The Indian Space Programme

by Gurbir Singh

  The ASI was rich in the range of topics and the complexity of the debates it hosted. The nature of the papers presented at its regular meetings was specialised and highly technical. John Evershed spoke about his solar observations on the “angular speed of rotation of long enduring prominences”. C.V. Raman presented a paper on Astronomical Optics, which he illustrated profusely with mathematical equations.

  Some of the papers tackled astronomical themes that are well understood and accepted today but lacked sufficient evidence in the early 20th century. For example, on 11 February 1911, W. A. Lee spoke on the Nebular Hypothesis, the idea that the solar system, the Sun and all the planets condensed out of a giant cloud, a nebula of gas and dust. Lee supported his case by presenting observational evidence “the planets all revolved in one plane, they all revolved in one direction in their orbits, and mostly rotated in the same direction on their individual axes.”[132] A wealth of evidence acquired since then from Earth and space-based telescopes confirm this hypothesis. In November 2015, astronomers announced the discovery of a solar system in the making, which was consistent with the Nebular Hypothesis but beyond the Solar System.[133]

  Figure 3‑3 Seal of the Astronomical Society of India Designed by Member F.C. Scallan in February 1911. Credit Indian Institute of Astrophysics

  A discussion following a paper on meteors on 28 March 1911 presented the possibility that a meteor trail was a “result of the combustion of the meteor.”[134] In the early 1940s, the British astronomer Bernard Lovell (1913–2012) detected radio waves that reflected from the trail of ionised molecules left behind as a meteor combusted following its high-speed impact in the upper atmosphere. He confirmed the hypothesis of meteor combustion and went on to advance a new branch of study, radio astronomy. He also developed the world’s largest fully steerable, 76-m diameter radio telescope in 1957.[135]

  The idea that large planets with correspondingly strong magnetic fields can hold to their atmosphere while a smaller planet with a weak magnetic field cannot is now an accepted and understood scientific concept. For example, Mars has a very tenuous atmosphere, unlike the Earth or Venus. Intriguingly, this idea was raised in the society’s correspondence records on 1 May 1914. F.C. Molesworth asserted “We know that the Moon is not heavy enough to retain permanently any gases. Hence, at no stage of its existence could it have had an atmosphere of appreciable density.”[136] ASI also debated principles of the scientific method. One of the speakers insisted that it was the “glory of Science that it did change its hypothesis when they were tested and found wanting.”[137]

  The ASI attracted considerable interest from non-professionals, too. To promulgate the excitement and joy of astronomy, the ASI conducted a series of classes in Calcutta for beginners in astronomy. The classes introduced “rudiments of science and demonstrated how to use star charts”. Mr Rackshit, the ASI Director of the meteor section, led those classes, and the first batch was attended by 20 to 30 individuals.[138] Despite the high standards of the scientific contributions from its several members of national and international repute, the ASI did not survive for long. Although financially secure, its scientific contributions did not attract substantial international recognition.

  With air and light pollution, a growing city like Calcutta was not a suitable location for an astronomical observatory. However, it was the failure to attract young, talented and industrious members with the ability to conduct and publish original research that led to the demise of ASI within a decade of its inception. Attempts to engage the wider public in astronomy and science is replicated by today’s ASI. In 2014, the new ASI established the Public Outreach and Education Committee of the ASI to promote awareness of astronomy and increase public engagement in science.[139]

  Council of Scientific and Industrial Research

  The hope of nationalists for the independence of India immediately after the end of World War I had been dashed. Two decades later, as the UK fought for its own independence against Nazi Germany, a politically stronger Indian independence movement was determined to end British rule. In preparation, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was founded in 1942 to facilitate the R&D essential to realise Nehru’s vision of an India built on modern science and technology. Nehru had spent most of World War II in prison and used that time to write. He reflected on the role of science concluding that “the applications of science are inevitable and unavoidable for all countries and peoples today.”[140] CSIR today is the largest R&D body in India employing about 21,000 staff members, including research scientists, technical support members and research students in equal measure.

  Whereas the IACS and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research founded by Homi Bhabha in 1945, focus on pure research, CISR’s mandate has been industrial research. World War II was raging at the time it was created, and this emphasised the critical nature of a national industrial infrastructure, not just for national development but also for defence. The building of the first CSIR laboratory, the National Chemical Laboratory, started on 6 April 1947 in Pune, three months ahead of the formal independence of India. Others followed. The National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, National Metallurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur, Central Fuel Research Institute in Dhanbad, Central Glass and Ceramics Research Institute in Calcutta and Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore were established in 1950. Since then, the number has grown to over 40 across India employing over 1,000 technical personnel. The laboratories are grouped under five disciplines: (i) physical and Earth sciences, (ii) chemical sciences, (iii) biological sciences, (iv) engineering sciences and (v) information sciences.

  Most key posts in the scientific institutions established by Nehru were held by physicists, but he picked Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar (1894–1955), a professor of chemistry, as the Director-General of CSIR. Bhatnagar was revered as the Father of Research Laboratories and went on to hold the influential post of the Chairman of the University Grants Commission. The CSIR files around 1,000 new patents and publishes about 4,000 scientific papers every year. Its research is not pure research but research that can be directly applied. The diverse disciplines include innovative commercial aircraft, parallel computers and technology for genetic fingerprinting.

  Governments of all political colours have consistently supported industrial development since independence. In September 2014, just a few months after coming to power, the Narendra Modi government announced a new initiative called Make in India. The primary objectives included encouraging foreign investment, increasing industrial production, creating employment and training opportunities and generating a larger tax revenue. Government procedures and controls on foreign investment have been relaxed in many areas, including railways, space, automobiles, chemicals, news media, IT, pharmaceuticals, defence, aviation and textiles. The CSIR has put forward its Broadband Spectrum Confocal Microscope (a microscope using an enhanced optical imaging technique to increase resolution) as a ‘humble beginning’ to the Make in India initiative. The former ISRO Chairman U.R. Rao, who led the team that built India’s first satellite, expressed frustration at the absence of self-sufficiency in non-space sectors in India; the space sector is an exception that has largely succeeded in becoming self-reliant. In November 2015, Rao lamented, “even Brazil is making small aeroplanes. What are we making in defence? We import everything, including Swiss knives. You can’t defend a country unless you make it yourself.”[141]

  Even though CSIR has grown in size and complexity since 1942, its management has not kept pace. It no longer attracts the attention of the highest political office as it once did. On 25 August 1947 “even while riots raged”,[142] Nehru ensured he was present for a meeting of the CSIR. The quality and quantity of the scientific work conducted by CSIR today is considered by some to be below its full potential.

  Indian Institute of Science

  In 1893, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (J.N. Tata, 1839–1904) chanced to meet with Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) aboard a ship bound to the US from
Japan. Vivekananda was probably India's first global celebrity extolling the values and traditions of India (especially Advaita Vedanta and Raja yoga). They discussed establishing steel and other industries and higher education institutions in India for India. This meeting has now become almost a sacred memory in Indian folklore. Tata envisioned an institute of higher education for science that would work for the benefit of India. In the late 19th century, this was a particularly outrageous vision. India, at that time, had little in the way of established universities producing high-quality graduates in numbers anywhere near proportional to its population.

  To realise J.N. Tata’s vision, Burjorji Padshah (1864–1941), an intelligent and capable manager within the Tata business group, travelled to Europe and America with the task of identifying the model of a university that would best suit India’s need. He chose Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1898, he published a report titled ‘Institute of Scientific Research for India’, which eventually resulted in the IISc.

  It took a decade of surmounting numerous obstacles, but finally, the IISc was established in 1909, five years after the death of J.N. Tata. A century later, the IISc became the first Indian higher educational institution to be listed among the top 100 higher educational organisations worldwide in a highly regarded ranking published in the British Times Higher Education Supplement.[143] Today, the IISc offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses and research opportunities in many disciplines, including biology, chemistry, electrical engineering, physics and mathematics.

  To get the project moving, J.N. Tata had understood that he needed three key ingredients. He would have to invest his own funds, persuade the colonial government to commit financially and encourage a donation of land from a wealthy Indian princely state. J.N. Tata and Padshah met with the new Viceroy of India, George Curzon (1859–1925), on 31 December 1898, two days after he arrived in India to take up his new post. Their intention was to secure his support for their project. Curzon was not forthcoming. Not only was he not convinced of the viability of the project, but he also saw no need for Indians to acquire higher education, even if they were intellectually capable. After all, working as clerks and administrators in the Indian Civil Services was all that Indians could aspire for. He likened higher education for Indians to “presenting a naked man with a top-hat when what he wants is a pair of trousers.”[144]

  Tata presented 18 of his privately-owned properties to the government as his side of the bargain to get the colonial government to commit to the project.[145] He did not want his name associated with the project to encourage the widest range of additional sponsors.[146] In 1904, J.N. Tata died. One of his two sons, Dorabji Tata (D.J. Tata, 1859–1932), wrote to the Viceroy informing him of his father’s death. In the same letter, he confirmed that the institute project would continue as planned: the government was to provide 30% of all proposed costs as grants, the Royal Society in London was to select professors for the Institute and the new facility was to be a public, not a private, institution.[147]

  The difficult and protracted project finally met with some success in 1907. By then, Curzon had been replaced as Viceroy. Tata’s sons, Dorabji and Ratan, succeeded in first securing a financial commitment from the government and then 372 acres of land in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) from the Maharaja of Mysore, Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV (1884–1940). After a further two years of complex negotiations, the colonial government formally passed a resolution to establish the Institute. With additional funding from the State of Mysore, the foundation stone for IISc was laid in Bangalore in May 1909, and the formal teaching started two years later.

  IISc’s first Director, Morris Travers (1872–1961), a chemist, was encouraged to take up the role by his colleague and scientific collaborator William Ramsay (1852–1916). Upon request from the British government to advise on a potential Indian scientific institution, Ramsay had visited India in 1900. He was a celebrated chemist who, working with Lord Rayleigh (1842–1919), had discovered argon, a noble gas, in 1894, an achievement that was recognised with a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904. Subsequently, Ramsay and Travers collaborated and used fractional distillation of liquid air to discover the noble gases neon, krypton and xenon. They were also the first to isolate helium, which had been initially detected from India in a spectroscopic observation of the Sun during the total solar eclipse in 1868. In addition to his skills as an experimental scientist, Travers excelled in designing and making glass instruments, as well as designing and building industrial plants and furnaces. He pioneered a process for producing acetylene gas from calcium carbide. In 1903, using his own apparatus, Travers produced liquid hydrogen (LH2) for the first time during his demonstration in Germany.[148]

  When Travers was offered the post of Director of IISc, he was working at the University of Bristol and was not initially keen to take it up “Expatriation and working with people with whom I could not cultivate a bond of sympathy are my main reasons for holding back”. Eventually, however, Travers accepted.[149]An increase of salary from his then￡350 to￡1800, paid accommodation and a pension probably helped to persuade him. On 2 November 1906, Travers left Marseilles on the steamer Victoria to take up his post in Bangalore. He arrived before the building, facilities and organisational structures were complete. As the institute director, those were his initial tasks before students arrived in 1909.

  Even though he was able to conduct his research, he found routine tasks a burden. People management, provision of buildings, equipment, teaching and administration, along with developing and fulfilling a vision for the future of the institution, did not hold his interest. One of his first challenges in 1911 was to provide the unique catering facilities to meet the varied dietary needs of students from all over India, vegetarians, non-beef-eating Hindus and non-pork-eating Muslims. His most serious disputes, however, were with Padshah and Tata on the direction the institute should take academically. Travers wanted to introduce humanities, including archaeology. The Tata brothers, who were convinced by the potential of science to develop India, wanted the focus to be on hard sciences, such as bacteriology and tropical diseases.[150] These disagreements with the governing council (similar to what C.V. Raman would experience three decades later) led Travers to terminate his position and return to the UK in 1914. Over time, the IISc added additional subjects electrical engineering in the 1920s, physics in the 1930s and aeronautics in the 1940s.

  Figure 3‑4 Indian Institute of Science. Credit IISc Archives

  A year after the outbreak of World War II in Europe, France was occupied by Germany, and Japan had moved to occupy French Indochina. Concerned that Japan could head east to India, the UK invested in a factory to assemble and repair aircraft. It was established by Walchand Hirachand (1882–1953) in Bangalore. To support the demands of war, an aeronautical department was added to the IISc. In 1941, Hindustan Aircraft Limited (now Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) assembled the first aircraft, a Harlow trainer, in India. Today, it produces spacecraft for ISRO. Roddam Narasimha, a student at the IISc in the early 1950s, remembers seeing a Spitfire on the grounds of the IISc, but the landing strip on the IISc grounds used for training had by then been reclaimed.[151]

  In April 1939, a German architect Otto Köenigsberger (1908-1999) arrived in Bangalore as the Government Architect of Mysore State. He was the nephew of Max Born (1882–1970), whom C.V. Raman had invited to IISc for a 6-month stint in 1935. Possibly motivated by the imminent war in Europe, IISc went through a phase of expansion, and Köenigsberger was drafted in to help. He designed the departments of aerospace engineering and metallurgy and the dining hall/auditorium in addition to his duties for the State of Mysore.[152] IISc played a key role in the early careers of most Indian scientists who helped shape India’s post-independence technical development. Nobel laureate C.V. Raman was the institute’s first Indian Director (1932–1938), Homi Bhabha held his first teaching post in India at the IISc from 1939, Vikram Sarabhai conducted his PhD research under C.V. Raman’s supervision during Wor
ld War II and Satish Dhawan (1920–2002) taught there in the 1950s and returned as Director in 1962. The success of the IISc model inspired and fostered other institutions, including the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, the TIFR and the National Institute of Advanced Studies.

  When Morris Travers started, the IISc had two departments and 21 students. Today, it has 40 departments with nearly 4,000 students, most of who are engaged in postgraduate or research programmes supported by 500 academic and technical staff. It houses the largest library in India with the annual bill for the subscription of publications amounting to Rs.9 million ($0.13 million). The newer departments deal with topics that preoccupy universities globally, including climate change, nanotechnology, cyber systems, neuroscience, astronomy, aerospace, microbiology, cryogenics and atmospheric and Earth sciences. A New York Times survey of more than 5,000 recruiters from 30 countries released on 28 October 2013 listed IISc as 23rd for producing the most employable graduates. The success of IISc is the cumulative product of the effort of many, including Morris Travers, C.V. Raman and Satish Dhawan.[153]