HISTORICAL NOTE
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 94, NO. 6, 25 MARCH 2008 813
Science as a symbol of new nationhood: India and the International
Geophysical Year 1957–58
Rajesh Kochhar
The International Geophysical Year 1957–58 (IGY) enabled India to join the world club of science as an
equal, modernize its existing institutions, support basic sciences unapologetically, and prepare ground for
new initiatives directed towards nation-building and national prestige. More specifically, India’s space programme
emerged from the IGY exposure. At the same time, it accentuated the dependence of Indian science
on the West for assessment and encouragement.
The International Geophysical Year
1957–58 (IGY) was the largest international
field research programme ever undertaken.
Although the programme was
funded by various national governments,
the management and organization was
left to the scientists. IGY was overseen
by the International Council of Scientific
Unions (ICSU), a non-governmental
organization representing both national
scientific bodies and international scientific
unions. To act as the governing
body for all IGY activities, a Special
Committee for the IGY (known by its
French acronym, CSAGI) was formed in
October 1952, under the chairmanship of
Sydney Chapman. It was enlarged in
March 1953 to include representatives
from the constituent unions. IGY proper
lasted for 18 months from 1 July 1957 to
31 December 1958. Its activities were
continued till 31 December 1959, under
the heading International Geophysical
Cooperation. Eventually 64 countries
participated in the IGY.
India with its vast size, extant institutions
and scientific manpower turned out
to be an important and enthusiastic participant.
IGY has been called ‘a poor
man’s programme’1, in the sense that its
scientific and technological requirements
were quite modest and easily met by the
industrial and educational India of the
1950s. (Subsequently as world technologies
developed at a fast pace and basic
sciences became more a child of high
technology, India fell behind sharply.)
Historical background
The British could not have built and
maintained an empire in India without
the help of modern science and the natives.
This brought Indians into contact with
modern science. The empire-supported
science in India was utilitarian and primarily
field science. It was thus latitudedriven
(unlike the IT-facilitated Western
interest in India today, which is longitude-
driven).
European men of science employed in
the 19th century India were the highest
paid anywhere in the world. In the course
of time, Indians were trained and employed
at lower levels. Inherent in the
British rule over India was the slow and
increasingly reluctant training of the Indians
to eventually overthrow that rule.
Indo-European linguistic commonality,
then interpreted in racial terms, ‘placed
in the hands of the British Government a
powerful instrument of connexion and
conciliation’ with the (upper-caste) Hindus,
who in the course of time began
turning Indo-Europeanism to their advantage.
From 1870s onwards, the Indian
leadership started demanding that it was
the bounden duty of their English brethren
to impart them (Indians) science education
and raise them in the scale of
nations2–4.
Clamour for basic science education
was the strongest in Bengal. The science
laboratories of the government-run Presidency
College, Calcutta, were among
the best equipped in the world in their
time5. Its two professors, the physicist
Jagadis Chunder Bose (1858–1937) and
the chemist Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–
1944), who began their work in the
1890s, were the world’s first non-White
mainstream modern scientists. Similarly,
Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman’s (1888–
1970) 1930 Nobel Physics Prize was the
first one to go outside the Western world.
At the time of the outbreak of the Second
World War, there were two mutually
exclusive streams in Indian science: routine
science under the government, and
nationalism-inspired research activity by
Indians in the universities. The twain met
during the war. ‘It was a foregone conclusion
that the British would leave India
after the war. (India became free on 15
August 1947.) Indians were already in
important positions in government as
well as in industry and science. Though
still working under British auspices, the
Indians sought to dovetail their country’s
post-independence interests into the British
exigencies of war’6.
Since the government needed Indian
help in its war efforts, a purely advisory
Board of Scientific and Industrial
Research was set up in 1940. It was a
landmark, ‘because it was the first time
official funding was systematically
forthcoming for research being carried
out by individuals and organizations outside
the government system’6. The Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research
(CSIR) established in 1942 ‘was seen
merely as a clearing house’. It is noteworthy
that Norah Richards’ authorized
1947 biography of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar
(1894–1955) who headed both the
Board and the Council, does not mention
CSIR at all.
Indian science at the time of IGY
Throughout the world, all available scientific
expertise was mobilized by the
governments for their war efforts. But as
soon as the war needs were over, the universities
were re-energized. Not so in
India. Unfortunately what was an outgoing
foreign government’s temporary
compulsion became the abiding philosophy
of a new nation. Independent India
opted for government science laboratories
at the cost of universities. CSIR was
given a high profile and priority by
Jawaharlal Nehru, who made the Prime
Minister the ex-officio president of the
CSIR.
The foundation stones of five national
laboratories were laid between December
1945 and April 1947. National Physical
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CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 94, NO. 6, 25 MARCH 2008 814
Laboratory (NPL), New Delhi was
opened in 1950, with an internationally
respected physicist K. S. Krishnan (1898–
1961) as its director. Krishnan was the
Vice-President of International Union of
Pure and Applied Physics during 1951–57
and of ICSU during 1955–58. (Chapman
is wrong in stating that Krishnan was the
ICSU Vice-President for six years1.)
A radio propagation unit was established
at NPL in 1954 by Ashesh Prasad
Mitra (1927–2007). A doctoral student of
the pioneering atmospheric scientist,
Sisir Kumar Mitra (1889–1963) at Calcutta
University, A. P. Mitra went for a
year to CSIRO, Sydney in 1951 and
thence to Pennsylvania State University,
USA, where he spent two years as an assistant
Visiting Professor and Associate
Professor in the ionospheric lab. His unit
at NPL became the hub for ionospheric
research under the IGY.
In 1945 (or 1944) the Indian Government
appointed a committee under
Meghnad Saha (1893–1956) for the
[post-war] ‘planning of Astronomy and
Astrophysics in India’7. Though nothing
substantial came out of its efforts, it does
show the national concern for scientific
upgradation in the newly independent
nation. The Solar Physics Observatory at
Kodaikanal, set up in 1899, which lay
just half a degree north of the magnetic
equator, was provided with a new magnetic
observatory in 1948 (the earlier one
set up in 1923 had long been dysfunctional).
In 1951, an ionospheric division
was added8. In 1954, the Uttar Pradesh
State Observatory was established, and
moved the following year to Naini Tal9.
This came up on the initiative of Sampurnanand,
then a Cabinet Minister and
later Chief Minister.
In the meantime, two private laboratories
had made a modest beginning. Homi
Bhabha (1906–66) established the Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research at
Bombay in 1945 while Vikram Sarabhai
(1919–71) set up the Physical Research
Laboratory (PRL) at Ahmedabad in 1947.
It was headed by K. R. Ramanathan
(1893–1984) who had just retired from
the India Meteorological Department
(IMD). He served as the President of
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
from 1954 to 1957. Though
privately owned in a legal sense, these
laboratories were generously supported
by the Government. While Bhabha or his
institute had no role in the IGY, Sarabhai
and PRL were actively involved.
Among the Government science organizations
IMD, established in 1875, and
All India Radio (AIR), founded 1930,
had, and still have, a vast network of field
stations. They were particularly useful
and active during the IGY.
Preparations
India was thus ready for the IGY. It is
not that India had not participated in international
science before. Bose and Ray
as well as others had been deputed to attend
many conferences abroad, but there
was an understandable defensiveness and
consciousness about their country’s slave
status in their participation. S. K. Mitra
was a participant in the International
Polar Year 1932–33, but in a strictly individual
capacity. But here was the new
nation country with its whole apparatus
ready to help its band of scientists to become
an equal partner in the new world
of science.
Indian association with the IGY began
early enough. Two Indians, T. V. Ramamurthy
(NPL) and Sarabhai were among
the 12 observers drawn from nine countries
who attended the first meeting of
the enlarged CSAGI in Brussels in June–
July 1953 to plan the IGY programmes.
Similarly, Ramanathan participated in
some of the later meetings of the CSAGI.
The Indian national committee for IGY
was formed in 1955 with Krishnan as the
President and Mitra as the Secretary.
S. K. Mitra, Ramanathan and Sarabhai
were members of the Committee. There
were others drawn from various Government
scientific departments. The
Committee formed 14 sub-committees to
look after specific disciplines, ranging
from aurora to world days.
IGY’s prime mover, the American science
administrator Lloyd Berkner, met
the Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in
January 1957 and was assured all help.
On 12 June 1957, a fortnight before the
formal inauguration of the IGY, Krishnan
gave a talk titled ‘The International
Geophysical Year and its significance’
on AIR. The type-written text with corrections
in Krishnan’s hand is in the custody
of his grandson, V. R. Thiruvady
(Bangalore). (I thank D. C. V. Mallik,
Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore,
for making the text available to
me.) It represents an effort to educate the
initiated. A typical product of the historiography
of the times, it begins with Columbus
and then moves on to discuss
Halley and Gauss, before delivering a
class-room lecture on the science underlying
IGY, ‘undoubtedly the most extensive
programme that has ever been undertaken
by an international organization’.
Krishnan went on to point out that ‘All
the various scientific organizations in the
country, the observatories, the Universities,
the Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, the scientific departments
in the Ministry of Education and Scientific
Research, Information and Broadcasting,
Communications and Defence
are participating in the programme’. He
concluded thus: ‘We are looking forward
to a period of intense scientific activity,
and we hope it will help us to solve at
least some of the outstanding problems
in Geophysics’.
Source material
Regrettably, the extant source material is
extremely limited. No minutes of any
committee are available nor any old correspondence
or photographs. A film on
the IGY was made by AIR but it is not
traceable. Mitra wrote a popular account
for The Statesman, Calcutta, but it is not
readily accessible. Whatever is available
in print deals with the scientific output
rather than the history. On the occasion
of Krishnan’s 60th birthday in 1958, a
special issue of the JSIR10 was brought
out on ‘work carried out under the auspices
of the Indian National Committee
for the IGY 1957–1958’. A small 1985
monograph, Indian IGY Programme:
Achievements by A. P. Mitra, provides
useful but mostly technical information.
On 18 July 2007 Mitra kindly recorded
in an interview with me his impressions
of those days, which give us some feel
for the times. (Mitra passed away on 3
September 2007.) I will draw attention to
some of the scientific highlights and lowlights,
but try to place the scientific outcome
in a wider perspective.
Scientific activity
In the 19th century, India’s geographical
vastness was put to good use by measuring
a great meridional arc. India’s size,
coupled with the fact that the magnetic
equator passes through its southern tip,
made the country an asset for the IGY.
India already had good facilities for
ionospheric, geomagnetic and meteorological
studies. They could now be upgraded
and expanded.
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CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 94, NO. 6, 25 MARCH 2008 815
The whole of the 75°E longitude zone
was monitored for ionospheric studies by
India from 11 field stations, spread over
20° of latitude (8°29′–28°38′N). A new
observatory was set up at Thiruvananthapuram,
which lay as much south of the
magnetic equator as Kodaikanal was north
(half a degree). IMD took up the task of
developing an ozone sonde with great enthusiasm
and excitement11. In retrospect,
the pleasure of making one’s own instruments
was a passing phase. Since India
could not keep pace with the technological
and industrial developments elsewhere,
its laboratories soon became dependent on
non-cutting-edge purchases from abroad.
During IGY, the Kodaikanal Observatory
‘intensified and extended’ its ‘normal
routine programme’. Along with the
Nizamiah Observatory it observed solar
flares, prominences, etc. and dutifully sent
data to the world data centres as well as
All India Meteorological Broadcasting
Centre10. The IGY provided an opportunity
for the much-needed modernization
of the Kodaikanal Observatory, which at
the time stood where John Evershed had
left it half a century ago. Three new instruments
were commissioned1, but with
mixed results.
A large solar tunnel telescope with an
object glass of 38 cm aperture and 36 m
focus was ordered from the well-known
English firm, Sir Howard Grubb Parsons.
The installation was done by the observatory
astronomers and technicians
themselves, without any help from the
manufacturer. The telescope has been the
mainstay of Kodaikanal ever since. For
the Lyot coronagraph and the Lyot heliograph,
it was decided to import only the
essential parts and rig the other parts in
the observatory itself. In retrospect, it
would have been better to buy the instrument
in its entirety, because the observatory
failed to make these two facilities
operational.
In those days, the best coronagraph
objectives were those made by the associates
of the late Bernard Lyot, who were
‘busy astronomers and optical experts,
not commercial instrument-makers’. To
get the 20 cm aperture, 3 m focus objective
made from Paris, ‘personal influences
and contacts’ had to be used. Only
the telescope was ordered. As the then
Director of the observatory has recorded,
the equatorial mount ‘has been improvised
by adapting components of disused
old instruments and the optical accessories
have been designed and built in the
observatory’s machine-shop and laboratories
with the help of optical components
already available in the observatory’8.
Similarly, a hydrogen-alpha Lyot filter,
along with a 15 cm aperture telescope
objective and ‘one or two small optical
components’, were purchased from Paris,
while the ‘whole design and the construction
of all mechanical parts for the
complete heliograph’ were carried out at
the observatory8. The coronagraph and
the heliograph were never really used.
Soon thereafter, with the arrival of M. K.
V. Bappu as Director in 1960, the focus
shifted to night-time astronomy from the
new facility at Kavalur, Tamil Nadu.
Non-successes
Before proceeding further, let us briefly
take note of non-successes. On the express
suggestion of Chapman, a programme
was launched to visually look for the
rather low-latitude aurorae. But none was
sighted. More seriously, longitude and
latitude determination under the Survey
of India remained more or less a nonstarter,
because the Survey was used to
keeping confidential the results of its
work, although this itself was not public.
Although Antarctica was a part of the
IGY programme, it did not interest India
then. It was only in 1981 that India, under
the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,
began its Antarctica programme12.
Mitra11 lists a total of 265 publications
as IGY publications. The entries are of
uneven quality. Even publications as late
as 1966 are mentioned. Some of them
must be repetitive, being conference papers.
It is for scientometric experts to analyse
the available publication data. But, even
taking the lists at face value, some interesting
conclusions can be drawn. Ionospheric
studies rank first output-wise
with 62% of the listed publications, cosmic
rays a distant second (11%) followed
by geomagnetism (8%) and meteorology
(7%).
Space programme
While most of the success that attended
Indian efforts was incremental, an entirely
new vista was opened by the IGY.
India was introduced to the new field of
satellites. Naini Tal Observatory was one
of the 12 world stations equipped with a
Baker-Nunn camera by the Smithsonian
Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), to optically
track artificial earth satellites.
This part of the IGY programme was
overseen by the director of Naini Tal Observatory,
Bappu (1927–1982), who was
educated at Hyderabad and sent to
Harvard Observatory on a Government
scholarship for his Ph D13. Bappu’s Harvard
connection was a great help because
the SAO’s new dynamic director, Fred
Whipple was also from Harvard14. Unlike
the other satellite-tracking stations that
were under SAO’s control, the Indian
station would be ‘under the complete jurisdiction
of local astronomers’.
The non-scientific dimension of the
project was lost on none. Krishnan rather
indelicately and to the embarrassment of
the Soviet representatives remarked publicly
that ‘it was wonderful that the US
was taking the world into confidence on
the satellite program so that all nations
could cooperate’. He said further that it
was a shame that the satellite program of
the USSR was so secret and he hoped
they might follow the example of the US.
On its part, USA was sensitive that the
project should be viewed as international
and not American. Whipple wrote that ‘the
scientific advantages would be marked
for both of our great countries’14. The
importance that the US attached to satellite
tracking programme under the IGY
can be gauged from the fact that New
York Times carried a news item datelined
Naini Tal, where the reporter made it a
point to mention that both Soviet and
American satellites would be tracked and
the information ‘will become part of the
treasury of scientific data’ of the IGY15.
The Baker-Nunn camera was shipped
to India in March 1958, and the first track
recorded in September 1958. For the first
few years an observer from SAO worked
with the Naini Tal staff. The project continued
well beyond the IGY, i.e. till 1976.
Thanks to the project, the geographical
location of the camera was recorded to an
accuracy of better than 10 m, so much so
that ‘the Survey of India tied its triangulation
network to this benchmark’16.
It will be no exaggeration to say that
the IGY experience paved the way for the
Indian space programme under Sarabhai.
He had already been interested in observational
studies of the impact of solar activity
on cosmic rays. The IGY exposure
helped Sarabhai expand his horizons. In
1962, an Indian National Committee for
Space Research was set up. The very
next year there came up the Equatorial
Rocket Launching Station at Thumba near
HISTORICAL NOTE
CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 94, NO. 6, 25 MARCH 2008 816
Thiruvananthapuram. The Indian Space
Research Organization was established in
1969, and India’s first satellite, Aryabhata,
named after the 6th century Indian
astronomer, was launched in 1975, and
tracked at Naini Tal from the facility set
up during the IGY.
Arnold Frutkin, who was the director
of NASA’s Office of International Programmes
from 1959 onwards, has an interesting
story to tell (www.jsc.nasa.gov/
history/oral_histories/). USA was planning
the Satellite Instructional Television
Experiment (SITE), which could broadcast
into home-receivers, provided the
host country set up some simple equipment.
NASA wished to have a big country
like India participate. The India desk
in the state department however declined
to approach India, because India had earlier
refused permission to Voice of
America to set up its broadcasting stations.
The fact that SITE was not propaganda
but science cut no ice with the officials.
Frutkin then decided to take matters into
his own hand. Frutkin knew Sarabhai
well as he had been dealing with Sarabhai
on sounding rocket programmes. He persuaded
Sarabhai not only to arrange for
India’s participation, but also to write as
if the initiative was coming from India itself.
The programme was such a great
success from the Indian point of view that
the country unsuccessfully tried to get the
availability of the US satellite extended
for another year. India then decided to
make use of commercial satellites and eventually
developed its own satellite network
as part of the INSAT programme.
General remarks
Mitra, in his recorded conversation made
some interesting points. Enthusiasm for
the IGY was not confined to the scientists
alone. It permeated the officialdom
also and that too at all levels. It is not
that instructions had to be obtained from
higher authorities for obedience down
the line. A postcard containing scientific
data from Taiwan was intercepted and
destroyed by the Bombay Customs in accordance
with the prevailing rules. The
Customs was however decent enough to
inform the IGY secretariat. The matter
was taken up with the Ministry of External
Affairs and scientific correspondence
exempted from censor. An American scientist
set out from Hawaii for India, only
to discover in New York that he needed
an Indian visa. It was an easy matter for
Mitra to persuade the Indian embassy in
the US to immediately issue a visa.
The IGY also had a rather negative influence.
Although India’s tryst with
modern scientific research began more
than a century ago, it has never been
self-assessing. It has depended on the
West for encouragement and recognition.
This may have been understandable during
the Colonial period, but the internationality
of the IGY gave a new lease of
life to this attitude. Indian choice of research
problems has often been dictated
by the availability of post-doctoral positions
in the West, especially in USA, and
the possibilities of an invitation for a
conference or a visiting position. At least
in the years immediately after independence,
the role of science in nationbuilding
was recognized. Now, 60% of
Indian GDP comes from the services sector,
which is science less. As the Indian
economy becomes more and more derivative,
so does Indian science. India does
not seem to need science anymore.
The greatest asset India had at the time
was a band of young energetic scientists
ready to work hard and make the programme
a success for the sake of science
and their own career. As Mitra recalled:
‘That was a good time to be a young scientist
in India’. IGY provided an opportunity
to Indian scientists not only to build
international contacts, but also to come
to know one another. Also, the image of
science and scientists got enhanced in the
eyes of the administration and the nation
in general.
At the time of the IGY, the Indian nation
was young and so were its science and
scientists; in the sense that its technological
and engineering requirements were
rather modest. Fifty years later, things
are not quite the same for the International
Heliophysical Year (IHY). There
are hardly any young scientists in the country.
Also, science is now a child of high
technology. If India is to make even a
partial success of the IHY, some of the spirit
of the bygone days will have to be revived.
1. Mitra, A. P., Indian IGY Programme:
Achievements, Indian National Science
Academy, New Delhi, 1985.
2. Kochhar, R. K., Curr. Sci., 1992, 63,
689–684.
3. Kochhar, R. K., Curr. Sci., 1993, 64, 55–
62.
4. Kochhar, R., Prof. R. C. Mishra Memorial
Lecture at the 67th Indian History
Congress, New Delhi, 2007.
5. Bose, J. C., In Acharya J. C. Bose – A
Scientist and a Dreamer, Vol. 4 (ed.
Bhattacharyya, P.), Bose Institute, Calcutta,
1913, Reprinted 1997, p. 32.
6. Kochhar, R., In Sir Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar
FRS: A Biographical Study of
India’s Eminent Scientist (ed. Norah
Richards), New edn, NISTADS, New
Delhi, 2004.
7. Saha, M. N., Post-war plan astronomical
and astrophysical observatories in India
(Government of India), 1946. This report
does not name any author. The committee
was headed by Saha.
8. Das, A. K., Modernization of the Astrophysical
Observatory Kodaikanal, India
Meteorological Department: New Delhi,
1960. This booklet is not paginated. Curiously,
it does not mention IGY at all.
Das was the director during 1946–60.
9. Kochhar, R. and Narlikar, J., Astronomy
in India: A Perspective, Indian National
Science Academy, New Delhi, 1995.
10. J. Sci. Ind. Res. (Suppl.), 1958, 17A.
11. Sreedharan, C. R., Curr. Sci., 2001, 81,
1129–1132.
12. Walawalker, M. G., Curr. Sci., 2005, 88,
684–685.
13. Kochhar, R. K. and Menon, M. G. K.,
Bull. Astron. Soc. India, 1982, 10, 275–
279.
14. Muir-Harmony, T., Paper presented at
History of Science Society meeting,
Vancouver, 2006.
15. Rosenthal, A. M., New York Times, 6
April 1958.
16. Sinvhal, S. D., Bull. Astron. Soc. India,
2006, 34, 65–81.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. This is a slightly
revised version of a talk delivered at ‘Making
science global: Reconsidering the social and
intellectual implications of the International
Polar and Geophysical Years’, at Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, DC, 31 October–1
November. 2007. The work has been partially
supported by a research grant from Indian
National Science Academy’s History of Science
Division. I thank Teasel Muir-Harmony for
giving me a copy of her lecture text as well as a
New York Times, 1958 report from Naini Tal.
Rajesh Kochhar is in the National Institute
of Pharmaceutical Education and Research,
Sector 67, Mohali 160 062, India.
e-mail: [email protected]
