How policies of Nehru and Communism stifled growth of scientific institutions.
The recent controversies surrounding the higher education sector in Kerala where student leaders aligned to the CPI(M) were found indulging in malpractices such as taking admission with fake marksheets, in connivance with authorities, show the degradation the Leftists have brought about in the sector.
Mediocrity has become the order of the day in Kerala, which once prided in high standards in education. Even before the British arrived, literacy among people, including women, was very high. The Travancore royals were credited for having started the first girls’ English medium school even before the Christian missionaries or the British. The erstwhile Travancore kingdom is believed to have reached out to Physicist and Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein to head the Travancore University (now Kerala University) to make it a hub of education and scientific research.
Turning institutions into rehabilitation centres for party workers and their dependents and political interferences have turned the Kerala higher education sector into a cesspool of mediocrity. The situation is so serious that bright students whose parents can afford to pay for their education abroad are leaving the shores. A majority of those students won’t choose to return to Bharat is also a reality staring at our face.
Bharat has not been able to produce great centres of scientific research, despite our great scientists such as Dr C.V. Raman, Prof P.C. Ray wanted it to be developed into a hub of scientific research. Sir C.V. Raman was upset with the way the Nehru government was going ahead with its policy on scientific development in the country.
As the architect of IISc, Raman tried to rope in the best scientific minds to the institute. When he took charge, the institute only had four departments: general chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry and electrical technology. He convinced quantum physicist and mathematician Max Born, Robert Oppenheimer’s PhD guide, to take up a position in IISc. But Born conveyed to Raman that he could not take up a permanent position because of personal reasons, but accepted a short-term position.
Raman believed that Bharat can emerge as a major power in scientific research but feared that Nehru’s policies were adversely affecting its growth. He openly criticised Nehru’s policies on science administration and warned that this would lead to degradation of scientific institutions. Instead of focusing on excellence, Nehru promoted his “yes men” and allowed institutions to become bureaucratic cesspools filled with men of low calibre and vision. The national selfhood spirit that fired men of science to take up efforts to build institutions of excellence but Eurocentric policies of Nehru took steam out of their initiatives.
Raman refused to be a Member of the National Planning Commission set up by Congress. Despite the invitation from the government, he did not join on the Board of Scientific and Industrial Research (now CSIR). Interestingly, he did not attend the Bharat Ratna award ceremony—the first award was given to him and Rajaji—as he had to take care of his student’s PhD viva voce in Calcutta.
Commenting on why science did not progress in Bharat post-Independence, scientist Dhirendra Sharma, in his article titled “India’s Lopsided Science”, writes: “Why has Indian science, for all its early promise, failed to become a vector of social change? Although it is not easy to do so, much of the blame for this failure must be placed on two men whom history has set on a high pedestal: Homi J. Bhabha, tsar of Indian science policy during the 1950s and 1960s, and his patron, Jawaharlal Nehru… In the days before Indian independence, scientific activity depended mostly on the interest of individuals and required only small funds. In practice, scientific activities were open and universal, and publication of results was considered a scientist’s most important function. In this situation, Indian scientists were able to contribute directly to the advancement of science, and they did so. The gap between European and Indian science was relatively small.”
The biographer of Raman, Uma, also pointed out that the ace scientist believed that Nehru was responsible for the lack of progress in science, though Left historians and retainers of the Nehru-Gandhi family have always credited Nehru “for his visionary and pro-science ideas”.
According to Uma, although Nehru was responsible for Raman getting Bharat Ratna, he “faulted Nehru for not having the knowledge, the intuition, what you will, to find the right people for the advancement of Indian science… Raman felt that newly independent India was taking the wrong road in its science planning and Nehru was responsible for it.”
Raman was a staunch critic of Communism and believed that Nehru’s economic policies would destroy Bharat’s innate entrepreneurial instincts. In a scathing attack on Nehruvian policies, Raman writes (Indian Express, Special Issue, 15 August 1952): “…There is a school of thought in our country which regards the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as an example to be quoted and followed on all matters. There is another school which thought not of the same persuasion, is nevertheless largely inclined that way and believes in leveling down as well as leveling up as the pathway to liberty, equality and fraternity, and would label as reactionaries all those who are not prepared to line up with them. Looking round and sizing up the situation, it seems to me that the real changer before our country in the days to come is the crushing down of individual freedom and initiatives by the steam of roller of government authority. Already, we see indications of this in the popularity of legislative measures having an expropriatory character and the passage of taxation and other bills calculated to kill private enterprise in the field of industrial development. To those who have no faith in personal liberty or personal initiative…the way of maximum freedom of the individual is also the way to the maximum prosperity of people. Indeed, democracy without freedom for the individual is a sham and a delusion…nothing in our present set-up in India disturbs me more profoundly than the manner in which the plea of communal justice is allowed to suppress individuals of particular communities.”
Raman believed that science would put an end many problems facing the country. On the Nobel Laureate’s vision on Bharat’s scientific progress, B. Chandrasekharan, in an article in Swarajya, writes: “Raman envisioned the future of India with science as ultimate antidote to the social and economic ills of the country. He was of the firm view that new knowledge could be amplified in natural sciences if only the scientists are given absolute autonomy to pursue the truthful and self-motivations triggered by complexities of sciences unfettered in nature.”
J. Nandakumar is the national convenor of Prajna Pravah. He authored Swa: Struggle for National Selfhood.