Another noted Indian scientist, P. C. Ray had also suffered similarly. On his return from England in 1888 with a doctora te in chemistry, he had to hang around for a year and was finally offered a temporary assistant professorship. All through he had to remain in Provincial Service. P. N. Bose, preferred to resign, when in 1903 he was superseded for the directorship of the Geological Survey by T. Holland who was 10 years junior to him.

These problems were reflected on the political platform of the country. In its third session (1887), the Indian National Congress took up the question of technical education and has since then passed resolutions on it every year. K. T. Telang and B. N. Seal pointed out how, in the name of technical education, the government was merely imparting lower forms of practical training. The Indian Medical Service was also severely criticised. In 1893, the Congress passed a resolution asking the government “to raise a scientific medical profession in India by throwing open fields for medical and scientific work to the best talent available and indigenous talent in particular.” Whether it be education, agriculture or mining, the Congress touched several problems under its wide sweep.

We find that the activities of that era had two important features. One was that almost all the exponents of Swadeshi looked to Japan as a major source of inspiration. Japan's emergence as a viable Asian industrial power and its subsequent military victory over Russia in 1904-05 caught the imagination of Indians. Another characteristic was that quite often they showed revivalist tendencies. This may have been because the distant past comes in handy for the recovery of a lost self or reassertion of one's identity. All these scientists were for the industrial application of modern science but failed to overcome certain cultural constraints, which was necessary for this effort. All they tried to do was to demonstrate that the Indian ethos and the values of modem science were congruent and not poles apart. In such a situation, it was not easy to evolve a correct understanding of our intellectual and cultural heritage. This was all the more difficult because of the total colonial domination both in education and in social life.