Rajesh Kochhar

Indian nationalist leadership of the late 19^th century was in a confused state of mind. It could not decide whether it should challenge the colonial empire’s might and incur its wrath or appeal to its sense of noblesse oblige and ask for small favours. Mahatma Gandhi resolved the dilemma by squarely placing the west on the defensive on ethical grounds and for all times to come. (In fact, Mohandas Gandhi became Mahatma Gandhi precisely when he accomplished this.) Third world countries find themselves in a similar pre-Gandhian dilemma on the important question of intellectual property rights associated with traditional knowledge (TK) of which they are the repositories. Should they individually nit pick or should they collectively take a principled stand. The latter option , desirable as it is , is difficult to exercise , the more so because the concept of noblesse oblige seems to have disappeared from international affairs.

The term third world was coined in 1952 by the French demographer Alfred Sauvy (1898-1990) to denote the economically underdeveloped countries. The First and the seond worlds were then described as an afterthought.Capitalist, industrialized countries constituted the first world, whereas the Soviet communist block represented the second world. The coinage was inspired by the expression third estate which denoted the commoners of France before and during the French revolution as opposed to the priests (first estate) and nobles (second estate). With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the second world has disappeared, even though the term third world continues to retain its original meaning.

We would like to define the three worlds in a connected and physically meaningful way, using the industrial revolution as a marker, with the third world retaining its original composition. In this new scheme, the third world comprises countries whose societies have essentially remained untouched by the industrial revolution. The second world consists of (west European and other) countries which have been transformed through industrial revolution, industrialization or by association, but have retained some memories and sensitivities from the pre-industrial times. The first world comprises a solitary country, USA, which is a social product of post-industrialization era, representing a total break from earlier times. The second world has been influenced by intra-European responses and colonialist experience, while the first world has been fashioned entirely by its conscious and subconscious reaction to the Europe it left behind.

When the world was Euro-centric, it was easy to define what was new. If Europe did not know of it, it did not exist before. In 1738 William Champion was granted a patent in his capacity as “the first European to produce metallic zinc”, even though the process was known to have been brought from east Asia (It originated 2000 years age in Aravalli Hills, Rajasthan, India.) However 100 years previously, in 1608, when Hans Lipperhey applied for a patent on telescope, he was turned down “on the ground that it is evident that several others have knowledge of the invention”. By the same logic, in today’s decentralized world if knowledge is available anywhere, it should not be possible to patent it.

Just as the first, physico-chemical, industrial revolution went hand in hand with European colonial expansion, the second, biotechnological, revolution is being attended on by globalization. The industrial revolution was an entirely self-contained European exercise, though it was facilitated by the subjugation of third-world countries. (If zinc metallurgy had not been imported from Asia, it would have been invented afresh.) But the on-going biotechnological revolution needs the third world. It is the third world’s traditional knowledge in civilizationally vital areas of food and health care that is being molecularized for incorporation into the broad-stream of modern science. This would have been a laudable exercise were it not for the retreat of the state and the weakening of internationalism. No body would have minded enrichment of science if some firms were not getting enriched in the process.

Third world countries are inherently incapable of protecting their TK. They have become aware of its value because of the scientific advancement in the west. Most TK of the world is undocumented. Even in countries like India where it was partially committed to paper under colonial auspices, what is now the written word was not self-contained. It was meant as an aid to a living oral tradition. In any case, ancient documents were not prepared to withstand the scrutiny of a modern-day patent attorney. Nations can be expected to plead their case in a court that is above all of them. A country cannot expect to win a case in the domestic court of another country according to the law laid down by the latter. (In the period following the celebrated cancellation of a turmeric patent on India’s objection more than 200 patents have been granted on turmeric, some to Indian organizations themselves. None has been challenged : most are unchallengeable as US laws stand.)

Patent laws in Europe followed by USA were enacted to deal with mechanical contraptions and to protect and further localized interests. Globalization has changed the rules of the game; and molecularization the game itself. Novelty needs a new definition and a new sensitivity. If traditional knowledge provides the initial clue, mere use of sophisticated instrumentation to “unlock” the chemical secrets of plants should not constitute an inventive step. TK should be viewed as a global heritage, to be protected by the world as a whole. The burden of protecting TK should not fall on the emaciated shoulders of its third-world repositories. If any organization exploits it commercially, it should pay a royalty into a global fund meant for the welfare of the world’s poor.

When the Paris Convention on Industrial Property internationalized patent laws in 1883, they had been in existence for 400 years. Today we must frame global IPR laws for situations for which there is no precedent. These laws should not be petty. They should be enshrined in a framework that is universal by being ethical. In 1733 what is now USA was earnestly appealing to England to grant recognition to Thomas Godfrey, the first ever inventor of sextant. Haughtily, London refused. USA has come a long way since. Now that USA has emerged as the solitary world power, its laws should also evolve. It must set an example for rest of the world by amending its own antiquated and parochial patent laws to truly reflect the spirit of a global world.

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Rajesh Kochhar

So far four genetic Indians have won the Nobel science prize: Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman (awarded 1930), Hargobind Khorana (1968), Subramanya Chandrasekhar ( 1983), and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (2009). Of these only the first one, Raman, was an Indian citizen and the work done was in India. All others acquired US citizenship and worked in the West. While there is pride in the honour bestowed on them, there is also regret that our pleasure is vicarious.

India is still answering questions that were raised by the colonialists 150 years ago. When an Indian did well academically , he was declared to have overcome prejudices of his race and declared a scholar in “ our sense of the term. Times of India editorially saw Ramakrishnan’s Nobel prize as a proof , because proof is needed all the time, that “Indians are no less talented than people elsewhere in the world”.

Raman is the first non-White scientist to win the prize. It would have been better for Indian science if he had missed the prize. (He got it with the skin of his teeth.)This early honour has created such dazzle that India has been blinded to the reality of its pursuit of science.

Raman used to boast the prize winning equipment cost only 200 rupees. (There is some dispute on the exact figure he quoted.)Raman missed the point completely. The main point is not the equipment cost a paltry sum, but that it was easily available in the country. Modern science was still young and its infrastructural demands were modest which they could be met at the level of a college lab. This was true of Raman as well as of the physicist Jagadis Chunder Bose and the chemist Prafulla Chandra Ray before him. Both were professors in Presidency College Calcutta which a century ago ranked among the best equipped academic institutions of the world. High quality original research was a continuation, or a short step ahead, of classroom teaching, as is exemplified by the work of Raman himself, Chandrasekahar, Meghnad Saha and Satyendra Nath Bose.

Science has progressed very rapidly since the second world war. The academic threshold for entering research is much higher than before. In keeping with progress in science, our science teaching at school , college and university levels should have been upgraded. Contrarily it has deteriorated

Basic science has increasingly become a child of high technology. India’s economy and industrial development do not have the intrinsic strength to sustain cutting – edge science. Since the recent economic growth has been driven by property boom and service sectors which are science-less, there is much less interest in science than before.

Indian education system has precipitously been made a part of patronage system. As many as sixteen central universities were opened with the stroke a pen. There have been successful street level agitations for more of them. Their location has been guided by real estate considerations rather than even semblance of an assessment Eleven of them do not even have a building to operate from leave aside a campus. The appointment of all vice-chancellors has been challenged in the Supreme Court. Are these signs of a country aspiring for Nobel prizes for in situ work?

Take the case of a small state as Punjab. Its capital, Chandigarh, has a university and an engineering college of long standing. Punjab already has a functional central post-graduate pharmacy university (NIPER), and a central science university (IISER) . A technical university (IIT) has become operational. On top of it, an all-purpose central university has been sanctioned in a far-off place. Are we talking of institutions of excellence or of cyber cafes and beer bars?

Ramakrishnan published his path-breaking three-dimensional map of ribosome sub-unit in 2000. Western recognition followed immediately. He was made a member of European Molecular Biology Organization in 2002; fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2003; and fellow of National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 2004. Curiously it was not until 2008 that Indian National Science Academy could bring itself to electing Ramakrishnan as a foreign fellow.

We do not have the self-confidence to recognize talent pon our own. We recognize it only when it is certified by the West. And then we deify the certified celebrities. We place them at high pedestals so that we do not have to listen to them, learn from them or put them to any use. We make them into two-dimensional images so that they can be hung on the wall and saluted. (They have not yet reached the statue stage.)

Contrast this with China. Ramakrishnan’s counterpart in physics is Shanghai-born Charles Kuen Kao for whom the prize has come at the fag end of his life. It is however remarkable that he was asked in 1970 to set up electrical engineering department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, of which he subsequently served as vice-chancellor (1987-1996).

Ramakrishnan and before him Amartya Sen while moving from US to UK took a cut in their pay. Quite obviously to them research facilities and ambience mattered more than the pay slip. Indian university faculty and national lab scientists may like to keep this in mind.

If India wishes to become a Nobel prize factory, it will have to see beyond the current fiscal year or the next general election. Lord Rutherford in the 1930s compared biology to stamp collecting. Biology has come a long way since then; it is now a full-fledged lab science. The present and the near future belong to it.

Ramakrishnan’s own career graph is worth studying. He spent four years, 1994-1999, at University of Utah before moving to the Nobel prize factory in Cambridge. Utah is not in competition with Cambridge. Rather it acts as a feeder. Utah’s vice-president for research has made a significant point: “ We do not have the money to hire the people who are already famous. We have to spot the talent and nurture it”.

Here then is a model for India. Set up a Cambridge-type national lab and surround it with Utah - type talent spotters and nurturers.//

Note added 13 october 2009. Also see R. Kochhar: “Some pride, some regret: From Raman to Venkatraman. Tribune , Chandigarh ( Op-ed) !3 Oct. 2009. URL is

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20091013/edit.htm#6

There are two annual exercises associated with Nobel peace prize. While Norway announces the winner in October, India bemoans why Mahatma Gandhi did not win the prize.

If Gandhi’s assassination had been delayed by nine months he might have died a Nobel laureate. Would this have elevated his place in history? It would have been ironical if Gandhi had got as prize money that was earned by selling dynamite.

Gandhi was nominated five times. There were three consecutive nominations in 1937, 1938 and 1939 filed by Western peace groups and Norwegian parliamentarians. The process stood interrupted during 1939-1943 because of the war. Gandhi was again nominated in 1947, this time by Indians including Gobind Ballabh Pant, and finally in 1948 just a few days before his murder.

In 1937 when Gandhi’s name was first proposed, the prize went to an individual, Lord Cecil, founder of International Peace Campaign. After this whenever Gandhi was in the reckoning, the prize was either not given or given to an organization. For a long time the peace prize was a club badge rather than a world honour. The first time it went out of Europe and North America was in 1960 when the president of African National Congress, Albert John Lutuli, was declared the winner. Gandhi would have approved of that.

Sir Winston Churchill who won the Nobel literature prize in 1953 gave a glimpse of his powerful prose in 1930 while describing Gandhi: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.”

In London, Gandhi is said to have been asked what he thought of the Western civilization. Gandhi’s reply was: I think it would be a good idea. The implication was that as things stood the West was not civilized. The story is apocryphal; the said encounter never actually took place. But it is significant that the story gained wide currency and was considered believable.

South Africa-based Mohandas Gandhi, even as late as 1894, was a typical product of English education system haplessly appealing  to the colonial sense of noblesse oblige. Finally he chose to squarely placing the West on the defensive on ethical grounds and for all times to come. (In fact, Mohandas Gandhi became Mahatma Gandhi precisely when he accomplished this.)

Europe of Churchill’s time could not have honoured Gandhi. The West has had to come a long way to recognize Gandhi as the author of Gandhian philosophy. By this time Gandhi was dead.

Gandhi was and is bigger than the Nobel peace prize. If he had been linked with it, the prize would have been enhanced. India has no franchise over Gandhi. India should not regret that Gandhi was not Nobelled. Rather, the West should introspect on its blindness of yesteryears when it was unable to recognize Gandhism.

The award of 2009 Nobel peace prize to Barack Obama  is a new experiment. It is like advance payment for goods to be delivered.

A science Nobel prize  opens up the field for future Nobel prizes. But peace is a goal. If all the Nobel peace prize winners in the past 100 years had actually deserved it , the prize itself should have become redundant by now.

Obama is the best thing that has happened to US and the world at large in a long time.For the sake of humankind one hopes he would succeed.

But at the moment the Nobel peace prize for President Barack Obama looks  more like an honorary doctorate.

Rajesh Kochhar

DIMENSIONS of SCIENCE Lecture on 10 June 2003 at India International Centre, New Delhi

War and pornography have played a significant role in the development of information and communication technology (ICT). Both war and porn are manifestation of baser instincts in man and therefore demand a certain degree of perseverance from their patrons. War, or more correctly the preparation therefor, represents state support to the hilt for creation of a new technology, whereas porn represents select public support during its teething days, paving the way for eventual widespread and varied use.

When a new technological process or product is first introduced or used, it is in response to a felt need. Very soon however it generates a momentum of its own, drawing into its fold new adherents whose needs could not have been anticipated before. History of science and technology provides many examples of this.

Innovator vis-à-vis user

By liberating human enquiry from the constraints of physiology, telescope transformed astronomy (and science). Yet telescope was not invented by an astronomer. More importantly, it could not have been invented by an astronomer. It was a spectacle-maker, already in possession of convex and concave lenses, who combined the two, by accident or otherwise, to create an instrument that could see far. Not surprisingly, the very first use envisaged for telescope was in spotting  enemy ships hours before they became visible to the unaided eye. That was in 1608. Almost four centuries later, Hubble space telescope liberated optical astronomy from the constraints imposed by earth’s atmosphere. Yet again, space telescope was not the first one in space. There were others before it, placed in orbit face down by military for spying on terrestrial targets. Obviously, fear of the enemy is a bigger driving force than love of stars.

It did not take terrorists long to recognize that hiding their messages in soft-porn pictures through internet provides them with a safe and convenient way of keeping in touch with one another. Similarly an underworld don has discovered the virtues of being in jail. State protects him from his blood – thirsty rivals while mobile phone permits him to run his business uninterruptedly.

Combination of live sports commentary and wireless telephony has revitalized Satta trade. Havala operators have also upgraded their modus operendi. They no longer use a currency note expressly torn into two as an identifier, but the innocuous cell phone number. In all these cases, a system developed by others for their own purpose has been put to good use by new entrants. Chillingly, internet has opened entirely new vistas for child abusers who can now form an alliance among themselves and target their victims safely and unobtrusively.

The above examples illustrate a general “law”. The bigger the beneficiary of an innovation, the less their chances of having been its author.

The rather eventful journey of a technological product from its inception till mass use can be broadly understood in the framework of a new model involving three-overlapping stages (ECM model)

ECM model

I. Experimental stage. This stage belongs to the technologists and specialists who create and develop a new product over a period of time to a level that it can be made available to the non-specialist for use.

II. Committed-use stage. This class of user, by virtue of his commitment, remains undaunted by the defects and shortcomings of the new product, gives it vital support in its nascent state and thereby helps its further development to a stage where it can be considered user friendly, and economically viable.

III. Mass-use stage. This stage is characterized by what we may call “Moronification of technology”, whereby a technology is simplified to such an extent that it can be used without application of mind or without any attendant risk. The product is now ready for mass use, which as stated earlier generates its own momentum, and creates its own culture freeing the technology from its previous history.

Colt’s revolver: A case study

We shall now apply the ECM model to the case history of revolver, a major 19^th century technological product invented by Samuel Colt (1813-1862) in USA. Working as a sailor on a ship bound for London and Calcutta and by observing the ship’s wheel, or possibly the windlass, Colt in 1831 came up with the idea of a gun with a revolving cylinder that could fire multiple shots from a single barrel. He first made a crude model in wood and then got prototypes made by a gunsmith. In 1835 he patented his revolver in England and France. Next year he received a US patent and started production. The period 1831-1836 corresponds to the first, Experimental, stage of the model.

The second, Committed-user, stage may be said to last from 1836 to 1873 with major patronage and incentives for improvement coming from the military. An ordinary rifle required time for reloading and therefore could be fired only once or twice in a minute. In the same time however a native American could devastatingly fire 20 arrows. Repeating firearms would be extremely effective against arrows, and the US military did order some from Colt. But since there were not too many native Americans to be shot, the number of orders was small, and the Colt company collapsed.

Colt’s fortunes were revived with the war against Mexico in 1847, when the government placed bulk orders for revolvers and rifles. American civil war, California gold rush, colonization of American west, Crimean war and demand from Europe all brought tremendous prosperity to Colt, and improvements in his death machines. Early guns were very heavy, complicated, “easily fouled up”, and potentially lethal to the shooter. The last defect was remedied in 1873, with the development of the metallic-cartridge revolver, the mainstay of a model ironically called Peacemaker, which soon became not only the standard issue of the US army but also the most popular gun in the west. In the committed use stage, the revolver was aimed at a designated enemy; in its mass-use stage, it could be aimed at friends and strangers also.

Internet

Internet is a child of fear. It was created to withstand a nuclear war. A traditional communication system collects all information at a central control, processes it and then sends it somewhere else. This system would collapse if a nuclear attack destroyed the central control. US Defence department in mid-1960s started funding research to create a computer network without a central control system. The key to the new network was “packet switching”. A dataset was broken into small packets, each labelled with the destination address. Once they arrive at the destination, the packets would be reassembled. It does not matter in what order and by what route a packet reaches its destination. A packet could be sent to an intermediary site. If this site was not working or was processing slowly, the packet would find another route and eventually reach its destination. This internet is based on a principle similar to the old Indic philosophy: Destination is important, not the route. Internet is decentralized by design and inherently anarchic. Neither can its connectivity be thwarted nor the content censored. Therein lie internet’s strengths and risks.

The first network created in 1969 was called ARPAnet, after the funding agency, namely Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 1972, internet e-mail address incorporated the now-familiar @ sign. In January 1983, a new protocol called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol was introduced to handle a large number of hosts in the network. The same year ARPAnet was split into ARPAnet and MILnet, both remaining under Defence department. It is a measure of the role of military in the early years of internet that as many as 68 of the 113 nodes went to MILnet. (ARPAnet would be closed in 1990).

In the early 1980s, a number of large and small specialist networks came up including the one for high-energy physicists. It is this network that created World Wide Web, in 1989, which enables a computer to access information stored elsewhere. Web’s ability to transmit moving and stationary images and sound gave internet a vitality, creators of web or net could never have imagined. Web was thrown open to public in 1991. The term “surfing the net” was coined in 1992, and the net itself was commercialized in 1995.

The period from ARPAnet (1969) to commercialization of web-fortified internet (1995) is then the Experimental stage of our ECM model.

Committed-use stage

(Please note that in the following no moral judgement is made on the website content)

Porn sites were among the very first ones on commercialized net. Sex has always sold, but never so well as on the net. Porners have benefitted from the net, and strengthened it in the process. Porn sites have contributed at three levels: technological innovations; standardization; and lessons for mainstream business.

Since porn sites did not get any support from venture funds, they had to make money and quickly. They acquired top-class hardware and high bandwidths, and went on to hire thousands of highly skilled workers like network engineers, programmers and graphic designers. They gave valuable business to companies like Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics. In a little publicized incident, when a porn portal clandestinely arranged to route calls from a client through more expensive lines, it had the technical expertise of AT&T at its disposal.

To many porn customers who were abashed to visit a traditional sex shop, e-commerce came as a godsend. No wonder porners have been pioneers in e-commerce. They were the first to accept credit cards for on-line payment and to use shopping-cart technology. Porn sites have been the earliest adopters of innovations such as streaming video. Porn-site profits often reach 30%, compared to a paltry 0.2% profit in online stock trading. Getting over their early revulsions, mainstream companies like Disney and Warner Brothers are trying to benefit from technologies and business practices originating from porn services.

In the early years, porn sites accounted for as much as 80% of total e-commerce revenue. The figure has since come down to about 20%, signifying transition from the Committed-use stage to Mass-use stage for the internet.

Mobile internet

In the early 1980s Europe had a number of analog cellular telephone systems, operating within boundaries of different countries, incompatible with one another in equipment and operation. Keeping in mind requirements of a unified Europe, expanded market for each type of equipment, and advantages of economy of scale in 1982, Europe set up a study group called Groupe Special Mobile (GSM) to study and develop a pan-European mobile system. GSM standard was issued and commercial service started mid 1991. The most basic teleservice provided by GSM is telephony. Additionally, a number of data services are also offered. A unique feature of GSM, not found in older analog systems, is the SMS (Short Messaging Service) whereby short alphanumeric messages can be sent. Messages can also be stored in the SIM card for later retrieval. GSM systems now exist on every continent and account for 65% of the world’s mobile networks. Very aptly, GSM now stands for Global System for Mobile communication.

SMS is an example of a peripheral feature that caught on without the knowledge of network operators and went on to become the mainstay of the system. SMS was rather difficult to use. It was left to the young people to master the technique and use the service, developing in the process a whole new economical language of their own, combining letters, numbers and other symbols. While a phone call cost money, SMS was free. Network operators were technically unable to bill pre-pay customers for SMS. The technologically savvy young mobile – owners made use of this loophole to the hilt. It is only after seeing the huge popularity of SMS that the network operators rose to change prepay customers for SMS messages.

Next generation of mobile phones will provide internet connectivity, which means that it will be possible to view pictures and video on the screen of a mobile phone. Operators have paid an exorbitant $ 1 bn as license fees for running 3G mobile services in Europe. Unfortunately for them 3G has miserably failed to repeat the technological success of GSM. Much of the money spent by operators on 3G is already considered unrecoverable. “The only services that are likely to generate the necessary revenues to pay for the licenses will be thoroughly unsavoury ones such as pornography, gambling, and worse”. A great advantage of buying pornography over a mobile network is that billing can be handled by the operator without the subscriber having to submit credit card details over the internet. Many porn groups have signed agreements with operators in Britain and Spain as well as several other European operators for porn-related SMS.

“In new technologies, adult services usually account for 80 per cent of traffic. It has been so with video, the internet and DVD. It is natural to assume it will be the same with mobile internet”, according to CEO of an “adult services” company.

To sum up, baser instincts of man play a major role in the development of science and technology. Sad but true.

Rajesh Kochhar

Invited  talk delivered at XXVII General Assembly of International Astronomical Union  Special Session 4: Astronomy Education between Past and Future, Rio de Janeiro 6 August 2009

A man is wise with the wisdom of his age only,

and ignorant with its ignorance.    -Henry David Thoreau

History is an exercise in constructing the past carried out in the present with an eye on the future. Thus, paradoxical as it may seem , history converts the past into a bridge between the present and the future. As our perception of today and expectations from tomorrow change, our interpretation of yesterday must also accordingly change.

Human beings are an astronomical species. Ever since they learnt to walk upright they have looked at the sky and wondered. The sky has remained the same, but not its meaning. Astronomy is thus simultaneously a state-of-art intellectual enquiry as well as a symbol of the collectivity and continuity of humankind’s endeavours to come to terms with their cosmic environment. This collectivity can be conveniently discussed in terms of a three-phase model comprising (i) propitiatory phase; (ii) negotiatory phase; and (iii) the modern, curiosity-driven, impersonal phase.

To begin with, sky was home to divinities who were to be feared and appeased. As time progressed, human beings felt more secure and became intellectually more alert. Earlier awe made way for curiosity. Sky was now seen as a phenomenon which could be described The knowledge thus gained was employed to renegotiate the equation with celestial bodies. (iii) The third phase nominally began with Copernicus but took off with Galileo. Sky was now the abode of laws of nature which could be discovered and tested. Earlier astronomy had measured angles; now it could ascertain distances. The sky had acquired depth literally as well as figuratively. It is the transition from phase 2 to phase 3 which concerns us here.

Cultural Copernicanism

Post- world war II decades have ushered in an age which we may call the age of Cultural Copernicanism . In analogy with the cosmological principle that the universe has no preferred location or direction, principle of Cultural Copernicanism would assert that no cultural or geographical area or ethnic or social group can be deemed to constitute a superior entity or a benchmark for judging or evaluating others. This principle argues for a Trans-Cultural Civilizational Perspective whereby modern astronomy (or science in general) is seen not as a western brand but as the current phase of human cultural cumulus to which contributions at different times have come from different parts of the world.

This framework however is a recent development. Historiography developed in the long 19^th century consciously projected modern science ( including modern astronomy) as a characteristic produce of western civilization, decoupled from and superior to its antecedents, with the implication that all material and ideological benefits arising from it ( and modern technology) were reserved for its authors.

As a reaction to this, the orientalized east has often tended to view modern astronomy as western astronomy , and sought to defend, protect and reinvent its “own” heritage. This defensive mindset works against the propagation of modern astronomy in many non-western countries.

It also warps their own accounts of their history. Those who act can retract, but those who react continue doing so.

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return. - W.H. Auden

If we wish to create enthusiasm for (modern) astronomy and teach it effectively, especially in geographical areas which have memories of their astronomical past, we must create links to the past and situate modern astronomy in a more extended evolutionary sequence.

Even for researchers, educators and students in astronomically advanced countries, a universal history of astronomy would be professionally beneficial and culturally satisfying. It will bring home the important lesson that at all times, including today, scientific breakthroughs have taken place only when inputs are received from diverse sources.

19th century historiography:Suggested correctives

There are two aspects to be considered: (A) How Europe constructed its own history of astronomy and (B) how it described earlier developments especially in India and the Muslim cultural zone (MCZ). (I am unable to say any thing about developments , e.g., in China.)

Greek science

My own assessment is that science in Europe would have developed exactly the way it did even if Greek science did not exist. This is because of the dynamism created by maritime voyages and the exorbitant profits therefrom. Europe however took its science’s roots back to ancient Greece. And stopped there. It refused to go into the antecedents of Greek science itself . Hellenic and Hellenistic periods were presented as a monolith so that by association Homer and Aristarchus would reinforce each other.

Greek science could arise only after Alexander. His conquests brought Greeks to the older civilizations of Egypt and Iraq, which had large surplus economies, vast geographical extent, higher levels of practical knowledge and technological advancements. These, when combined classical Greece’s intellectual prowess, gave rise to “Greek science”. But it did not suit Europe of the time to give any credit to Africa or Asia.

Terms like Hindu astronomy and Arab astronomy are isolationist and were intended as such. Moreover they are misleading. The word Hindu was not in use in 500 CE. And .as Ibn - Khaldoon pointed out , “ most Muslim scholars both in the religious and in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs”. Unfortunately, these terms continue to be used by sheer force of habit. They should be discarded in favour of purely descriptive terms like Siddhantic astronomy and Zij astronomy.

More generally, serious thought needs to be applied to the vocabulary employed. Words do not have any intrinsic meaning; they carry the meaning given to them. Some terms may appear innocuous to astronomers, but they may carry their own baggage from other area studies.

With reference to earlier epochs, terms like pre-scientific or ascientific astronomy have been employed even in serious literature. In contrast , ethno-astronomy or cultural astronomy may appear more acceptable , but they have their own shortcomings. They appear to be patronizing and an exercise in exoticism. ( All human activity including the modern scientific is cultural)

I have seen the use of term rational astronomy to refer to the modem phase. This seems to suggest that in earlier phases people made a distinction between the rational and the irrational and deliberately chose the irrational!

May be terms like solsticial (equinoctial) astronomy or colure astronomy or cardinal point astronomy can be used, because they are purely descriptive and not tainted by any association.

Incidentally, we routinely use geographical terms like India, China, and Egypt while discussing their antiquity. But an exception is made in case of Iraq which is invariably described in such difficult-to-comprehend terms like Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Chaldea, etc. This tends to decouple modern Iraq from its rich heritage. Why is this so?

Copernicus

Greek science was one of the big bangs for 19^th century Euro-centric historiography; Copernicus was another. Some of the earlier accounts give the impression that he was not a product of his time at all , but was merely  taking sides in the  old dispute between Aristarchus’ heliocentrism and Ptolemy’s geocentrism.

Al-Tusi

The common use of a term like Arabic numerals raises the hackles of Indians who consider it to be a case of mis-branding. (This is true. ( Arabic/Persian call them Hind-se’, from India.) But terms like Arabic numerals and Algorithm, after Al-Khwarizmi, draw attention to an important historical fact , namely, arrival of intellectual inputs from MCZ into Europe.

What did Europe do with these inputs? More specifically, did they go into the making of Copernicus? Whether Al-Tusi deserves to be elevated from a lowly , early 19^th century, footnote to the 21^st century main text needs to engage the attention of present-day scholars, in a non-parochial context.

A universal history of astronomy would transcend patriotisms of all kinds.

Buddhists and Arabs

Arabs were  dismissively told that there role had been no more than as librarians and archivists for preserving  Greek science till Europe was in a position to take its heritage back. And yet, when Indians in their own context pointed out that in earlier times the Buddhists had  worked extensively  on health-related  chemistry , they were told with a straight face that  when their ancient texts mention Buddhist , they probably meant Arabs! Surely Arabs would have liked to hear that. But it was not considered necessary to inform them.

From about 500 CE till Kepler’s time , Indian astronomers were probably the only ones in the world who could calculate an eclipse with any reasonable accuracy. Disdainfully they were told that there was nothing original in their astronomy; it was a tame imitation of the Greeks. Indians did not retort that the only way to build an intellectual tradition is to absorb extant knowledge and build on it. Instead they weakly argued that the Greek borrowing was in astrology and not in astronomy, as if the distinction would have made any sense 2000 years ago.

Indians take pride in the appreciation earned by Indian texts in Baghdad, but are themselves less than liberal in acknowledging the role of Greco-Babylonian inputs around 1^st century CE in revitalizing their Vedic astronomical tradition.

Since racial purity is an absolute no-no now , great emphasis is being placed on cultural purity. It is like discovering therapeutic virtues in distilled water.

Unlike the MCZ, Indian astronomical developments did not impinge Europe directly. The main concern of Siddhantic astronomers was the computation of planetary orbits. In the process they solved many equations which as formal mathematics caught Europe’s interest much later. Should they be the concern of only Indian historians?

History of astronomy functions at two levels. At one level we are interested in tracing the historical trajectory which leads to recent developments. But examination of high points that do not lie on the trajectory is also a legitimate field of enquiry. To put it attractively, if history has its compulsions, it also has its romances.

Thomas Godfrey’s 1730 invention of sextant in Philadelphia a year before Hadley invented it “ independently” the next year in England is an example of romance of history . Similarly European pre-history of telescope before Hans Lippershey’s commercial invention in 1608 is a fascinating subject. This line of enquiry should be extended to include similar episodes from other culture areas as well.

To sum up

Astronomy as a modern scientific discipline stands apart from most others in the sense that iy is collaborative rather than competitive. No person howsoever important, no nation howsoever powerful, no observatory howsoever well equipped is permitted a view of the whole celestial sphere.

It is a significant arrangement by nature that to know where you are located on the earth you must take the help of the sky ( stars/satellites).There is a rather obscure theorem in applied mathematics, known as Lichtenstein’s theorem, which tells you that for a rotating body like the earth the distinction between north and south along with the existence of equator is a mathematical fact , but the distinction between east and west is completely arbitrary.

We are all committed to the world-wide propagation of astronomical sciences. I have argued that to facilitate the task we must construct a universal history of astronomy so that every one feels they have contributed to it in the past and must do in the present and future as well.

Even otherwise an inclusive history is good for the world’s general wellness.

Sunday Times of India, 14 July 1991

Rajesh Kochhar

[This essay reviews Kameshwar C. Wali’s authorized biography of Subramanya Chandrasekhar, titled Chandra. The review was written when Chandrasekhar was still alive. I sent him a copy. His response makes interesting reading. He wrote in a personal letter dated 5 Aug 1991: “It is always interesting to read upon aspects of the book different reviewers select to comment. In this instance, there seems to be systematic difference between the reviewers in the “West” [his quotes]. When the biography came out in paperback, the blurb carried excerpt from this review. Subsequently I published two newspaper articles on Chandrasekhar, which may be seen as companion pieces:

R. Kochhar (1995) Transcending the limits: Chandrasekhar’s stellar contribution. Times of India, 19 Oct.]

R. Kochhar (1999) India-born U.S. astrophysicist. Chandra Observatory: Tribute to a legend. The Tribune, 27 Jul. {Cited in Wikipedia}

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Chandrasekhar symbolises the practice of science at its noblest. A man of integrity, modesty, and exceptionally high standards, he is “the kind of person for whom and through whom the university existed”. His personality, like his mathematics, is self-consistent; there are no kinks, aberrations or loose ends. It is difficult to decide whether his research is an extension of his personality or whether his personality has been mounded by his research.Perhaps there has been a symbiotic relationship between the two.

Chandra’s life story by his compatriot Kameshwar C. Wali, himself a physics professor in the USA, is a labour of love. The biographer has reconstructed Chandra’s life mainly from material supplied by Chandra himself and has added his own comments and notes, at the end, which provide useful background material.

The best part of book starts after the author’s description of Chandra’s life. Entitled ‘Conversation with Chandra’, it describes in Chandra’s own words his thoughts on himself, his colleagues and his times. The book comes alive in these pages through Chandra’s sensitivity and honesty. Of special interest to Indian readers will be his views on men and matters in India.

This is not a scientific biography. As the author says, “it is biography of an individual whom I admired from a distance for many years.” It provides a splendid insight into the working of a great contemporary mind, and can be read with profit by lay persons for enlightenment, and by scientists for introspection.

Chandra - as he is universally known – wrote his first research paper in 1929 when he was an 18-year-old under -graduate at Presidency College, Madras. His uninterrupted research career, spanning six decades and three continents, has been marked by mathematical rigor and elegance. The award of a Nobel Prize in 1983 made him into science’s show boy and he found this rather unbecoming.

Chandra come of age a a time when western education had taken root in India; when modern physics was being founded in Europe; when the Imperial government in India has developed a mild sense of noblesse oblige; and when nationalism was assert in in self.

In 1930, when he was travelling from Delhi to Madras by first class (his father worked for the Railways), an English memsahib loudly expressed her disgust at having to share the compartment with a native, but added that at least he was in European dress. Chandra promptly left the compartment and returned in the typical south Indian dress of shirt and veshti.

Then again, Chandra once missed classes to go and listen to Jawaharlal Nehru who was visiting Madras. The principal, shocked to find Chandra among the “culprits”, exclaimed: ‘you too!’ But this did not prevent the college from creating a special scholarship to enable their brilliant student to go to England. Not surprisingly while the government did not hesitate to create a special scholarship to send Chandra to Cambridge for his PhD it would not create a job for him in India when he wanted to return.

In 1933 Chandra got his PhD and also the Fellowship of Trinity College which, 16 years previously, had been held by another Indian, Srinivasa Ramanujam. He now returned to the important question: what happens to a star once it is has burnt all its nuclear fuel? The leading lights of the day claimed that they already knew the answer: All stars finally retired as earth-sized white dwarfs.

Chandra was the first one to apply the theory of special relativity to understand the behaviour of stars. In his 1930 voyage out of India, he had done preliminary work on the topic and to remove all doubts about the results, he now got down to working out a complete, rigorous mathematical theory without taking any short-cuts.

Chandra found that all stars do not end up as white dwarfs, only low mass ones do. As to what happens to bigger stars, Chandra’s answer must rank as the understatement of the century: “. . . one is left speculating on other possibilities”. No white dwarf can be bigger than the Chandrasekhar mass limite, that is 1.4 times the mass of the sun. The “other possibilities” are the neutron star and the black hole, as even a school student knows today.

In January 1935, Chandra presented his results at the London meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was hoping to be warmly received by the astronomical community for his path-breaking research, little realising what he was in for. Sir Arthur Eddington, the most influential astronomer of the time, stood up to present his own results and tore Chandra to pieces, not by pointing out mistakes in his analysis but by ridiculing him, not by logic but by rhetoric. Sir Arthur did not believe in black holes. With a haughtiness one associates with Viceroys rather than scientists, he declared, “I think there should be a law of nature to prevent a star from behaving in this absurd manner.”

Sir Arthur was blinded by his self-righteousness; the others by the glare of his self-righteousness; the others by the glare of his personality. It was not that one hypothesis was competing with another.It was an exact mathematical theory that was pitted against a refusal to listen. A desperate Chandra tried to enlist support form among the international community of astronomers and physicists. There was however no one who had the time or the courage to sit down with paper and pencil and see through the hollowness of Eddington’s arguments. After four long frustrating years Chandra gave up.

Having pitted himself against the dons of Cambridge and Oxford, young Chandra had no chance of a job in Britain or even Europe. The United States of America offered to take him in: “Out there, we don’t believe in Eddington”. Chandra left Sir Arthur’s England as well as the white dwarfs and headed for the University of Chicago in 1937 where he has remained ever since. He was the first non-white on the faculty of the university, which was, he puts it, “30 years ahead of its time”.

A lesser man would have been traumatized by the experience. But Chandra confronted the situation stoically and raarranged his thoughts. For one, he decided to never become an Eddington himself. He would retain a “certain modesty of approach”, and an open-mindedness. (In 1984, when I wrote to Chandra pointing out a mistake in one of his papers, his reply was warm and prompt; “Publish your results”) The second lesson Chandra learnt from the episode was even more momentous. He would never again try to canvass support for his work. He would let it speak for itself. Mathematics would be his only ally, and time his judge.

In a book that is now a classic, Chandra put down what he knew about white dwarfs and closed the topic. In his never-ending “quest for perspectives”, he would take up a new topic, work on it for a number of years, write a monograph, and move on.

All his work carries a uniform stamp of scholarship. And his later work tends to be the last word on the subject, unlike his early work on the white dwarfs, which was the first word. The first word took a long time to sink in. Chandra has won a number of prestigious awards, but for a long time there was no reference to his white dwarf work. In fact it was only in 1974, 40 years after the work, that a prize mentioned this work.

The belated Nobel Prize in 1983 tried to set things right. His citation refers to the work on white dwarfs “accomplished when he was in his 20s”. As if to compress the intervening time, the citation also mentions two pieces of later work on the relativistic instability of stars done in the ’60s.

It is futile to speculate what course Chandra’s life would have taken if the had won Sir Arthur’s support in 1935. There is, however, no doubt that Sir Arthur’s obduracy delayed the development of the subject by a generation. The recent work on neutron stars and black holes would certainly have been done in the late 30s and 40s as a natural extension of Chandra’s pioneering work.

Chandra has been good for American science. He would drive 100 miles, week after week, to teach a class of two American-Chinese students, both of whom went on to win the 1957 Nobel Prize. He has trained many generations of students and researchers, and taken extraordinary pains to set the standards for astronomical research journals.

Chandra has always kept in touch with India. It was his efforts that brought to light Srinivasa Ramanujan’s passport photograph, the basis for all later photographs, etchings and sculpture. As Chandra says, finding Ramanujan’s photograph has been one of his important discoveries.

From an Indian point of view, it is unfortunate that the country of his birth was not the theatre of his activities. Unlike Har Gobind Khurana who required sophisticated laboratories for his work, all Chandra has ever needed is a library and students. It is not that he did not try, or that India didn’t. He tried before independence, and India afterwards.

The first jog offer to Chandra came from Sir C.V. Raman, Chandra’s father’s younger brother and the director of the Tatas-sponsored Indian Institute of Science (IIS) Bangalore. He was offered an assistant professorship. Chandra’s father’s response was electric: “ My advice is keep out of his orbit.” Having an overbearing uncle in the family was enough of strain. Having him as boss would have been impossible. Not only did Chandra not want a job in his uncle’s institute, he also did not wand it through his influence.

In 1935 Chandra was interested in a mathematics professorship at Government College, Lahore (his birth place). But he withdrew when he came to know about the candidacy of S. Chowla, a personal friend “whose work and abilities I greatly admire”.

Chandra’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1944 (for which he was supported by Eddington) enhanced his job prospects in India. He was offered the directorship of the Kodaikanal Observatory, for which he was ill equipped. He could not do observational work and did not want to do administrative work. He asked for a comparable post where he would do his theoretical research. Nothing came of it, just as his earlier attempts to find reader’s post at a university had yielded nothing. While sending Chandra to Cambridge was good for Cambridge, creating a job for him in India would have been good for the Indians but Imperial Government was not interested.

A positive offer came from Dr Homi Bhabha in 1951 when he was building the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Bombay. Chandra was tempted, but not strongly enough. Soon after, he became a US citizen, and conditions changed drastically. In 1961 the CSIR, on instructions from Jawaharlal Nehru, offered him a national professorship, provided he relinquished his foreign citizenship.

Again, in 1963 when Dr Bhabha died, the government, forgetting that Chandra was no longer an Indian citizen, offered him the chairmanship of the Atomic Energy Commission. Of all the offers Chandra received, the most attractive was Dr Bhabha’s Looking back, he now feels that perhaps he should have accepted it, but at the time he was not quite sure whether he would fit in.

Chandra had had a ringside view of Indian science, first as Sir Raman’s nephew and then in his own right, and he did not like what he saw. The Trimurti of Indian physics: Raman, Meghnad Saha, and S.N. Bose, especially the first two, were always at each other’s throats. K.S. Krishnan, who worked with Raman but did not share the Noble Prize, was Chandra’s friend. (Chandra later obtained a copy of his diary for the Royal Society.)

Chandra liked Dr Bhabha and his cosmopolitanism but was dismayed by his autocracy. Once when Wolfgang Pauli and other foreign scientists came to India, they were transported in a bus. Dr Bhabha followed them in his limousine. An enraged Wolfgang Pauli left the country the next day.

Chandra did not want administrative power, but was not sure whether he would be academically free if he did not occupy the top slot himself. Raman’s advice was blunt: “Don’t play second fiddle”. The very fact that the concept of “first or second fiddle” existed put Chandra off.

The Chandra of British India had to leave his country for the sake of science. And the tragedy of independent India lies in the fact that if a Chandra, who wants academic freedom without administrative power or interference, were to appear today, he would still have to go into exile.

The Tribune , Chandigarh, 7 January 1999

Rajesh Kochhar

The name Jantar Mantar, sounding like hocus-pocus, would have pained Raja Sawai Jai Singh. The quaintly shaped buildings at Delhi and Jaipur that would have intrigued many a passer-by are in fact scientific instruments improvised and built, at least as wax models, by Jai Singh himself in the 1720s and 1730s.

Jai Singh was not a sovereign ruler. He was a high-level mansabdar (official) in the Mughal administration, paid for his services by the allotment of his vatan (native) jagir retrospectively called Jaipur and other transferable jagirs. He was a key player in the politics and intrigue of his turbulent times. He was also a skilled astronomer. Astronomy was his passion and, one suspects, his refuge. The Delhi observatory commemorates, in a way, the restoration of order if not leadership under emperor Muhammed Shah. Jaipur with its observatory symbolises Jai Singh’s dreams of making personal peace with the menacing Mahrattas and carving out a bigger niche for himself. Jai Singh was thwarted in his political ambitions. It now turns out that history’s verdict on his astronomical enterprise may not be any the less harsh.

Historically, the most outstanding feature of Jai Singh’s astronomy is its anachronism. Though he came on the scene a hundred years after Galileo and 50 years after the setting up of the Paris and Greenwich observatories, his role model was the 15th century king-astronomer Ulugh Beg, the more revered for being a collateral ancestor of the Mughal dynasty. Jai Singh came to know about the telescope, but did not view it as a revolutionary break with the past that is was. To him the modern astronomers were Europe’s Ulugh Begs with whom he wished to interact and compare notes.

In 1732, after the more- or- less completion of his masonry observatories Jai Singh received a valuable gift from the king of Portugal. It was a copy of the 1702 astronomical tables prepared in Latin at Paris by Phillipe de La Hire. Jai Singh brought out his own set of tables, or Zij. In his preface dedicating it to the emperor, Jai Singh declared that he had found that La Hire’s tables did not agree with his own observation and that his own tables were an attempt to “arrive as near as possible at the truth”.

Contemporaneous accounts cast aspersion on the validity of Jai Singh’s claims to originality.A French astronomer, Joseph Dubois, employed at the Jaipur observatory, was asked to prepare a copy of La Hire’s tables. In his preface to the tables, also written in Latin, he noted that Jai Singh had got La Hire’s tables “transcribed in his own script” and that he had “ordered all his astronomers to make calculations by them”.

A more explicit statement came from the Jesuit father Francis Pons who spent some years in Jaipur. He wrote in 1740 that “The Tables of M. de La Hire, under the name of this Prince, will be in use every where”.

The actual comparison of Jai Singh’s Zij with La Hire’s tables had to wait for another 250 years. An astronomical table is an intricate mix of observations, available data and tedious calculations. If two tables are independently prepared, their entries will be unrelated to each other. Recently, a British historian of astronomy, Raymond Mercier, has shown that the entries in the two tables are not un-correlated.

Take a number quoted by La Hire for the position of, say , the sun or moon. Now carry out a two-step mathematical transformation: change the epoch from 1 January 1 to 20 February 1719, the nominal date of ascension of Muhammad Shah to the throne. In the second step, change the longitude from that of Paris to the longitude of Jaipur. You obtain the corresponding number listed in Jai Singh’s Zij!! Obviously, as a homage to Jai Singh’s own pet city, the calculations were carried out for Jaipur; but as a concession to the empire’s city they were listed as if the actual observations had been made at Delhi.

Jai Singh died in 1743. The Delhi observatory was ransacked by the Jat leader Suraj Mal’s son Javahar Singh. Perhaps the most telling comment on Jai Singh’s anachronistic astronomical efforts comes from the rather disconcerting fact that his grandson at Jaipur used the ancestral 400 kg brass astrolabe for target practice.

The story can be summed up simply: A part rajah-part scientist creates a scientific facility with great fanfare. But then takes the easy way out and borrows data from abroad. His successors abandon the facility altogether, creating a ruin.

What makes the story rather unsettling is that it does not merely describe the India of the early 18th century but perhaps also the India of the later 20th century.

Rajesh Kochhar

The 70th birthday celebration of the noted physicist Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974) in Calcutta was witness to an unusual event. One of the invited speakers in the function was Debendra Mohan Bose (1885-1975) the nephew of the famed Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858-1937) and a well known physicist. He was the grand old man of Calcutta science. In the course of his speech he referred to the 1927 international conference at Como in Italy which he had attended when S N Bose interrupted him by pointing out that D M Bose had gone on an invitation that was actually meant for him. The interrupted by the mild-mannered and usually reticent Satyen Bose caused a flutter, especially because the reference was to a 37-year old incident.

In the year of S N Bose’s birth centenary it is of historical interest to recount what led to this confusion. At the time of the Como conference, S N Bose was a professor at Dacca University where he had moved in 1921. He wrote his famous paper on ‘Planck’s constant. ‘The Como conference, held during 11-20 September 1927, had been billed as a ‘meeting of exceptional interest’ in commemoration of the first centenary of the death of Volta. At this international congress of physics, 14 countries were represented by about 60 invited participant, including 11 Noble laureates. India was represented by two scientists: D M Bose and M N Saha. But, it turned out at the meeting that the organizers had intended to invite S N Bose, the co-founder of Bose-Einstein statistics.

When S N Bose wrote his paper providing statistical mechanical basis for Planck’s radiation law, he very boldly decided to send is to Albert Einstein. In the covering letter dated 4 June 1924, Bose requested Einstein to evaluate his paper, and if found worthy, arrange for its translation into German and publication in the Zeitschrift fuer Physik. Einstein promptly acknowledged Bose’s latter, translated the paper himself, and sent it to the journal with a laudatory note at the end. The paper was received by the journal on 2 July 1924 and published in the August issue.

Einstein remarked in his note that “The method used here gives also the quantum theory of an ideal gas, as I shall show else where” and Einstein’s paper ‘Quantum theory of monatomic ideal gas’ appeared in print on 20 September 1924. Bose’s epoch making work and Einstein’s prompt follow-up gave rise to Bose-Einstein statistics (now shortened to Bose statistics) which applies to elementary particles that are indistinguishable from each other and these, in turn, are termed bosons. Unwittingly, Einstein applied the ‘indistinguishability principle of bosons to the two Boses themselves: S N Bose who corresponded with him and D M Bose who spent time at Berlin.

Bose’s covering letter to Einstein had been signed as S N Bose. However, the paper sent to the Zeitschrift by Einstein is credited simply to Bose (without initials), Dacca University, India. Einstein compounds the mistake by his carelessness in his own follow-up paper. Here he refers to Bose’s epoch-making work but attributes it to Hrn (Mr) D Bose. So what must have happened is when the Como conference decided to invite S N Bose, they went by Einstein’s paper rather than S N Bose’s own. Accordingly the invitation went to D M Bose who made his appearance at Como.

It is not known in which archive the original invitation exists. It is, however, mildly amusing to note that truth was revealed not by the beneficiary D M Bose, but by the victim S N Bose whose next visit abroad was to occur only 27 years later, in July 1954.