The temporary office space of Science Gallery Bengaluru, which is now nestled in the lush premises of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, teems with activity and brims with ideas. At its centre is Jahnavi Phalkey, a historian of 20th century Indian science, documentary filmmaker, professor, author, and founder-director of the gallery. The 50,000 sq.ft. gallery is among the more ambitious science communication projects in the country and seeks to bring science ‘back into culture’. The pandemic may have delayed its grand opening but that hasn’t stopped Phalkey or her young team from finding ways to represent complex science through sensorial art and more. Excerpts from an interview:
There just aren’t many scholars looking into the history of Indian science. Why is this so?
In India, there is a smallish community, particularly if you are agnostic about whether they are studying the history of mathematics, medicine, environment, science or technology. But what is sad is that we don’t have a single university that has a department office, or that awards a degree in the history of science and technology. We don’t have a professional society. There is a journal, the Indian Journal of History of Science , but it’s not run by historians of science. This is a lament. Science is a part of our life and human history, particularly in the past 200-odd years. To leave it out feels like a sin of omission.
Increasingly, scientific disciplines have become siloed. They aren’t accessible to the public. What I mean is, zoology used to be studied in naturalistic collections, botany was studied in herbariums. The public could walk in, observe and understand. There was a relationship between the scholar and the public. That relationship has nearly gone in the 20th century. It is very important to understand the past in order to rebuild that relationship. We live with the outcomes of the decisions taken. In order to move forward, it is important to understand why we are where we are.
Science history in India is largely written by scientists and not by historians. Is there some sort of barrier for historians looking to narrate its history?
Science in India represents a path for upward social mobility, it is a social indicator of intelligence and success. And there is disdain for the study of humanities and social sciences. It’s there in other countries too, but not to the extent as in India. Here, we look at people who study these subjects as “not intelligent” enough. And so, how do you allow someone who you don’t respect to write about the history of the work you do?
Second, there is no proper archiving policy or collections policy in most scientific institutions. Personal papers are almost unheard of or access to them is difficult. Nobel laureate C.V. Raman’s papers exist, but his personal papers are not available for anyone to see. Whereas, I can see nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford’s archives and access Raman’s letters through his archive.
There are societies that collectively believe that history is a public good; the past and present belong to the people. But knowledge as a public good is not something that has found widespread acceptance in India. I think this is because protecting knowledge or not putting knowledge in the public domain is something that is culturally acceptable to us for millennia. This has consequences. People can claim what they want and there’s no way to examine that, because we don’t have a proper historical narrative.
Many believe that narratives are being muddied by the rise of pseudo-scientific history in India. That is, claims that ancient India invented stem cell research or airplanes or the Internet. These ideas are even presented in places where serious science is discussed, like the Indian Science Congress.
For me, a historically more important question is why are they doing it? What does it reveal about the scientific community? What does it tell us about the times we live in?
As we’ve seen through the 20th century, there comes a time when this no longer remains an intellectual curiosity. There are consequences when a certain kind of scholarship is not allowed. There are examples of this: Trofim Lysenko, Soviet-era biologist who propagated pseudoscientific ideas and persecuted those who disagreed with him; or the persecution of theoretical physicists (of Jewish heritage or accused of harbouring anti-Nazi views) in Nazi Germany. Let’s hope things change before something like that happens here.
We need strong history programmes that combine philology, history and archaeology, and that will build a scholarly force of people who understand Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, classical Tamil. Then you can look at the scientific and mythological past of our subcontinent in a serious way. But where are the universities that can support that kind of work? Where is that big vision where you produce work that tells us about the scientific ideas in these texts? Very important things will come out of these studies. But you can’t anchor this sense of accomplishment in the absence of empirical evidence. The people who make these (pseudo-scientific) claims also know this. Their motivation is not one of wanting to know the past but to mobilise it for short-term gains.
In your book, Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth-Century India , you write about the important collaborations between philanthropists and scientists in early and mid-20th century India. This relationship seemed to have changed now.
In terms of philanthropy, you have more money in India today than you had before. People are establishing universities and centres of learning. But they’re not investing in the same way as the Tatas or Birlas did at the time. In many ways, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research or Birla Institute of Technology — both set up through philanthropy — are integrated into the public education system. The newer private universities are not, and are, in fact, in active opposition to the state system.
They pursue the point that the state system is bad, which is untrue, because leading scientific institutions that are valued in India and globally are public institutions.
The relationship between scientists and the government seems to have changed too.
The relationship between science and the state changed in the late 1930s and 40s. It started with World War II and continued with the Cold War. Scientists came to be recognised as important for the war effort by the political leadership. Therefore, these scientists got prominence and power. Both the Indian state and scientists benefited from the recognition of science as an important political resource. It isn’t true now because the institutions are in many ways established. There are many still with power and prominence. But it’s not quite the same. Today, we say we live in a knowledge economy, but people who have knowledge are not the ones who can monetise that power.
Access to science and science communication in India seems to be restricted to the upper classes. How does Science Gallery Bengaluru intend to address this?
You’ve identified the problem precisely. It remains a very big danger. Access to science is what every society needs. To give a brief history of the Science Gallery, the original gallery was founded around 2008 by a historian of science at Trinity College, Dublin. It was set up to increase STEM enrolment there. When this model was taken globally, Bengaluru was the second city to sign up.
But STEM enrolment is not an issue in India. Our objective was to make science a public good. We came up with the idea of a public lab complex. This is an old idea. My favourite public lab complex story is that of C.V. Raman. For the first 10 years of his professional life, Raman was an accountant. He was doing his experiments each evening at the Indian Association for Cultivation of Science. Where is that space today? Now, I may be an accountant or historian with a deep interest in science, but the labs in research institutes are inaccessible to me because I don’t pursue a full-time career in science for whatever reason.
At the Science Gallery, we’ve come up with the idea of five accessible laboratories: natural sciences lab, materials lab, food lab, new media lab, and a black box theatre where anyone can experiment with light, sound, data, lasers, augmented reality, and such. We hope these labs create aspiration, curiosity, but also a certain understanding that science is messy, dirty, smelly work. This is to encourage and build the capacity for participation in science that is not dependent on whether you have money or degrees. Of course, there is still much more work to be done in terms of actually bringing people in, but at least this will be a starting point.
Doctoral degree in history of science and technology from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
Started academic career at University of Heidelberg, followed by Georgia Tech-Lorraine, France, Imperial College, London and King’s College, London
Was fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin), and external curator at Science Museum, London
Producer-director of the documentary Cyclotron (2020), which narrates the New York-to-Chandigarh journey of the world’s oldest particle accelerator
The interviewer is an independent journalist based out of Bengaluru.
