of
our heritage.
Apart from using state-owned bungalows, etc, and the ancient movements
and temples as museums or centres of our art and heritage, the matter of a
proper maintenance and utilization of these places should be a question of
serious national and local concern. Till all available local structures,
meant for public purposes, have been put to constant and locally
appropriate use there should be a halt to the construction of buildings at
public expense all over the country without any exception whatsoever.
As our officers, administrators, cabinet ministers, Governors, and even
the President of the country for some reason are mostly on the hop, and
during such hopping they do require places to stay, wash, rest, etc., it
would be healthier, even more comfortable for them, and certainly
economical to public economy, if those serving the state in whatever
capacity were expected to stay in hotels, etc., even in those of the
five-star variety, when on official or semi-official visits to places away
from their official residence, and the market-rate of such expense on them
debited to the state exchequer.
VI
There must be a large number of ways, and possibly of greater worth
besides those suggested above, to help in the regeneration of our
technology and industry which can arise from our roots or can soon strike
root and thus become innovative and socially relevant. In succeeding in
doing so we will not in any way be isolating ourselves from the world at
large but rather be readying ourselves to participate more fully and
constructively in the life of the world.
Having observed earlier that our young scientists and technologists who go abroad are said by some to be just competent, I must add that competence is not to be shunned at. It is in fact a very valuable quality in a well functioning situation. Competence however has necessarily to be related to its subject, and the subject has to correspond to what is being sought. If I may say so, our institutions, theories, methodologies, technologies, etc., are today unable to deliver what is sought, in practically every sphere. They even seem to hinder in many cases any such delivery. On the whole we do not lack competent men and women. What we lack and what we have to look for, or design are the right processes and instrumentalities. Possibly prolonged enslavement destroys or at least dulls and makes rusty the skills of a people. It also seems to disorient them. Exploring ways for the restoration of the sense of discrimination and of the innovative skills is perhaps the major task which today faces our academics in the sciences as well as in the humanities.
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