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New International Economic Order In 1797 when John Binny arrived on the shores of

Madras, as surgeon to the Nawab of the Carnatic, thedays of the English nawabs, governors downward, wereover, or nearly so.

The Nawab of the carnatic had inherited bankruptcyfrom his father.

1801 the Company had taken over the carnatic. TheBritish Parliament had expressed its altruistic andbenign concern for: ....the land of princes once of greatdignity, authority and opulence; of an ancient andvenerable priesthood...; of a nobility of antiquity and

renown; of millions of ingenious mechanics, andmillions of diligent tillers of the earth...',

John Binny, surgeon to the Nawab, received a bond forhis pay, but no remuneration.

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In 1799 he founded his House of Agency, John Binny was aScot.

Thomas Parry was a Welshman, and had been a Revenue-collector to the Nawab and on leaving this employment had

founded his house of urgency in 1789. There were others: William Palmer (son of Lt. General W.

Palmer, army secretary to Warren Hastings, and of a wealthynoble Hindu lady) in the employ of the Nizam of Hyderabad,who founded his house of agency in 1810 in partnership with

William Rambold, grandson of a Governor of Madras, H.Sothely, first assistant to the British Resident with the Nizam,four other Englishmen and an Indian moneylender.

And, others-Alexander & Co. (1770); the big firm of Arbuthnotknown as of Francis Labour in 1799, prospering in Madras in

the 1820s. When John Binny started his house of agency in 1799 there

were already more than 11 agency houses, at Madras, not allwere to survive.

By- 1825 there were 57 agency houses 32 in Calcutta 15 inBombay, and I0 in Madras-Bengal bred fatter nobobs;

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John Binny was from a Small town In Forar, froma family with important positions in the runningof town affairs, a middle class which was

providing professionals to the universities ofScotland and its industries, and yet wascompelled to seek fortunes for instance in India.

John was not the first; his brother and uncles hadpreceded him in the employ of the Company orthe nawabs, some had gone back home otherssettled in Calcutta.

Others were to follow-son's, sister's sons,brother's sons, husbands of girls of the clan, andso on as nominees of the partners who retired-clan and family bonds between home and India.

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Forfar was to give others around the 1830s

like, for instance, James Skinner, brother

Charles Binny Skinner, enterprising men whofounded Jardine Skinner & Co. in Calcutta

Thomas Parry, perhaps because he was Welsh,

"distinguished himself by fiambouncy ortaking sides against the government", and for

several years was under a suspended sentence

of exile from India. There was another, James Silk Buckingham, an

Englishman champion of the free press,

deported from India by John Company.

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There were then the Serampore missionaries

with their Bengali journals.

From 1780 onwards newspapers had beenbrought out by the British which gained in

popularity with their opposition to the

Hon'ble John Company. And John Company in 1818 enacted a

regulation which enabled detention without

trial; another in 182l was for the benefit of thenative-press.

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"The Government of the Honourable EastIndia Company which held sway in the thenMadras Presidency, and to the lordlyindividuals who composed, it, the activities ofthe "free-merchant" community generallywere beneath notice-until they [courted

attention by infringing any of the stringentlaws related to private trading" .

These seditious free merchants andpamphleteers, opposed to the established

order and government, were of the samestuff as those battling in the British Parliamentto bring the Company to an end.

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Soon after the Charter of 1833, all -restrictivepress laws were removed

Parliament control the Companyservants

remittances home were restricted, as also tradeby them on private account.

The houses of Agency emerged to fill the breachthey became bankers to the wealth of the

Company's servants. The East India Company also founded its banks,

Bank of Bengal (I806), Government Bank, Madras(1806), but presumably the agency houses and

their banks had greater flexibility suited to theneeds of Company officials, for the agencyhouses thrived and with them- their relationswith the officials of the government of the East

India Company.

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The direct links in the case of Palmer & Co. have

already been cited, mere generally:

In the early 1830s for example twelve of theCompany's directors had business or family

connections with the executives of agency

houses and six of the houses, owned shares inthe banks of the East India Company.

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Agency Houses

In addition to these developing relations, there were,

of course, those with the family back home, and otherswhich were developing with officials and others whohad retired back home and for whom they wereagents, or trustees, or those who had died and forwhose Indian estates they were executors.

Undoubtedly such agency houses as had close officialconnection would have entered trade, or acted ascommission agents to the merchants and industries athome, relationship to be widened and broadened with

the progressive erosion of East India Company'smonopoly.

Prior to 1813 and later-till 1833, the East IndiaCompany was powerful enough to retain its monopolyover foreign trade

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Indigo a traditional crop and it was to be taken upon a commercial scale. To begin with Europeanplanters were brought from West Indies, were

presumably they had given way to slave-basedsugar plantations.

The European planters came penniless andfinanced by the agency houses they spread out toBengal and Bihar. By the end of the eighteenthcentury Indigo plantations and factories spreadand grew rapidly.

In the end decades of the 19th century Bihar,Banaras, and the Doab regions were the majorproducers.

In 1830 the opulent house of palmer & Co.collapsed and the tremors shook CalcuttaScott& Co. and Alexander & Co, Mackintoshes,

Coloins. Fergussons in 1833.

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The disaster took place because of over-trading

by these houses, particularly in indigo: others put

it to reduced opportunity for foreign trade. What is of interest is that the Government had

loaned sizable amounts to these houses, and

withdrew them.

Was it a signal that an age had come to a definite

end, that was sealed and certain, that Indian

indigo-dye had no future?

Indigo plantations continued surviving the

aniline-dyes to make history in another way at

champaran with Gandhiji, the peasantry and

moffusil lawyers.

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Around 1825 Arbuthnots the house of agency inMadras, were flourishing: they were engaged inbanking, leather and skins., indigo, cotton,

timber, West Coast estates & agencies generalshipping, general agency operations andimport/export.

The Binnys their mainstay remained banking:they made a tentative start in piece-goods forlocal consignment at the start of the 19th century,and then by 1820 they were exporting piece-

goods. There were other items of trade, wine, spirits and

beer, glass, sodawater, books and gempowderand also rice wheat and cotton.

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Another mainstay was insurance agencies of avaried variety, apart from commissions,trusteeships and executorships.

The agency house way of life appears as earningfrom other people investment instead of riskingones ownprofits were good.

Then came 1833, the houses of agency in the

presidency towns and some smaller towns, bandedthemselves together to assert their mutualinterests: chambers of commerce quickly sproutedin Calcutta (1834), Madras (1836), and Bombay.

Up-country trade in raw materials had beendifficulty and was to be opened. There was first thetask of removal of duties and tolls at innumerableboundaries and even pseudo-boundaries.

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It was an all India issue and the MadrasChamber took up cudgels in 1838 and in the

relatively short period of 6 years had reachedtheir objective-'transit duties were replacedby a duty on salt'. And so were sown the seedsfor another historic event almost a hundred

years later The seed for another campaign to be taken up

by Gandhiji.

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Plantations Coffee plantations were taken up in earnest from 1840. The

plant had been introduced in 1760, possibly by some amateurbotanist, but it took an '1833' to make it take root and flourish.

The agency houses were backing coffee; Parrys entered it in1840, in 1852 Binny took to plantations.

But, like in the case of indigo, the European planter wasfinanced; the agency houses were actively promoting thegrowth of agricultural and planting, the operations of

professional planters, and in turn undoubtedly securingagencies for export.

In 1834, a centenary account narrates: '1833' had terminatedthe East India Company's monopoly on tea and China and LordBentinck had heard rumours of the discovery of tea plants

growing wild in Assam, near Burma (it is not made clear if thesource of the rumour was the Company's Botanical Bagh) LordBentinck wondered if tea could be profitably grown in India asin China-so he appointed a committee.

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This committee was, in today's parlance, time-targeted and action oriented and fortunatelyfor tea in India it 'was research-oriented:

Experiments in tea culture were begunwithout delay, at first with plants broughtfrom China but in no long time with theindigenous variety which when cultivated,proved to be much more productive.

The key words one may note are experimentsand indigenous variety i.e. acclimated to the

Ideation in wild to be selected and to bedemonstrated so much for fixation withexotic.

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In 1839, the plantation was handed over toAssam Co. A firm incorporated in Britain-nevermind the British, here was an example of transfer

of technology, of course of knowhow generatedat the expense of state.

William Carey at Serempore, was doingsomething odd, he was publishing the work of

Roxburgh, Superintendent of Botanical Gardensat Howrah, and a close friend-Hortus Bengalensis1814; Flora Indica 1820, Vol 1, 1824 Vol 2, 1832Vol 3

Dane Nathaniel Wallich, successor to Roxburgh in1815, helped Carey to publish Roxburgh'sposthumous works.

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The odd and surprising part is that the

Company should have been so unmindful of

what its employees were doing; were the

plant collections not done on Company's time;

did it pay for the collection or not; why did it

not publish; why were the collections lost and

not retained: why publish and broadcast, why

not retain and monopolize?

The Company officials linked with the agency

houses of course, promoting the indigoplantation, and sugar-cane growers; clearly by

publishing Carey himself was catering to the

market of professional planters.

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Perhaps this information may have been of morerelevance to the relatively recent agency houses seekingan entry into the agriculture and planting business, i.e.

entrants whom the Company and its proxies did not wishto enter the scene.

Significantly in 1832, the Company published WaqllichsPlantac Asiaticae Rariores (3 vol.) and started a Harbariumcollection data bank and dissemination servicesincidentally another company Botanic Garden was startedat Saharanpur, the up-country area, and studied theHimalayan flora.

In 1331 Hugh Falconer located at Saharanpur wasspending time in the Sivalik region, and here he cameacross the engineer. Proby Cautley and his colleaguesdigging up Jamuna Canal, as a very happy and fertilecombination of botany and irrigation which came up with

fossil flora and fauna. This was serendipity.

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Experimental farms Somewhat earlier in 182O William Carey was founding

the Agricultural Society of India, renamed Agriculturaland Horticultural Society of India In 1826.

Who were the founding members of Careys society:

his parish to whom he preached in the Vernacular, his

zamindar and merchant students whom he taught inEnglish, or the professional European planters?

What is clear is there were pathetically few with Careywhen he launched his society, perhaps Roxburgh and

other amateur European botanists. Elsewhere in Madras, in 1836, a Dr. Wight founded the

Agri-Horticultural Society of Madras. Dr, Wight'spassion was cotton'.

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In 1840 an experimental farm at Coimbatore had beenstarted under Dr. Wright with a view to improving thestaple of Indian cotton for use in the mills, and

American experts had been called in to assist. There were other experimental farms also. Pilot-scale

experiments succeeded, but commercial scale for somereason did not, except for medium staple at Dhawar

In 1836-42 the duty on cotton shipped to England fromIndia, was abolished, loss of revenues notwithstanding, and this, as one saw, triggered off acotton fever experimentation foreign knowhow.

The cotton enthusiasts in 1840s were stressing thatland revenues rates were too high, and were impedingthe adoption of cotton by peasants.

Abolishing a semi feudal state revenue which required

the starvation of peasants to enforce the cas crop.

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Lack of Transport Pressure in 1847 to establish railway lines

between Bombay and its key cotton growing

area, measures ensuring cotton supplies to theBritish mills through the diversification of rawmaterial sources.

The Jumna Canal was being dug in 1831, the first

Punjab War had ended and in 1847, theconstruction of the Ganges Canal was underway.

Large workshops were erected at Roorkee, Civilengineers, supervisors, helpers were required for

the Upper Ganges Canal Project and so the civilengineering college at Roorkee came up in 1854named after the Lieutenant Governor of N. W.Provinces, James Thomson, who had proposedthe college.

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On his arrival in 1848 Lord Dalhousie desired that eachpresidency town should have its engineering college.

And with this he proceeded to enunciate another policy

for which he is better known. The engineering colleges came up virtually by the time

Dalhousie was to leave India in 1856.

The college at Roorkee had finally come up in 1854 thatat Madras, mooted as early as in 1842, was establishedin 1855 and at Pune in 1854 for training subordinateofficers for the PWD.

In 1856 the-engineering college at Calcutta was openedwith an attached Mechanical testing laboratory and a

mining Section. The accent in the main was, as expected, on civil

engineering at all the colleges, for Lord Dalhousie at thestart of his stay had created the Public work department:the demand had been created, the supply was to follow!

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Steam powered ships had come to Indiaaround 1821 and shipping fever come to grip

Calcutta A bounty was declared for the first

entrepreneur to link Bengal with Britain with70 days voyage by 1826.

The first Bombay Suez run achieved in 1830,and regularized by 1837

In 1841, the Indian Steamship company was

incorporated in Bengal with the object oflinking up Bengal, madras, Ceylon and Suez bysteam undoubtedly other agency houses likethe Binnys invested in this Indian company

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In 1842, the dreams of the Indian company, witha paltry capital of Rs 3.5 lakhs, was shattered bythe lordly P&O, a British incorporated concern.

Its luxurious wooden 2000 tonner, equipped withsails, and two funnels steamed up the Hooghly.

Maldennon and Mackenzie met at Ghazipur,

Bengal in 1842 not only did they setup their partnership house,

but watching the river steamer decided to charterlarger steampaddleships to run cargo from Britain

to Calcutta or Calcutta to far east-they thrived. So well had the lesson been learnt that 1856

found them focusing on local coastal trade.

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With British capital and highest official

encouragement they founded the Calcutta-

Burmah Steam Navigation Co. Ltd. With two

ships, and then, in 1862, incorporated in London

the British India Steam Navigation Co. ltd., with

nine ships of 1000 ton and less to focus

systematically on the peninsular coastal trade.

The British was to grow into a giant and to take

over the P&O.

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The houses of agency had been managing investmentson behalf of absentee owners in England; a house ofagency had been managing the Aska concern with part

of the capital invested from abroad. There were the mines, the plantations, the jute mills

under the management and supervision, of Europeanagency houses looking after investments from abroad

and internally. The merchants and shroffs had managed other persons

investments and deposits; they had managed asdiwanjis and munshijis the estates; of lessentrepreneurially talented landlords.

So there were well established precedents for the newdevice of managing agencies, traditions ancient andemergent, traditions Indian and European related tomanaging other people's investments.

h h h h ff d h f

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The merchants, the shroffs, and houses of agencywere now managing imported plants; equipmentand machinery instead of imported finishedpiece-goods.

They were very much there and more so in thebusiness of raw material collection; they were toengage labour through thekedars as on landlordestates-in brief merchants and bankers managingimported mills.

The mills had descended on the Indian soil full-born.

There were no phase-shifts in the internaladvance of techniques, no smashing-up so to sayof the charkha: and the loom by the mills.

They were exporting for the China market, yarnblending Indian and imported Egyptian cotton.

h i i i l l d

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They were importing raw materials, spares, plant andmachinery which determined effective location at ports.

The opening of the Suez Canal implied cheaper Imports fromEurope of plant, equipment and machinery, spares and

replenish-able. Imported piece goods continued the task of disrupting

artisans technique directly, and raw materials procurementindirectly

The emerging firms, fabricators of plant; equipment and

machines; of spares and component and their exporters musthave watched in fascination the small, uncertain trickle oforders from India, of accidents on high seas which jeopardizedthe work of firms, and seen these trickles spurting at the timeof the German War and the US Civil War.

They must have added up the figures and charted thepotential for export of their wares-why not export themachines, the equipment, recurring spares and intermediates,instead of the finished consumer articles, export of courseselectively ?

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Was this not a new means of achieving the oldgoals?

Of course, imports would need restructuring,partially or totally processed materials,instead of unprocessed or virtuallyunprocessed raw materials.

Of course, a clash and difference in the twoways would occur.

Who would be the reliable links? Of course

those to whom the equipment, the machineswere already being exported to in India, thosewho had also been importing the requiredmanagerial, engineering and technical talent.

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The basic links for the new were available and at hand.

Greaves Cotton & Co, for instance, owned presses andgins, and, were importing equipment for the cotton

mills, some of which they owned, others under theircontrol, and yet more set up by others (by 1895, eightper cent of the agencies were European and controlling20 per cent of the factories, an index of concentration

and yet an index of Indian owners). J. R. Greaves, the son of the founder who worked with

Platt Bros in England, built and maintained closeconnections with them even after returning to Indiaand joining his father's firm.

Kilburn & Co. had been importing mine equipment,engines and pumps, electric motors and insulators, anditems 'to meet the needs of railways and shipping.

h d d d h

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A Martin in 1874 had arrived in India to open theCalcutta branch of Walsh, Lovett & Co, a British firm.

By 1892, T. A. Martin was in a position to embark on his

own Martin & Co. Rajendra Nath Mookerjee while a partner in a small

Indian firm, had shown versatility in obtaining an up-country engineering contract.

Martin & Co, engaged him, and he finally became apartner, and was knighted.

Martin & Co. owned the Bengal Iron & Steel Co, builtdocks, mines, railways, cement factories, power plants

and soon. Sir R. N. Mookerjee 'held high office in connection with

the Imperial Bank of India', and he was a member ofthe Royal Industrial Commission of 1916-18.

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Then there was Andrew Yule & Co under thesupervision of Morgan GrenfeIl, a financial house ofEngland.

Sir David Yule had come to India to join the familyconcur- of Andrew Yule & Co, and on his death in 1928it was recalled that 'he leaves behind him a long list ofsolidly established companies'; in the business worldIndia could not contain him';

"he became a power in London and in internationalenterprises, but India remained his special field"; 'themore his capital increased the- more ready he was toinvest it in India which he-regarded as his home'; all hisbusiness life was associated with Indians and it is not

too much say that his closest friends in Calcutta wereIndians.

A web of connections financial, and engineering inBritain and in India, and Indians that mattered.

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Drawing on the experience of World War- I the needfor a heavy industries infrastructure was already welland elaborately described in the report of the Royal

Industrial Commission of 1916-18, 'one of the all-IndiaCommissions of the twentieth century that have lefttheir mark on the country.

There was a clear description of what should be state-

owned, arid 'what of the heavier industries should beprivate-the private here was British; provincial levelindustries generally agro-based were Indian.

Ratan J Tata, R. N. Mookerjee, and Madan Mohan

Malaviya were members of this Commission. This was one option-the Calcutta jute mill one.

Heavy industries under the Bombay Cotton Mill optionhad its uncertainties.

H i d t i t b i d i t

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Heavy industries were to be repair and maintenanceindustries stabilizing the economy especially whensupplies from principals were jeopardized-due toaccidents on the high seas.

Heavy industries have been given a mystique, amysterious aura, they are not synonymous withengines of growth, a self-reliant function which isfeasible only in a particular context.

With no physical surpluses to plough back they wouldbe no more than glorified repair and maintenanceindustries-and no surplus would be forthcoming if therate of utilization of these physical resources by thecapital-intensive consumer goods industries were

exhaustive. With large-scale consumer industries in the lead the

reduction of heavy industries to repair andmaintenance functions merely became a certainty,even with the Bombay Cotton Mill option.

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With care and judicious husbanding, eitheroption was acceptable to the new meanssuiting the capital goods industries in England.

The engine of growth would continue to beinvestments comprising imported capitalgoods, regardless of the 'Rs' and foreign

exchange mix; recurring import of spares,components, intermediates and replenish-ables being the umbilical-cord of sustenance.

The logic of the new means to the old goalshad completeness, persuasiveness forimplementation.

S i d T h l S i

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Science and Technology Service S & T services were to grow the technical schools and the

diploma schools, indeed the Royal Industrial Commissionhad stressed the need for the creation of a ChemicalServices under the aegis of the government.

There would be analytical laboratories, testing laboratories,research on indigenously available raw materials-agricultural, forest-based, or mineral-to promote thedevelopment of the resources of India; there would beadoptive research to suit and acclimatize industrialprocesses to Indian conditions.

Indeed in 1902 itself, under the Vice royalty of Lord Curzon;the Board of Scientific Advice was established with a viewto coordinating the scientific work which was carried out byofficial agencies'.

There was a whole array of S & T functions to beperformed-services and R&D but, nothing was to be doneto sever the bonds giving operational content to Integralpart of the Empire.

Bench scale R & D was permissible detail design

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Bench scale R & D was permissible, detail designengineering was permissible, project engineering andmanagement was permissible, but-not equipment andmachine design engineering to generate the know-how to

delink, at one's will, the need to import components,spares, and of machines and equipment; there was to beno RDD, the design and development portion of it.

The risks of these being undertaken were meagre, thecreation of technology through RDD and the pursuit of

absorptive RDD required an institutionalized and organizedexpression of S & T for these functions.

Disorganized, dis-functional, individualistic attempts wereof no consequence of any avail and these were endeavourswhich required sustained effort, support, and reasonable

learning-cum-developmental time. In the short-run the pressure of stoppage of sustaining

imports and immediate bankruptcy was an effectivecorrective to an errant endeavour.

The era of Mohsin Hussain was over.

1888 h G f I di d i li

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1888, the Government of India expressed its policy ontechnical education:

And thus technical education of the special, as contra-distinguished from the preparatory kind, is an auxiliaryof manufacture and industrial capital. But theextension of railways, the introduction of mills andfactories, the exploration of mineral and otherproducts, the expansion of external trade, and the

enlarged intercourse with foreign markets, ought intime' to lead to, the same results in India as in othercountries, and create a demand for skilled labour andfor educated foremen, supervisors and managers...... itwould be premature to establish technical schools on

such a scale as in European countries, and therebyaggravate the present difficulties by adding to theeducated unemployed a new class of professional menfor whom there is no commercial demand."

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'Auxiliary', 'extension', 'introduction', 'expansion ofexternal trade' key terms of a policy of import toexport, export to import accompanied with a false

analogy with 'other countries' of Europe. 'Nocommercial demand' a phrase which hid more than itrevealed. And, there had also arrived another being onthe scene the educated unemployed and a new class ofprofessional men, persons who had just the means tobuy an education, but not an independent source ofincome as from landed estates and mercantile andbanking operations, The Government of India in 1901-02, were to state:

"It is the declared objective of the Government toencourage the investment of English capital inindustrial enterprises in India....."

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Despite this, Montagu and Chelmsford were

not making an idle claim when they wrote:

"It is only now, when the war has revealed theimportance of industry, that we have

deliberately set about encouraging Indians to

undertake' the creation of wealth by industrialenterprise."

The Bombay cotton mill had to stake its

claims, as it did. In conclusion one cannot helpnoting the wars and their relation to the

induction of industry in India from Britain.

S i l f f i di S & T

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Social force of indigenous S & T -

Mahendra LaI Sircar's venture

Mahendra Lal Sircar, born 2nd November 1833 atPaikpara, Howrah; died 23rd February 1904;

education: Hare School, Hindu College, MedicalCollege, Calcutta-passed 1860, M.D. Degree

1863; Fellow of Calcutta University 1873, founder and

life secretary of Indian Association of Cultivationof Science (IACS) 1876,

Sherrif of Calcutta 1887, member BengalLegislative Council 1887-93.

This is all that the centenary volume of IACS tellsus of this Mahendra Lal Sircar as a man.

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One knows so little of Mahendra Lal Sircar the

man, the four-dimensional man and more,

who lived, endeavoured, and passed away. He chooses his entry well and also his exit-it

was the beginning of an age and the start of

its dialectic in 1905. He chooses 1869 of the watershed years to

enunciate a vision of indigenous S & T that

was to consume him. Mahendra Lal Sircar was the indigenous S & T

of his time, its contradictions, its heart-break,

its hero.

At th f 9 h i h l h h b

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At the age of 9, perhaps in school, he may have beenwitness to the mourning for David Hare the unletteredwatch maker.

At that age, the conclusion of the Opium war (1839-42)and the opening of the China market, the fortunes tobe made irrespective of caste, colour or creed musthave been distant events.

At the age of 24, Sircar cannot but have read of Anglo-Persian wars (1856-57) of the second Chinese War(1856-58); could he have escaped the conflagrationsweeping India.

The peasant sepoys rising up in a revolt that was areflex, peasant sepoys still steeped in the culture offeudalism, seeking in the already defeated feudal lordsa leadership which was not there a sepoy rebellionwhich was a peasant mass rising.

Mahendra Lal Sircar cannot but have seen the impact

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Mahendra Lal Sircar cannot but have seen the impactof the German War (1859-56) on Calcutta as jute millssprouted with their stacks billowing smoke.

In a pace of years seen the steamships and thehammer on the railway line; witnessed the completionof the 24-mile electric telegraph line between Calcuttaand Diamond Harbour in 1857 and observed their webrapidly spreading.

He way have heard of Shib Chandra Nandy, perhapsthey may have been friends; a Shib Chandra Nandywho was assisting W. B. OShaughnessy, Professor of

Chemistry at the Calcutta Medical College, an Irishman

responsible for the erection of this first telegraph.

Sircar may have met OShaughnessy, and known of theIrishman's experiments on electric-telegraphcommunication while at the Medical College.

h k h ' h h d h

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What one knows is that O'Shaughnessy and his

colleagues did not create a community

committed to the scientific method and its

pursuit and application.

What OShaughnessy did create was a technical

service he became the first Director of Telegraphs

in India with a Shib Chandra Nandy merelysupervising the erection of telegraph lines.

Yet one must be grateful to OShaughnessy and

his colleagues, they were merely to teach andthey did more; they came as exiles from a culture

of science and practised this, culture in an

individual way.

Th d t t d th lt f i

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They demonstrated the culture of science on analien soil, they did not, and perhaps could nottransplant it, could not make it take root: for how

many of those coming out of the Raja's HinduCollege, of those dilettantes, aspired for theculture and method of science.

They aspired only for lucrative employment in the

Company's services chafing at the denial of theseprospects.

It was only the off-beats, the mavericks that,

perhaps unknown to the OShaughnessy were tobe moved by these demonstrations of the-cultureof science and its method in India-one such wascertainly Mahendra Lal Sircar.

Mahendra Lal Sircar could not have escaped these vast

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Mahendra Lal Sircar could not have escaped these vastmovements affecting India-these movements providingthe context of science and technology creation and beingcreated by it itself. That Sircar had studied the charters of

the Royal Institute and the British Association for theAdvancement of Science is beyond doubt.

He made his public debut in 1869 through the 'CalcuttaJournal of Medicine'; he wrote:

.....We want an institution which will combine the character,the scope and objects of the Royal Institution of Londonand of the British Association for the Advancement ofScience. We want an Institution which shall be for theinstruction of the masses, where lectures on scientific

subjects will be systematically delivered and not onlyillustrative experiments performed by the lecturers, butthe audience should be invited and taught to performthem themselves. And we wish that the Institution beentirely under native management and control....

Af i h id

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After six years he said:

l have been doing what it was in my powers

to do,-acting the part of the husbandman. Iborrowed a seed from the West, the part of

which I may say, was borrowed long ago from

the East that is India. Having got the seed I set

myself to preparing the soil by ploughing it

with the poor instrument of rough persuasion

in my possession. The soil was good, and not

great effort was needed on my part to prepareit.....

Tardy Progress

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Tardy Progress In 1870, he published the prospectus of the association and

there was a spurt of subscriptions and then it languished forfive years.

The initial glamour and sensation was over, sufficient fundswere not forthcoming for the association to be a viable body,and the subscribers were not clear.

To what end, presumably they may well have-asked, shouldone have instruction for the masses; of what purpose lectureson scientific subjects, experiments and then took to learn howto do them, why?

The 'Rajas' the 'Babus' and Honbles' who had subscribed tothis novelty were clearer of their Hindu college, of theirPresidency College, of their Medical College the purpose wasclear cut, one because a lawyer, one joined the medicalservice, one looked for access to the surveys even ascomputers, or aspired to join the telegraph service assupervisor, these were concrete achievable end butexperiment

The lieutenant governor of Bengal Sir Richard

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The lieutenant governor of Bengal Sir RichardTemple was keen to encourage science teachingin the educational institutions Sir Richard had

spoken favourably of Dr. Sircar's venture thisdeserved attention and so a body of 40subscribers met under the chairmanship of anHonble this was the first meeting of the

subscribers on 4th April 1875, five years thesubscriptions had stagnated governor wanted aplan to be drawn up he would preside-who is thisDr. Sircar-and by the second meeting nearly 8

months later, the promised subscription wasRs.80000. At the third meeting, on 15th January,1876 the lieutenant Governor presided with 60persons

This was the milieu from which Dr Sircar sought

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This was the milieu from which Dr Sircar soughtsustenance; amongst which he had tried his powers ofpersuasion for five arid years. He had to make a casefor experiments and on 4th April 1875 gave a fresh

exposition of his scheme: "Gentlemen one characteristic of my scheme is that we

should endeavour to carry on the work with our ownefforts, unaided by Government, or perhaps moreproperly speaking, without seeking its aid. Now this

does not mean that we will not accept any aid fromthat quarter if it comes to us unasked, andunhampered with conditions and restrictions,excepting the all important condition of thecontinuance of the Association. Let me not bemisunderstood. I want freedom for the institution. Iwant it entirely under own management and control. Iwant it to be solely native and purely national.

"Si D id B t d C t R f d f d

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"Sir David Brewster and Count Runford found menalready in the field, ready to work in a fresh direction,and it was only to facilitate their communications with

each other so as to give a greater impetus to originalinvestigations, and to spread knowledge of science sofar as advanced to the masses, that they founded theirrespective institutions. Mine cannot in the present atleast make any approach to this ambitious character,though I am confident that if it succeeds I do not seeany reason why it will not, necessarily grow into thecombined magnitude and importance of both."

In 1876 and clearly in 1878 he set the objective of the

Association to be:

To cultivate science in all its departments, both with a

view to its advancement by original research, and to itsvaried applications to the arts and comforts of life

Greatly encouraged by the interest shown by Sir

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Greatly encouraged by the interest shown by SirRichard temple, Mahendra Lal noted in 1875 that fulltime pursuers of science were supported in, Europe

and in America by the State, in our country suchappointments do no exit and it is chiefly with a view tosupplying the deficiency and the desideratum that Ihave been striving to found this Association Sevendisciplines were to be pursued, each with a full time

worker a graduate selected from colleges in Calcuttaespecially the Calcutta Medical college with books andinstrument guided by the men who had made therespective disciplines their specialty for all this a total

fixed investment of Rs 19.2 lakhs was needed andonly a sum of Rs. 80 thousand was at hand foundswere tardy in forthcoming and the Association couldnot make much head way.

The Rajas and Their League

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The Rajas and Their League

AndMahendra lal Sircar, very conscious and committedto the realization of full- time researchers for original

research and its applications, sought to lure themillionaires by taking advantage of Lord RiponsEndowment Professorship in 1884, By the end of 1884,the subscription was precisely Rs. 17,050 and stagnant.Lord Rippon- 1000, Maharaja of darbhanga-10000, The

first Prince of Indore- 1000, Kumar Baikunt Nath Deyand father-1000, Nizam of hyderabad-3000, Nawabsalarjung-1000, Rakhal Das Halder-50

In 1898-99, and again in 1901, Mahendra Lalattempted a Hare Professorship and a VictoriaProfessorship, but to no avail. The Rajas had theirlaugh at the Indian League, they were not interested inscience even for mental pleasure even pleasure has itsupper cost bounds.

S di i li i 1875 d t b

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Seven disciplines, in 1875, were proposed to bepursued: general physics, chemistry, physiology,systematic botany, systematic zoology, astronomy

and geology-the first two because they were thebackbone of science, the next three because ofevident importance, and geology for no otherreason than that calling up the past history of theglobe revolutionized the idea of time.

The patronage was not adequate and so only thefirst three were given priority for no reason thanthat these are the only branches of scienceswhich have received permanent professorship atRoyal Institution of London.

A lakh and half rupees to secure a fullprofessorship, twenty lakhs to realize the fulldream of 1875?

Cost Breakup

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Cost Breakup Seven disciplines:

One full timer for each @ Rs 400 pm

Head worker for each @ Rs 170 pm

Recurring cost @ Rs 70 pm

Total per month Rs 640

Annual 640 X 7 X 12 = Rs. 54000

Fixed investment of Rs 18 lakhs @ 3%

Equipment cost Rs 10000 per discipline

Total = Rs 70000

Building, Land etc.= Rs 50000

Thus total fixed cost = Rs 1,20,000

Total Investment required = Rs 19.2 lakhs

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For only three disciplines:

Recurring cost 640 X 3 X 12= Rs 23040

Equipment cost = Rs 30000Land and building cost = Rs 50000

Total Investment required = Rs 7.6 lakhs

Without full time specialist:

Recurring cost reduced to Rs 8400

Total investment required Rs 2.8 lakhs

Even this much did not come forward

The subjects proposed were more philosophical

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The subjects proposed were more philosophicaland educational than scientific in the scheme ofTata's. Was the manufactory of original research

and its application to be displaced by industry forresearch and its application grafted from abroad'virgin' born? Were original research and itsapplications the objects of the Rs. 100 Iakh

scheme; were the industries of Tata to rest onthis foundation of research? No, would not be asurprising answer.

Or, was research a beautiful word, and the realend was to turn out cheaper engineeringmanpower. Indian, to only operate and maintainthe industries and its processes inducted fromabroad? One may answer this in the affirmative.

Of this period one hears of an Acharya Prafulla

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Of this period one hears of an Acharya PrafullaChandra Ray, of Acharya Jagdish Chandra Boseand his instruments for botany fabricated byartisans to original design, of a Paise Fund GlassFactory, promoted by Bal Gangadhar Tilak onbasis of artisan skill stories that need to beunearthed and told, stories of innumerableothers who proceeded to create this new social

force. A new social force creating and created by its

indigenous scientific and technologicalendeavour, to hurl a defiance to and challenge

the constituted 19th century economic order andits mode of industrialization emergent from itswomb.