PAST PRESENT
A gift to itself
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
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The Indian Institute of Science needs to establish a centre for the study of humanities to make its pursuit of knowledge more holistic.
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In the best universities, research in the sciences must relate to nature and to society.
As explained in my last column, in November 1898, Jamsetji Tata requested Swami Vivekananda to write a “fiery pamphlet” advocating the establishment of a new science institute in India. The Swami was otherwise preoccupied; however, after his death, the idea was revived by his Anglo-Irish disciple, Sister Nivedita. Hearing that the Tatas had acquired land in Bangalore for the new Institute, Nivedita wrote to her friend, the Scottish ecologist and town planner Patrick Geddes, for advice on how the promoters of the project should proceeed. Geddes wrote the good Sister five letters, which were published in an Indian newspaper, and later consolidated in a pamphlet entitled “On Universities in Europe and in India, and on a Needed Type of Research Institute, Geographical and Social.”
The pamphlet was published by the National Press in Madras in 1904. Copies may still exist in that city, but I read it in the National Library of Scotland, where it rests amidst a vast collection of Patrick Geddes’s papers. The letters begin with a magisterial survey of the formation of universities in different countries and time periods. Writing to Nivedita, Geddes remarked that “it is at present one of your many educational misfortunes in India that you only know the acute insularity of Oxford and Cambridge when you get outside the examination madness of London”. Insisting on “the necessary and increasing internationalism of science”, he pointed out that British institutions, which had lost “touch with the Continent and with America”, were “not wide enough to inspire India, which must in this respect be as free and as eclectic as Japan”.
A new model
As for the new Institute in Bangalore, argued Geddes, it must look more to France rather than to England. The French universities had developed first-rate departments of physics, chemistry and botany; at the same time, they were becoming “truly regional”, by working out the relation of each university to the geology, natural history, and anthropology of the province in which it was located. Geddes was of the view that this regional emphasis was very relevant to India. For, “France — a country of small agriculturalists, of artists, and intellectuals — is in each of these ways peculiarly analogous to India — much more so than Britain. And her example, therefore, ought to be studied by Indian educational organisers in the fullest possible way”.
A concrete proposal Geddes had for the Institute was for it to start what he termed “A School of Regional Survey”. This would locate the venture in Bangalore more firmly in its surroundings, by studying the social life and economic occupations of the people of the province. Culture and society would thus be investigated in the context of geography. To “create one such Institute of Regional Survey”, wrote Geddes, “one such centre of geographical and social observation, of record and interpretation, could not but be of immediate scientific and educational value, and even before long, of economical value also; while it would throw an ever-increasing light upon these further requirements of each city and its region — indeed of India as a whole”.
One does not know whether Geddes’s pamphlet reached Jamsetji Tata. In any case, Tata died in May 1905. When the Indian Institute of Science was established four years later, there was no school of regional studies associated with it. There was, however, a Department of Economics and Social Science, which existed in a desultory way for a few years, before being given a quiet burial.
A lacuna
As I noted in my last column, the Indian Institute of Science has consistently maintained high academic standards since its inception. It has been a model and inspiration for later initiatives in scientific research and teaching, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology. But if one is to make a criticism of this outstanding institution, it would be that its pursuit of knowledge has not been holistic enough. It has done excellent work in all branches of science and technology. At the same time, it has neglected the study of the social sciences and the humanities. In this respect it has been unlike its Western counterparts, such as Stanford University or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example. These institutions are also known for their contributions to scientific and technical research, yet they have also had high-quality departments of economics, political science, anthropology, and history.
In the best universities, as Patrick Geddes noted, research in the sciences must relate to nature and to society. Departments of physics and engineering apart, they should have space also for centres “of geographical and social observation”, and perhaps also of historical and cultural studies. For all the marvellous work it has done down the decades, the process of knowledge creation in the Indian Institute of Science remains somewhat one-sided. (Its founder, Jamsetji Tata, had hoped for “the cultivation of sciences — natural and humanistic”). The distortions of the Indian educational system, where Arts is forever opposed to Science, have unfortunately been reproduced in our finest centre of learning and scholarship.
In his now forgotten pamphlet, Patrick Geddes had argued that the “modern specialist’s skill” needed to be humanised by a deeper acquaintance with history and geography, poetry and philosophy. I think the call is compelling and relevant still. To establish and make active a proper centre of humanistic studies would, in this centenary year, be the Indian Institute of Science’s most appropriate gift to itself.
ramguha@hotmail.com
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