A trailblazing visionary

By 1945, Bhabha had been in Bangalore for almost five years. He had been promoted from a reader to a full-time professor in 1944. The war was over, and scientists all over the world were keen to get back to research. Bhabha's peers in England were eager to get him back. Maurice Pryce sent Bhabha the announcement of the Wykeham Professorship in Oxford, asking him to apply for the position, saying, 'I think it would be very good for English theoretical physics if you would return to England.' (A Masterful Spirit)

The national movement for independence at this time had become strident and forceful, and it was clear that India would gain independence soon. It was only a matter of time. Bhabha began to think beyond his laboratory and office, beyond his group of students working on cosmic rays. He wondered how scientific research in an independent India could be given shape and how he could play a role. Greenstein has commented on this aspect of Bhabha's life in his essay: 'Perhaps when he returned home Bhabha found in himself an aptitude for institution building, for administration on a grand scale, that never could have flourished in such a country as England, whose scientific institutions were already well in place, but which was free to flower in the relative vacuum of India. Perhaps, too, he found himself swept up in the exhilaration of a great moment. He had been too young when he left India to have taken part in the independence movement. But by the time he returned it was obvious that independence would not be long in coming. It must have been a heady time, a time in which everything seemed suddenly possible.'

Bhabha was not alone in thinking about a larger vision of scientific research in India. Bhabha's stay in Bangalore coincided with other important milestones in the emergence of a general consensus among Indian scientists that a concerted effort was needed, especially in anticipation of an independent India. There were two other notable figures in this regard—Meghnad Saha and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar. The ambience of such cross-currents of thoughts spurred Bhabha to think along these lines.

Although scientists such as Raman had been clamouring for the establishment of research organizations in India in the 1930s, the British government had been putting them off, saying that such steps 'to promote the application of research to natural resources does not appear to be necessary,' ('Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar') as the viceroy Lord Willingdon said in 1933. Instead, a tame Industrial Intelligence and Research Bureau was created, for testing and quality control of instruments. Its first director was Bhatnagar, a chemist trained in England. Bhatnagar had come back to India in 1921, and had been thinking of linking scientific research with industrial needs. His own research had been geared towards that and had benefited a few industrial outfits. Even this bureau was proposed to be shut off at the beginning of the war. However, a persistent lawyer named Arcot Ramaswamy Mudaliar, who was in the viceroy's executive council, fought for the establishment of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1942. When the CSIR came into existence, Bhatnagar suggested that a few national laboratories should be set up, and this was approved.

When Saha went back to Calcutta in 1938, he too started thinking about a larger scenario of scientific research in India beyond the confines of his laboratory. During the setting up of the CSIR, Saha had written to Mudaliar about the necessary distinction between scientific and industrial research, saying that setting up industries is different from protecting them. Then he was invited by Subhas Chandra Bose, the then Congress party president, to attend a meeting in Delhi in October 1938 that was intended to form a National Planning Committee (NPC), in order to draw up a vision for the future of India. It was initially planned that the meeting would be chaired by Sir M. Visvesvaraya, who was a visionary engineer in the state of Mysore, and the dewan of the state. Visvesvaraya had written a book in 1934, titled A Planned Economy for India. But Saha urged him not to be the chairman, apprehending that in such a case the Congress party would regard the exercise of the meeting as merely academic unless an important functionary of the party was at the helm. Jawaharlal Nehru became the chair at Saha's suggestion. Several sub-committees were formed to discuss issues such as irrigation and so on, but the work of the committee languished because of the Quit India movement and turmoil due to war. Their main effort was to plan an industrially self-sufficient India, but there were subtle issues regarding how much attention should be given to cottage industry and how to tackle the thorny issue of wealth redistribution which was bound to come up after independence. Nehru wrote later in his autobiography that, 'It is clear, any scheme that we may produce can only be given effect to it in a free India. It is also clear that any effective planning must involve a socialization of the economic structure' (An Autobiography). For various reasons, other scientists, such as Raman or Bhatnagar, decided to stay out of NPC. There were tensions growing between Raman and Saha and Bhatnagar, each with their own ideas of how to proceed with science and industry in India. In 1944, a group of prominent industrialists including J.R.D. Tata and G.D. Birla formulated and published the so-called 'Bombay Plan', in which a combination of public and private sector economy was suggested.

In the backdrop of this, Bhabha thought of striking a different path. The positive vibe from the viceroy's office for research institutions in India was a good sign. Taking advantage of his intimacy with the Tatas, he wrote in 1943 to J.R.D. Tata, the head of the Tata Group of firms and chairman of the Tata Trusts, saying that he would like to stay back in India, because '…it is one's duty to stay in one's country and build up schools comparable with those in other lands'. He gave the example of the Soviet Union where scientific research for industrial purposes was encouraged, but not at the expense of fundamental research. In his view '…there is no genuine knowledge of the universe that is not potentially useful for man, not merely in the sense that action may one day be taken on it but also in fact that every new knowledge affects the way in which we hold all the rest of our stock.' (Nucleus and Nation)

He wanted to explore the possibility of Tata's funding towards a research institute of his own. In his reply, J.R.D. Tata wrote, 'If you and/or some of your colleagues in the scientific world will put up a concrete proposal backed by a sound case, I think there is a very good chance that the Sir Dorab Tata Trust… will respond' (Bhabha and his Magnificent Obsessions). Encouraged by this Bhabha wrote a four-page letter on 12 March 1944, to Sir Sorab Saklatvala, chairman of the Trusts. He wrote, 'There is at the moment in India no big school of research in the fundamental problems of physics, both theoretical and experimental. There are, however, scattered all over India competent workers who are not doing as good work as they would do if brought together in one place under proper direction. It is absolutely in the interest of India to have a vigorous school of research in fundamental physics, for such a school forms the spearhead of research not only in less advanced branches of physics but also in problems of immediate practical applications in industry. If much of the applied research done in India today is disappointing or of very inferior quality it is entirely due to the absence of a sufficient number of outstanding pure research workers who would set the standard of good research and act on the directing boards in an advisory capacity.' (Homi Jehangir Bhabha).

This was the first time that Bhabha had used such language in order to encourage philanthropists like the Tatas to fund him, and it was not easy. In a rather personal letter to J.R.D. Tata, he described on 24 March 1944 his experience of writing to the Tata Trusts: 'I must explain that I wrote the letter with a good many blushes, but in order to put forward convincingly a scheme which I believe to be in the interests of science, I have had to throw modesty to the winds' (A Masterful Spirit). In his reply, J.R.D. Tata assuaged him saying: 'You don't need to blush too much about what you wrote in your letter. As hardened business men we are not easily shocked by such mild forms of trumpet-blowing! In fact it was almost inaudible!' (Ibid.)

After the visit by Sir A.V. Hill from the Royal Society, a scientific delegation of some leading scientists was planned, for a four-month-long tour of the UK, the USA and Canada, from October 1944 to February 1945. Saha and Bhatnagar were among those who accepted the invitation. Bhabha declined the invitation, because he realized he had work to do for the planning of his own institute. And it was not that he was not aware of how scientific research was done abroad. He was all too familiar with it. All his thoughts were now focused on how to re-create in India the ambience of research that he had witnessed abroad.

(Excerpted with permission from Biman Nath's Homi J Bhabha; published by Niyogi Books)