..........................................Course Developed by Dr. Sambit Mallick

By the early twentieth century, the Indian society had started witnessing the first stirrings for freedom from colonial rule. While their political aspirations led to a demand for self-rule, the frustration resulting from economic stranglehold found expression in their insistence on using only goods made in India. Swadeshi Movement provided further impetus for:

•  Promotion of education along national lines and under national control with special reference to science and technology; and

•  Industrialisation of the country.

In 1904, an Association for the Advancement of Scientific and Industrial Education of Indians was formed. The objective was to send qualified students to Europe, America and Japan for studying science-based industries.

As mentioned earlier, in colonial India the environment was not conducive to higher studies, much less to research. Indians were allowed only subordinate posts and even those who had distinguished themselves abroad were given less salary than the Europeans of the same grade and rank. This ‘apartheid' in science made the Indians respond strongly. J. C. Bose, the first noted Indian physicist, refused to accept this reduced salary for three years. Not only this, till the Royal Society recognised Bose, the college authorities refused him any research facility and considered his work as purely private. J. C. Bose was unorthodox in one more sense. He was one of the first among the modem scientists to take to interdisciplinary research. He started as a physicist but his interest in electrical responses took him to plant physiology. To fight for a place and recognition in the scientific circles in Britain was no less difficult than fighting against the administrative absurdities of a colonial government. Bose persisted and won.