MIT-trained swadeshis: MIT and Indian Nationalism, 1880-1947

Osiris

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 212-230

  Bassett, Ross ^a  

^a NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 70450248653     PISSN: 03697827     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/605976     Document Type: Article

References (106)

1. The author constructed this database, as part of a larger project on the history of Indians who went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the twentieth century, by going through MIT commencement programs and picking out every graduate who listed a hometown in India. The programs are available at the MIT Institute Archives under the primary title Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Graduation Exercises.
2. One can see this in almost any survey of modern Indian history, such as Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of India, 2nd ed. (New York, 2006);
3. Judith M. Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1994)
4. and Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy, 2nd ed. (New Delhi, 2004).
5. The role of elites in the making and unmaking of colonial India has been a particular theme of the "Cambridge School," whose leading figure in recent years has been C. A. Bayly. His works include Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, UK, 1988)
6. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: Northern Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, UK, 1983).
7. A ummary and critique of this work is given in Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, N.J., 2001), 303-13
8. Inevitably and rightly, recent Indian historiography has lessened the focus on elites. The thinking behind this article owes much to the work of Charles S. Maier, particularly his Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 19-77.
9. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, N.J., 1999), 178.
10. Other works that focus on the technology and the colonial state include the essays in Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfers to India, 1700-1947, . Roy McLeod and Deepak Kumar (New Delhi, 1995);
11. David Gilmartin, "Scientifi c Empire and Imperial Science: Colonialism and Irrigation Technology in the Indus Basin," Journal of Asian Studies 53 (Nov. 1994): 1127-49;
12. Daniel R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940 (New York, 1988).
13. Rostow's most complete formulation of his work was W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, a Non-Communist Manifesto (New York, 1960). The study of modernization theory is becoming alarmingly close to reaching the large-scale industry stage itself. Work includes Michael Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, Mass., 2006);
14. David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, and Michael E. Latham, eds., Staging Growth: Modernization, Development, and the Global Cold War (Amherst, Mass., 2003);
15. Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore, 2004);
16. Nicole Sackley, "Passage to Modernity: American Social Scientists, India, and the Pursuit of Development, 1945-1961" (PhD diss., Princeton Univ., 2004). Ironically, Adas's chapter critiquing modernization theory, "Imposing Modernity," with his own reductionist single focus and lack of nuance, replicates some of the very features that Adas fi nds objectionable about modernization theory. The chapter is full of straw fi gures, generic "ideologues," "modernization theorists," and "development specialists." Adas's work practically grants modernization theory agency in and of itself, ignoring the complex mixture of motives and interests that drive most human activity.
17. As of 2007, roughly two-thirds of India's IT business was done with the United States. Nasscom, Strategic Review 2007, Executive Summary, http: // www.nasscom.in / upload / 51054 / Executive%20 Summary.pdf (accessed 5 May 2008).
18. The importance of NRIs to India's identity can be seen by spending a few minutes with an Indian newspaper. Some representative articles that have appeared in the Times of India include: Chidanand Rajghatta, "Nine Indians in Elite US Science Academy," Times of India, 8 May 2003, http: // timesofindia.indiatimes.com / cms.dll / html / uncomp / articleshow?msid= 45781586 (accessed 23 June 2008); and Rajghatta, "IIT Madras Alumnus is MIT Dean," Times of India, 15 June 2007, http: // timesofi ndia.indiatimes.com / World / The United States / IIT Madras alumnus is MIT dean / articleshow / 2124324.cms (accessed 26 Sept. 2008)
19. A typical case of an Indian educated in one of India's engineering colleges is described in Prakash Tandon's memoir, Punjabi Century. Tandon's father, Ram Das, went to Roorkee, then joined the Irrigation Department of the Punjab government. English engineers held the higher-level positions, while the senior Tandon was consigned to the lower ranks. Prakash Tandon, Punjabi Century: 1857-1947 (Berkeley, Calif., 1968).
20. See also Arun Kumar, "Colonial Requirements and Engineering Education: The Public Works Department, 1847-1947," in Technology and the Raj: Western Technology and Technical Transfers to India, 1700-1947, ed. Roy MacLeod and Deepak Kumar (New Delhi, 1995), 216-34
21. Headrick, Tentacles of Progress (cit. n. 3), 304-45.
22. Ian C. Petrie, "Village Visions: Science and Technology in the Bengal Countryside, c. 1860-1947" (PhD diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2004), 226-37.
23. Quoted in Samuel C. Prescott, When M.I.T. Was "Boston Tech" (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 332.
24. Ibid. Samuel C. Prescott, When M.I.T. Was "Boston Tech" (1954), 3-127;
25. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President's Report for the Year Ending September 30, 1875, 203;
26. Class of '84, Forty-Fifth Anniversary Booklet (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), 1
27. Technology Review 1 (April 1899): 245. Given the fact that over the long term Asia would be MIT's most important hinterland for foreign students, it was appropriate that the first foreign student and the first group of foreign students both came from Asia.
28. Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal: 1903-1908 (New Delhi, 1973);
29. Metcalf and Metcalf, Concise History of India (cit. n. 2), 153-58;
30. Manu Goswami, "From Swadeshi to Swaraj: Nation, Economy, Territory in Colonial South Asia, 1870-1907," Comparative Studies in Society and History 40 (1998): 609-36
31. ; Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago, 2004), 242-76. Swadeshi is a Sanskrit term meaning "of one's own country."
32. Amartya Sen, "The Indian Identity," in The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and Identity (New York, 2005), 337. On Tilak,
33. see Stanley A. Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the Making of Modern India (Delhi, 1961).
34. Paisa Fund, Silver Jubilee Number (Poona, India, 1935), 17-23;
35. Dwijendra Tripathi, The Oxford History of Indian Business (New Delhi, 2004), 158.
36. Paisa Fund, Silver Jubilee Number (cit. n. 11);
37. G. P. Ogale, "Glass Industry in India," Bulletin of the American Ceramic Society 1 (Nov. 1922): 296.
38. On efforts by the British to integrate Indians into offi cial positions, see Brown, Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy (cit. n. 2), 144-50. Information about Krishna Gupta is given in his obituary in The Times of London, 30 March 1926, 19. A visit of Gupta's to the United States is documented in "People Met in Hotel Lobbies," Washington Post, 10 June 1907, 6. The MIT Institute Archives considers Gupta the fi rst Indian to have received a degree from MIT. (I did not fi nd his name in the graduation program or in the corporation records of those awarded degrees.) Birendra Chandra Gupta, Pathfi nder File, India, Institute Archives, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. (hereafter cited as MIT Institute Archives). His later visit to the United States is documented in "No Rebellion In India at Present, But-," Boston Globe, 22 Oct. 1922, E3.
39. M. D. Parekh, interview by author, 20 June 2008, Mumbai, India. Further information on Parekh is included in J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part 2, 1752-1900 (Cambridge, UK, 1953), 5:19.15.
40. Parekh, interview (cit. n. 14).
41. J. M. Keynes, "Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924," in Memorials of Alfred Marshall, ed. A.C. Pigou (London, 1925), 51. Marshall's lecturing to students in Parekh's curriculum is asserted by J. Cox, deputy keeper of University Archives, Cambridge University. Cox letter to author, 8 July 2008.
42. Marshall to [B.B. Mukerji?], 22 Oct. 1910, in The Correspondence of Alfred Marshall, Economist, ed. John K. Whitaker (Cambridge, UK, 1996), 3:268-9.
43. Marshall to [B.B. Mukerji?], 22 Oct. 1910 (cit. n. 17); Marshall to Manohar Lal, 28 Jan. 1909, Pigou, Memorials of Alfred Marshall (cit. n. 16), 457.
44. Martin J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 (Cambridge, UK, 1981).
45. Quoted in James Phinney Munroe, A Life of Francis Amasa Walker (New York, 1923), 264. Marshall's visit to America is described in Peter Groenewegen, A Soaring Eagle: Alfred Marshall, 1842-1924 (Aldershot, UK, 1995), 193-203.
46. Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics, 9th ed. (London, 1961), 209-10. On Marshall's mathematical background and use of mathematics,
47. see Groenewegen, A Soaring Eagle (cit. n. 20), 91-94, 412-13.
48. "Two Hindoos Here," Washington Post, 17 July 1893, 6. Documentation for Parekh's entry into the United States was found searching the ellisisland.org database using the search term "Parekh." See http: // www.ellisisland.org / search / passRecord.asp?MID=06161316900145053280&LNM= PA REKH&PLNM=PAREKH&last kind=0&TOWN=null&SHIP=null&RF= 2&pID=103190080012 (accessed 23 Sept. 2008).
49. Bhavnagar Chemical Works Vartej, Golden Jubilee Souvenir, 1910-1960; Report on the Administration of the Bhavnagar State for the Year 1928-1929 (Bhavnagar, 1930), 44, India Offi ce Records, British Library, London; Somerset Playne, Indian States: A Biographical, Historical, and Administrative Survey (London, 1922), 386. Parekh, interview (cit. n. 14).
50. Gandhi's stay in Jetpur in January 1915, where he is said to have been "[p]ut up at Devchadbhai Parekh's," is documented in C. D. Dalal, Gandhi: 1915-1948; A Detailed Chronology (New Delhi, 1971), 1. The letter in which Gandhi talked about Parekh's joining him in South Africa is M. K. Gandhi to D. B. Shukla, 8 Nov. 1902, The Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http: // www.gandhiserve.org / cwmg / VOL003.PDF (accessed 28 Sept. 2008).
51. Mohandas Gandhi to Devchand Parekh, 5 May 1921, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http: // www.gandhiserve.org / cwmg / VOL023.PDF (accessed 21 Sept. 2008). Khadi, homespun and home-woven cloth, became one of the foundations of Gandhi's movement in the 1920s. Lisa Trivedi, Clothing Gandhi's Nation: Homespun and Modern India (Bloomington, Ind., 2007).
52. "To Kathiawaris," 12 April 1925, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL031.PDF (accessed 21 Sept. 2008).
53. "Reminiscences of Kathiawar-II," 8 March 1925, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL030.PDF (accessed 28 Sept. 2008).
54. Shah's wedding and his association with the Vidyapith is documented in Dalal, Gandhi, 54 (cit. n.)
55. The history of the Vidyapith is given on its Web site, http: // www.gujaratvidyapith.org / history.htm (accessed 28 Sept. 2008). Shah's imprisonment is documented in "Technology Graduates in Prison in India for Anti-British Activities," The Tech, 13 May 1932, 1, 5; and MIT, Twenty-Fifth Reunion, Class of '29 (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 60-61. Strikes at Tata Iron and Steel as part of the "Quit India" movement are documented in Vinay Bahl, The Making of the Indian Working Class: The Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Co., 1880-1946 (New Delhi, 1995), 358-63. Shah's son, Anant Shah, asserted that his father had Gandhi's approval to go to MIT. Anant Shah, interview with author, 29 July 2008, by telephone.
56. Parekh, interview (cit. n. 14).
57. Devchand Parekh also sent two daughters to Boston University, where they earned master's degrees in the 1930s. Chanduben Parekh, "Acculturation in Marriage Institutions of India" (master's thesis, Boston Univ., 1938);
58. Kamuben Valabhadas Parekh, "The Infl uence of Racial Prejudice in American Life Today" (master's thesis, Boston Univ., 1938).
59. "Notes," from Young India, 5 Sept. 1929, reprinted in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http: // www.gandhiserve.org / cwmg / VOL047.PDF (accessed 28 Sept. 2008); Mohandas Gandhi to Hiralal Shah, 12 April 1932, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http: // www.gandhiserve .org / cwmg / VOL055.PDF (accessed 28 Sept. 2008). Further information has been provided by Shah's grandson Anand Pandya, in various emails and meetings.
60. Barbara N. Ramusack, The Indian Princes and Their States (Cambridge, UK, 2004);
61. Manu Bhagavan, Sovereign Spheres: Princes, Education and Empire in Colonial India (Oxford, 2003).
62. L. M. Krishnan, untitled memoir (epilogue, dated 10 Feb. 1997), in author's possession, 104-5. Independent evidence of students from Bhavnagar being funded by the state comes from B. V. Bhoota, unpublished memoir, 7 July 1997 (in author's possession); and
63. Sriram Shastry, "Nautam Bhagwanlal Bhatt (1909-2005)," Current Science 89, 10 Sept. 2005, 895.
64. The following account is based on R. S. Bhatt, "Anant Pandya: A Biographical Sketch," in Dr. Anant Pandya: Commemoration Volume, ed. Lily Pandya (np, 1955), 1-13;
65. Upendra J. Bhatt, "Beloved Brother, Intimate Friend, Brilliant Contemporary," in ibid., 25-42
66. ; Kiran Bhatt, interview by author, 16 Feb. 2007, by telephone; and numerous discussions and emails with Anand Pandya, Anant Pandya's son.
67. R. S. Bhatt, "Anant Pandya," 2-3;
68. Upendra Bhatt, "Beloved Brother," 33-4. (Both cit. n. 34.)
69. Upendra Bhatt, "Beloved Brother" (cit. n. 34), 36-37.
70. Anant Pandya to Frances Siegel, 25 Oct. 1935, folder 7, box 3, Frances Siegel Papers, SC 149, Radcliffe College Archives, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.;
71. R. S. Bhatt, "Anant Pandya" (cit. n. 34), 4-5.
72. R. S. Bhatt, "Anant Pandya" (cit. n. 34), 6;
73. Upendra Bhatt, "Beloved Brother" (cit. n. 34), 38
74. ; Anant Pandya, "Education for the Engineering Industry," Proceedings of the Indian Science Congress 29 (1942): 347-74.
75. Information on Kaka Kalelkar is provided in Madho Prasad, A Gandhian Patriarch: A Political and Spiritual Biography of Kaka Kalelkar (Bombay, 1965), 355-64. Prasad gives evidence that the senior Kalelkar read Marshall's Principles of Economics (cit. n. 21).
76. B. D. Kalelkar, "A Study of Intake Manifold Design, with Special Emphasis on the Distribution Characteristics of a Six-Cylinder Engine Equipped with a Twin-Carburetor Layout" (PhD diss., Cornell Univ., 1944),
77. unpaginated front matter. Further details of the Salt March are provided in Rajmohan Gandhi, Gandhi: The Man, His People, and the Empire (Berkeley, Calif., 2008), 308-11.
78. B. D. Kalelkar, "Potter: Through the Pot's Eyes," in Incidents of Gandhiji's Life, ed. Chandrashankar Shukla (Bombay, 1949), 99-100.
79. M. K. Gandhi, 5 July 1940, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL078.PDF (accessed 27 Sept. 2008). Support from Birla is asserted in Kalelkar, "A Study of Intake Manifold Design" (cit. n. 40).
80. Gandhi to Bal D. Kalelkar, 3 Nov. 1944, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL085.PDF (accessed 27 Sept. 2008).
81. Kalelkar, "A Study of Intake Manifold Design" (cit. n. 40).
82. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984);
83. Roger Chartier, "Texts, Printing, Readings," in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), 154-75.
84. A. V. Hill, Scientifi c Research in India (London, 1945), 29-30.
85. Ibid. A. V. Hill, Scientific Research in India (London, 1945), 30.
86. "Progress in Reconstruction Plans for India," Times of India, 15 Sept. 1944, 1; "Report of the Selection Board Overseas Scholarships, 1945," 2 V / 27 / 864 / 8, India Office Records, British Library, London.
87. Committee of Stabilization of Enrollment, "Report on Foreign Students, to be presented to the Faculty on April 13, 1945," MIT Faculty Records, AC 001, MIT Institute Archives
88. ; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, President's Report, October 1945, 90. Out of fear that an increase in foreign students would squeeze out returning GIs and reshape the character of the institute, the faculty voted to place a quota of 300 on the number of international students the institute would accept. 50
89. Kim Patrick Sebaly, "The Assistance of Four Nations in the Establishment of the Indian Institutes of Technology, 1945-1970" (PhD diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1972), 12-28;
90. Central Bureau of Education, India, Development of Higher Technical Institutions in India (Interim Report of the Sarker Committee), Feb. 1946.
91. Development of Higher Technical Institutions in India (cit. n. 50), 1-2; Parekh, interview (cit. n. 14).
92. Hill, Scientifi c Research in India (cit. n. 46), 7.
93. For data on Indian students in the United States, I have used Federal Security Agency, Offi ce of Education, Annual Report 1948, 524;
94. Robert C. Story, Residence and Migration of College Students, 1949-50, Offi ce of Education, Misc. No. 14. For data from 1950 onward, I have used the annual reports of the Institute of International Education, Open Doors (New York).
95. For Indian students in the United Kingdom in 1947, I have used Yearbook of Commonwealth Universities, 1948 (London, 1948), 1002-3. Further data on Indian students in the United Kingdom comes from subsequent volumes of the same serial.
96. Parekh, interview (cit. n. 14); Shastry, "Nautam Bhagwanlal Bhatt," 895 (cit. n. 33); R. S. Bhatt, "Anant Pandya" (cit. n. 34), 1, 6-13.
97. Program, Eleventh Convention of MIT Alumni Association (1968), 7, folder "Bombay," box 54, Collection AC224, MIT Institute Archives; Parekh, interview (cit. n. 14).
98. Kumar, Aug. 1952 (in Gujarati), in author's possession. I thank Anand Pandya, son of Anant Pandya, for providing me with a copy of this magazine. Many of the articles also appeared (in English) in Dr. Anant Pandya: Commemoration Volume (cit. n. 34). I thank Anand Pandya for providing me with a copy of this volume.
99. Kirit Parikh, interview with author, 11 June 2008, New Delhi. Although I was aware of the Kumar tribute to Pandya, Parikh brought it up without prompting by me. As of 2008, Parikh is a member of the Indian Planning Commission.
100. By the late 1950s, the Indian student population had grown to approximately 60 (out of approximately 6,000 total students). In the late 1960s, it was approximately 100 (out of approximately 8,000 total students). These data are from MIT's President's Report (available online at http: // libraries.mit .edu / archives / mithistory / presidents-reports.html).
101. Although proving this statement is beyond the scope of this paper, an example of how it happened can be seen in the case of Aditya Birla. Aditya Birla, born in 1943, was the grandson of G. D. Birla, the man who was the head of the Birla business empire and had funded Kalelkar to go to MIT. Aditya was seen by the Birla family as the likely heir to run the Birla business empire. When Birla went to college, the family sent him, not to an IIT, not to Cambridge, Oxford, or Harvard, but to MIT. Birla received a degree in chemical engineering and became the leader of the Birla empire and one of the most important business leaders in independent India. Minhaz Merchant, Aditya Vikram Birla: A Biography (New Delhi, 1997). My general statement about the social backgrounds of Indians graduates of MIT is based on dozens of interviews I have conducted with them.
102. Adas, Dominance by Design (cit. n. 4). Daniel Headrick has made a similar critique. Daniel R. Headrick, "Dominance by Design," Journal of World History 18 (March 2007): 108-10.
103. Rabindranath Tagore, Letters to a Friend (New York, 1929), 136. The work of Amartya Sen drew my attention to this quotation. Sen, Development as Freedom (New York, 1999), 242. For Rathindranath's time at the University of Illinois, see "History of the Tagore Festival," http: // tagore.business .uiuc.edu / history.html (accessed 6 May 2008).
104. Correa, an Indian of Goan ancestry, but not Portuguese, is by any standard the most important Indian architect and urban planner of the post-1947 period. Charles Correa, Charles Correa (Bombay, 1996);
105. Jon Lang, A Concise History of Modern Architecture in India (Delhi, 2002).
106. Kanu R. Gandhi, "Theoretical and Experimental Study of Kinematic Characteristics of Subtalar Joint in the Human Foot" (master's thesis, MIT, 1963). Kanu Gandhi is identifi ed as the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi in "Grandson of Gandhi Weds," New York Times, 5 Oct. 1961, 34; "Cambridge Residents," Washington Post, 18 Oct. 1961, B15.