CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVI

SEER-SCIENTIST

THAT THE WESTERN impact energised the Indian mind into new and fresh forms of activity is borne out by the social, cultural and political movements in nineteenth-century India. Even the attempt to reform the religious life of the people was inspired more by Western ideas than by anything else. Broad and catholic in their aims, as they appeared to be, these movements as such were not therefore wholly Indian in their origin. Neither could they be said to have followed, all through, the lifeline of India's historic evolution sustained and motived by her all-embracing spirituality. Nevertheless, the contact with Western ideas modernised the mind of India, opened up its possibilities of expansion, and impelled it to go within itself, get at its own true nature, and make a reassessment of values.

This in-look of the Indian mind, so induced, easily called up before itself the greatness, the unrivalled superiority of the core of her culture and civilisation. And when Sri Ramakrishna burst upon the intellectual world and dwarfed its self-inflated stature, the proud heads bent low before the objective proofs of his spiritual power and were, besides, convinced of the spiritual potentials in the race consciousness. Barring a few blind imitators of the West, who remained as they were, the thinking sections felt themselves halted in their course and retraced their steps. Happily for India, before it was too late, Sri Ramakrishna did the God-appointed work at a single stroke, so to say. Of the two-fold alien conquest of the country, political and cultural, he undid the latter and to that extent undermined the former. Later history will show that just as spiritual power has liberated India from her cultural subjection, spiritual power again will liberate her from her political subjection.

Sri Ramakrishna, one in his consciousness with the Supreme, would use the power of the Supreme Sakti or the Divine Mother as the dynamics of his spiritual work. He invoked the Mother's aid and the Mother responded, just as She did when Ramprosad invoked her aid, and Rammohun was born. This time also a number of her worthy sons came to birth. They were, each in his way, builders of a New India within the old. Sri Ramakrishna's vivid realisations reawakened in the consciousness of his people—for long centuries worshippers of the Sakti—the dormant divine force and the chosen ones became its direct receptacles and started the Mother's work for India and for the world. And as if to facilitate their work, while these advanced souls were growing into their

manhood and preparing themselves for their life-work, Sri Ramakrishna was deepening and universalising his spiritual realisations, and in particular, infusing them into those who, because of his influence, changed their Western outlook and became ardent believers in the light and truth of the Mother. Keshubchandra and especially Vivekananda, as seen before, are the most glorious historic examples of this transformation.

This was how modern India, freed from Western taint, received her first touch of the Spirit. How this change acted on the subsequent movement of national awakening has been already referred to. What is of particular importance was that the mind of the race, so long drifting away from its spiritual centre—first, in the period of decline immediately before the coming of the Europeans, and next, when the onslaught of the West disrupted her life and culture—now veered round to it and took its proper bearings. But the return of the Indian mind into its deeper self has been inevitably a somewhat long process.

Resurgent India must mean an India reawakened to her soul and making fresh and vigorous efforts to rebuild her life and culture in new forms reflecting the innate genius of the race, the characteristic turn of its mind, the light of its soul in touch with the Divine Sakti. That which hastened this process hastened therefore India's resurgence.

Sri Ramakrishna's mission was to turn India back to herself and put her on her own path of progress and self-fulfilment. The march began, her mind energised by the Western contact, and reinforced and made confident by Sri Ramakrishna's powerful realisations; minds with an intuitive bent began to open to the light of her soul and saw in it the truths that had been seen by her ancient seers, and preserved in her soul for their rediscovery and utilisation in the future. To the vision of one of her chosen sons in modern times came one such truth, the truth of 'the Unity of Life'—a great truth at once for the service and for the advancement of Science; for India, a step towards her national and cultural, and even spiritual progress.

Acharya Jagadischandra Basu revisioned the Upanishadic truth: 'This whole universe, all that reacts, is born of a life-force and is quivering with a touch of animation.' His demonstration to the naked eye of this universal animation proved how the mind of modern India's seer-scientist recovered its native intuitive faculty and how it used this faculty for manufacturing out of simple ordinary things scientific instruments of extreme delicacy and precision with which to prove the truths of his discoveries, for the scientific mind of the modern man would accept nothing as true unless made perceptible by the senses. This was a victory of the all-embracing spirituality of India over the exclusive materialism of the West. It was a pointer, too, to what science would do in future—to discover the truth and light that pervade and govern the universe, and the ways in which they reveal themselves as external phenomena.

This is the significance of Jagadischandra Basu not only as a pioneer of science in modem India but as a founder of the Indian spirit in science, which is indeed its spiritual basis and which has its importance for the future. Jagadischandra is thus the first Indian scientist to use, as he himself said, 'the combination of the ancient introspective and the modern advanced experimental methods', to demonstrate 'the universal livingness of matter', or, as Sri Aurobindo would say, 'the omnipresence of Life in Matter', which in the beginning European scientists refused to accept, but later accepted, when, much to their amazement it was demonstrated as a visible fact.

This 'introspective method' was for Jagadischandra the ancient Indian Vedantic method of knowledge by identity. Speaking about how his country could develop this method, or to be more precise, how he developed it he said : 'India by her habit of mind and inherited gifts handed down from generation to generation, is specially fitted to make great contributions in furtherance of knowledge. The burning Indian imagination which can extort new order out of a mass of apparently contradictory facts, can also be held in check by the habit of concentration; it is this restraint which confers the power to hold the mind in pursuit of truth in infinite patience. The true laboratory is the mind, where, behind all illusions, we catch glimpses of truth. In order to discover the life-mechanism in the interior of the tree, one has to become the tree, and feel the throbbings of its beating heart. This inner vision, has, however, to be frequently tested by results of experimentation.'

Jagadischandra was led to his discoveries of the common life-mechanism of plants and animals by a few other previous experiments on electromagnetic waves which were equally original and fundamental. But did he derive his interest in science from his contact with the West ? Possibly he felt the impulsion while attending lectures in the University of Cambridge. And the fact must also be admitted that the experimental methods as prevalent now are wholly European in origin. But the possibility is also there that the scientific bent of his mind was a racial inheritance of which he was made conscious by the Sakti who guides the evolution of India and who found in him a suitable instrument. Her work found in him a channel for reviving in the modern age the Indian spirit that was behind the discovery and application of most of India's ancient scientific knowledge, whose modern forms are the glorious achievements of modern Europe. Jagadischandra's intuitive mind perceived the inner significance of India's past greatness, as also of her greater future. He said : 'A mightier spirit is guiding the onward march of the children of this great land, inspiring them with a burning faith in the renewal of India's ancient greatness.' On another occasion he said : 'The golden age belonged not in the past but in our immediate future.' He had the unshaken belief 'that the past shall yet be reborn in a nobler future through the efforts

of our lives'. And true to this intuition he lived and worked.

The phrases, such as, 'Mystic East', 'Metaphysical India', were coined and made current by nineteenth-century Western scholars to indicate that India was always engrossed in inward pursuits and had never shown any inclination to go in for such knowledge as would require the application of the practical mind which they believed India had never developed. These and so many other erroneous ideas were abroad to suggest that India had never made 'even a near-approach to what Europe calls science today,' and which she claims as her own monopoly. But the fact today, borne out by impartial researches, is that many fundamental ideas of physical, chemical, biological, mathematical and medical sciences were not only known to ancient Indians but used by them for practical purposes in the development of her life and culture, arts and industries throughout her long past covering two millenniums before and one after the beginning of the Christian era. There are authorities who hold that a number of basic scientific concepts have their origin in the Veda (circa. 3000 B.C.) and in the earlier Upanishads (circa. 1500 B.C.), and that science was not unknown to the builders of the Sindhu-Valley culture (circa. 3000 B.C.). Ancient Indian texts contain exact terms of these sciences along with the systematic lines on which many of them developed. They also mention a number of scientific thinkers, the last of whom was the famous astronomer Bhaskaracharya (twelfth century) who discovered madhyākarṣaṇa, or 'the Law of Gravitation'. The influence of these scientific ideas of India on Europe, on Greece and Rome, in ancient as well as, in later times, has begun to be admitted. The eminent Indologist A.A. Macdonell says : 'In Science, too, the debt of Europe to India has been considerable.'

Of course the ancient Indian method of discovering the universal laws of nature, as can be inferred from the available evidence on the subject, does not seem to be so much experimental as intuitive. It may be more by intuition than by experiment, or by both that ancient India discovered one such law as given in Manusmriti, one of the earliest of Sanskrit texts, that 'These (plants) have a consciousness in them and they feel pleasure and pain'. Modern mind, rather the modem Western mind has developed so much in its capacity to discover the same laws through experiment and observation that it does not give importance to the intuitive origin of many of its inventions and discoveries, although many leading scientists of Europe have admitted that the basic idea of their discovery first came to them as a flash.

The remarkable thing about Jagadischandra was that he first intuitively perceived the truth of the universal law through the conscious process of concentration, as he has himself said before, and then by experimentation produced the necessary instruments to demonstrate the truths discovered. Scientists of Europe were struck by both of these achievements of Jagadishchandra, which, they admitted, were possible because of the

synthesis in him of the contemplative Indian mind and the analytical Western mind. Here is one such admission published in The Times of England at that time : 'Sir Jagadis Chander Bose is a fine example of the fertile union between the immemorial mysticism of Indian philosophy and the experimental methods of Western science. Whilst we in Europe were still steeped in the rude empiricism of barbaric life, the subtle Eastern had swept the whole universe into a synthesis and had seen the one in all its changing manifestations.... He is pursuing science not only for itself but for its application to the benefit of mankind. We welcome the additions to knowledge which he has made.' This is an indication that the Western mind is tending to recognise higher ranges of consciousness from where true knowledge comes—a great and hopeful beginning of higher fulfilments in the future.

How Jagadischandra achieved these is a story as fascinating as it is inspiring. The story has its pathos too in his struggle against enormous odds to establish his theories.

Before beginning this story, we must mention the pioneering work of Mahendralal Sarkar who in 1876 founded in Caclutta 'Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science', the first institution of its kind in modern India. Himself a distinguished scientist and a famous medical practitioner, Dr Sarkar believed that India's 'regeneration' depended largely on her cultivation of Science. Today the Association has become a progressive centre of original scientific research with a splendid record of work at its credit. Eminent scientists like C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan started their researches at this Association which, Dr Raman said, 'made it possible for the scientific aspirations of my early years to continue burning brightly'.

The history of ancient Bengal records how centuries back Atisa Srijnana, one of her greatest saints and scholars, risking a perilous journey carried to Tibet the message of the Buddha. Atisa hailed from Vikrampur in Dacca, in East Bengal, famous as an ancient seat of learning and culture. It has in modern times given to India some of her greatest sons and daughters who have preserved the tradition of her ancient greatness by making eminent contributions to her modern resurgence. Of these mention may be made of Ahgorenath Chattopadhyaya and his daughter Sarojini Naidu, Manmohan and Lalmohan Ghose and Chittaranjan Das. Jagadischandra himself belongs to this historic place. He was born on 30 November 1858 in Mymensing where his father, Bhagavanchandra Basu, was a Deputy Magistrate.

Bhagavanchandra was a man of integrity and large heart, whose pioneering efforts for the industrial progress of the country should never be forgotten. One of the first Indians to start a tea industry, he founded also a 'Peoples' Bank'—the forerunner of later Cooperative Societies. He staked all his savings on starting weaving mills. 'He had come before the country

was ready and it happened to him as it must happen to all pioneers,' said his son in an estimate of his father's worth and work. 'And it is on the wreck of a life like his and of many such lives that will be built the greater India to be.'

Jagadischandra began his education not in a High English School but in a Vernacular School which was founded by his father for the education of the children, in their mother tongue, of those people who could not afford the expenses for English education. Explaining later why he was sent to that school he said that his father wanted him, to quote his own words, 'to learn my own language, to think my own thoughts and to receive the heritage of our national culture through the medium of our own literature. I was thus to consider myself one with the people and never to place myself in an equivocal position of assumed superiority.' He developed his love of nature from his early wanderings on river-banks with his fellow-students who were children of fishermen and cultivators and who told him stories of strange natural phenomena. He loved animals and used to have a number of pets always in his house and he would himself build dwellings for them. A small garden with a pool and a bridge over it he laid out as a hobby. All this points to his interest in the universe of nature whose secrets he would probe later.

Jagadischandra had a special liking for the Ramayana and the Mahabharata stories, the character of Kama having impressed him the most. 'Kama ! Kama ! the greatest of the heroes', he used to say. 'Kama's life, through a series of disappointments and defeats to the very end—his slaying by Arjuna—appealed to me as a boy as the greatest of triumphs.... This was the hero I loved to identify with my own father, always in struggle for the uplift of the people, yet with so little success, such frequent failures, that to most he seemed a failure. All this gave me a lower and lower idea of all ordinary worldly success—how small its so-called victories are—and with this a higher and higher idea of conflict and defeat; and of the true success born of defeat. In such ways I have come to feel one with the highest spirit of the race; with every fibre thrilling with the motion of the past. That is its noblest teaching—that the only real and spiritual advantage and victory is to fight fair, never to take to crooked ways, but keep to the straight path whatever be in the way.'

This was Jagadischandra's philosophy of life which he developed out of his love and admiration for his heroic father, the heroic spirit of the ancients of his race. In this philosophic attitude to life may well lie the secret of his exemplary fortitude, his valiant struggles, his world-shaking victories.

'Never to be daunted, never to give in, never to be a victim of fear' was the determination of his soul, even from his early life. While a student of a school in Calcutta meant only for European and Anglo-Indian boys, he was one day challenged to fight the champion boxer of his class. To

quote his own words : T then knew nothing about boxing; nevertheless, I accepted the challenge and got the severest punishment. Still I persisted, and ultimately won victory.'

Jagadischandra completed his college education in Calcutta with the science course both in the First Arts and the Degree Examination, and took the degree in 1879. His College certificate says that he took up Latin as his second language and was proficient in Sanskrit. It was now decided that he should go to England for higher studies. He chose to qualify for the I.C.S. in order to relieve his father's burden of debts incurred in his industrial ventures. But his father wanted him to be a scholar and not an administrator. He however gave his consent to the son's choice of medicine. When in 1880 Jagadischandra sailed for England he was having attacks of a persistent fever which disturbed his first year in England as a medical student and compelled him to leave medicine and join Christ's College in Cambridge with a scholarship he won for natural science studies. But he had no precise aim in view as to the particular course he should take. For the first year and a half he attended lectures on all subjects and visited laboratories. Then he began regular work in Physics, Chemistry and Botany. Lord Rayleigh and Prof. Vines were the two teachers of Jagadischandra who helped him most in developing his capacity for scientific investigation. And it was these two noble-hearted Englishmen again who were among those whose sympathy and support sustained Jagadischandra when later he had to struggle against a continued opposition to the establishing of his discoveries before British scientific institutions. He passed the Natural Science Tripos of Cambrige University as well as the B.Sc. Examination of London University at about the same time.

Jagadischandra returned home in 1885 with a letter of introduction from Prof. Fawcett to Lord Ripon, then Viceroy of India. At that time most of the Britishers in India held that Indians were not competent to teach science. Jagadischandra was therefore offered a place in the Provincial Educational Service. On his declining this and through the intervention of the Viceroy he was appointed officiating Professor of Physics at the Presidency College, Calcutta, the British Principal himself protesting. But the salary fixed was two-thirds of the permanent British incumbent's, simply because he was an Indian. And the appointment being a temporary one he was to receive one-third of the normal pay for that post. This racial discrimination against him was too much for a self-respecting Indian like Jagadischandra to stand. And he refused to accept his salary cheque for three years notwithstanding his financial straits at the time. His work at the College during this period made the Government realise his worth, and honour him with a permanent appointment with retrospective emoluments. This lump sum enabled him to pay off his father's debts.

On his thirtyfifth birthday, 30 November 1894, the young professor took the solemn vow that he would from then on dedicate himself wholly

to the cause of furthering 'new knowledge by unravelling the mysteries of nature'. But there were difficulties in the way which only his inspired determination could overcome. Here are his own words : 'There was no laboratory and no instrument maker. Everyone said that original scientific work was impossible in India. But it came to me as a flash that it was not for man to quarrel with circumstances but bravely to accept, to confront and to dominate over them, and we belonged to a race which had accomplished great things with simple means.' With this noble and heroic attitude of mind the young seeker of truth started his scientific investigations to which he was led by the demonstration on the Hertzian experiments he was then giving to his students. The subject of these experiments was electromagnetic waves or radio waves which had been predicted by Clerk Maxwell nearly a hundred years earlier, and only demonstrated by Hertz some fourteen years earlier. Eminent scientists of Europe were then investigating the properties of these waves and their Indian contemporary was Jagadischandra who was the first to produce extremely short radio waves, wavelengths of one centimeter or less compared to several meters that were being produced by his European contemporaries. And this he did with the help of an instrument he himself made of bits of mineral crystals, odd pieces of wires and a few electrical meters. The short radio waves behaved very much like light waves he demonstrated. They were reflected or refracted by matter. They could also pass through thick walls of brick which ordinary light could not. The usefulness of these extra-ordinary properties of short radio waves was appreciated forty years later.

In these days when radio, television and even radar are taken so much for granted, it may be recalled that in 1895 before a public meeting in Calcutta Jagadischandra demonstrated the transmission of waves through the body of the Chairman of the meeting, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, and then through the solid wall, displacing a heavy weight, ringing a bell and exploding a mine placed in a closed room. Mention may be made here that Jagadischandra's findings in the field of electro-magnetic waves, in the nineties of the last century, are having wider application in radar and micro-wave spectography in the mid-twentieth century.

Jagadischandra had already sent in his paper on these discoveries to the Royal Society, London, through his Professor, Lord Rayleigh. The Society published it and was so much impressed that it offered him help from its Parliamentary grant for continuing his researches. A scientific journal of England pointed out the usefulness of his discovery to 'electric signalling apparatus in place of ordinary light-houses which were ineffective in foggy weather'. In fact Sir Henry Jackson of the British Navy used this discovery for signalling purposes. Text-books on physics were revised incorporating it as a definite improvement on the Hertzian waves. The immense possibilities opened up by it were the reason for the head

of a British firm working on wireless telegraphy to tell Professor Bose that 'the advantage he had derived from his paper, already published in England, was beyond anything he could have dreamt of. Later they wrote to Bose : 'We have already benefited by your work in the construction of the most important part of the wireless apparatus'. When asked to have his discovery patented Professor Bose, true to the traditions of his country and bent on the selfless pursuit of truth, stated that 'he would not give any part of his life for money-making purposes'. This reply was a surprise to the firm. Yet two of his friends, Sister Nivedita and Mrs. Ole Bull, did take out patents on his behalf, of his 'Golena Receiver' which proved his priority to Marconi who patented his apparatus two years later. But Prof. Bose never used nor renewed the patent which lapsed. Meanwhile the Acharya, or 'eminent teacher', the title which his countrymen prefixed to his name, received from London University, unsought and without having to sit for any examination, the degree of D.Sc. for his paper on Electric Wave-Length measurements. The high merit of his thesis made Lord Kelvin say that he was 'literally filled with wonder and admiration'. M. Cornu, President of the French Academy of Science, acknowledged the Acharya's 'power of furthering the progress of science'.

The importance of his researches began now to be recognised by the Government of his country which sanctioned an annual grant for the purpose. When therefore the need was felt that he should visit Europe for conferring with her leading scientists, the Lietutenant Governor of Bengal, on his own responsibility, sent Bose to England. The mission was a great success. His first lecture before the British Association in 1896 evoked warmest appreciation from the press and the scientific thinkers one of whom, Lord Kelvin, wrote to ask the Government of India to provide for 'a well-equipped physical laboratory' for Bose's use. Later this request was repeated by the leading scientists of England. Equally welcomed by all was his address before the Royal Institution. The Spectator, always critical towards India, wrote : 'There is, however, to our thinking, something of rare interest in the spectacle there presented of a Bengalee of the purest descent lecturing in London to an audience of appreciative savants upon one of the most recondite branches of modern physical science'. Years later the same journal wrote : 'The culture of thirty centuries has blossomed into a scientific brain of an order which we cannot quite duplicate in the West. He is a prince among physiological research workers and a prophet of his age, which has brought so many new powers to life.' This was another proof of how the European mind was opening to the light that India was. From England the Acharya went to Paris where his lecture-demonstration at Sorbonne impressed the scientists so much that he had to repeat his lecture before the French Society of Physics which honoured him by electing him an honorary member. M. Cornu congratulating the Acharya said : 'You should try to revive the great

traditions of your race, which bore aloft the torchlight of science and art and was die leader of civilisation, two thousand years ago. We in France applaud you and wish you every success.' Years later when the Acharya was on a visit to Sweden the President of the Physical Society of Stockholm recalled in his welcome to the Acharya how some days before he had found in one of his old text-books a passage underlined by him telling that the Acharya had shown that an ordinary book had the remarkable property of acting as an excellent polarisation prism for electric waves.

On return home Acharya Jagadischandra plunged deep into his researches preparing paper after paper on his new findings. But the most important turn in his career came when in 1899 his experiments on electric researches brought to light a novel responsive phenomenon in 'the parallelisms between the response of what is called "inorganic" matter and what is called "living" substances.' It was while working with radio waves that the Acharya noticed that one of the instruments called a coherer used for the detection of radio waves showed signs of getting tired after constant use and refused to function. When left unused for some time these coherers recovered and again started the normal work of detecting radio waves. These detectors or coherers were usually made of metal filings or bits of fine metal wires, loosely packed together. The Acharya was greatly struck by "this phenomenon. It was something very akin to the fatigue of living organisms and the recovery from fatigue after rest. The detection by the coherer of the impingement of radio waves seemed to him something very much like the response stimuli of a living organism. From now on the Acharya began to work on the borderline where the behaviour of inorganic matter and that of living things have a great similarity.

He chose to experiment with plants as they are simpler living organisms and the 'half-way house between inorganic matter and highly complex animal life'. He was able to demonstrate that plants responded to stimulation and became tired after repeated stimulations. Their response decreased when a poison was introduced and increased when a stimulant was given. In fact, a stimulant could be used as an antidote to a poison. The Acharya was now amazed to find 'the boundary lines vanishing and points of contact emerging between the realms of the living and the nonliving.' And he declared that 'a universal reaction apeared to bring together metal, plant, and animal under a common law.'

The Acharya now wanted to place his discoveries before the scientists of Europe. The invitation from the International Congress of Physicists arranged in connection with the Paris Exhibition of 1900 gave him this opportunity. He now announced for the first time the results of his new experiments regarding the response of inorganic and living matter. Concluding his paper he said that a 'fundamental unity amidst the apparent diversity' ruled the world. The effect of his lecture-demonstration has

been described as 'electric'. The Secretary of the Congress declared that he 'at first felt stunned'. The paper was accepted as 'most important', and duly published in the Transactions of the Congress.

There was present at the Congress another representative of India— referred to before—returning home after giving voice to her eternal message to the West. When Acharya Jagadischandra concluded his lecture with an affirmation of the Vedantic truth of the basic unity of all diversities Swami Vivekananda was beside himself with joy. He wrote home : 'Here in Paris have assembled the great of every land, each to proclaim the glory of his country....Among these peerless men gathered from all parts of the world, where is thy representative, O Thou, the country of my birth ? Out of the vast assembly a young man stood for Thee, one of Thy heroic sons, whose words have electrified the audience, and will thrill all his country-men. Blessed be this heroic son; blessed be his devoted and peerless helpmate who stands by him always.' Seven years ago this Indian monk had conquered America by his message of the Vedanta, and now an Indian scientist amazed the centre of European culture by demonstrating to the naked eye 'the unity of life'—also a Vedantic truth.

From France the Acharya went to England where in September 1900 he read a similar paper before the British Association. It was 'a grand success'. A leading physicist was full of 'warmest congratulations'. Several distinguished electricians said that 'the paper came to them as a revelation. They could never remember anything which had produced such a sensation, among original investigators'. In publishing his lecture the paper Electrician said : 'What investigators of Europe had been attempting with crude and clumsy apparatus, Prof. Bose had accomplished in his laboratory in Calcutta with a pretty little set of instruments occupying no more space than an ordinary optical bench....Viewed in the light of Prof. Bose's researches, recent and of earlier date, Physics and Chemistry, even perhaps Biology, appear to be on the eve of a generalisation of unusual importance.'

But all was not smooth sailing for the Indian scientist. When on invitation he delivered a lecture on his researches the Physicists hailed his findings but the Physiologists were unwilling to accept them as they involved 'boundary questions'. Jagadischandra anticipated this challenge and wanted to meet it. He only took a little time because of illness. In April 1901, he was ready with an improved apparatus, and gave in May a Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution—a great distinction for a scientist—on the general phenomenon of response. Here he made the historic declaration : T have shown you this evening autographic records of the history of the stress and strain in the living and the nonliving. How similar are the writings. So similar indeed that you cannot tell one apart from the other. We have watched the responsive pulse wax

and wane in the one as in the other. We have seen response sinking under fatigue, becoming exalted under stimulants and being killed by poisons, in the non-living as in the living. Amongst such phenomena, how can we draw a line of demarcation and say, here the physical ends and there the physiological begins ? Such absolute barriers do not exist....Do not these records tell us of some property of matter common and persistent ? Do they not show us that the responsive processes, seen in life, have been foreshadowed in non-life ?... that the physiological is related to the physico-chemical ?... that there is no abrupt break, but a uniform and continuous march of law ?' Concluding, the Indian scientist observed : 'When I came upon the mute witness of these self-made records, and perceived in them one phase of a pervading unity that bears within it all things... the mote that quivers in ripples of light, the teaming life upon earth, and the radiant suns that shine upon us., .it was then that I understood for the first time a little of that message proclaimed by my ancestors on the banks of the Ganges thirty centuries ago—'They who see but one in all the changing manifoldness of this universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth... unto none else, unto none else.'

That these views were not challenged at the meeting did not mean that the opposition had died down. When in June he addressed the Royal Society on the same subject, 'the physicists were full of admiration for totally unexpected revelations', but the physiologists strongly assailed his results. Jagadischandra found that 'he had unwittingly strayed into the domain of a new and unfamiliar caste-system and offended its etiquette.' He however took up the relevant points of the opposition and decided to give a scientific answer for which he needed time. But the fact that the Royal Institution having printed the paper in its journal but not releasing it because of the opposition, was responsible for the refusal of his deputation-leave to continue his experiments. He had therefore to carry on his work with his own resources which were indeed very slender. But help came from his life-long friend and admirer Rabindranath Tagore who had already paid his homage to Jagadischandra in a poem which begins :

'Young image of what old Rishi of Ind

Art thou, O Arya Savant, Jagadis ?'

The experiments he now made were witnessed by a number of famous scientists of England like Vines and Howes who, impressed by his work, said that if the Royal Society closed its doors to him the Linnean Society would accept his paper for publication after a lecture-demonstration. The Acharya gave the lecture at the Linnean Society in March 1902, before a large gathering which included his opponents. As was the custom, they had been invited but they had no comments to make when such were asked for. The Royal Society had not yet released his paper and when

the question- was raised his opponents put forward the plea that a similar paper containing similar results had been published in the Journal of the Physiological Society. The fact was that this paper was based on notes taken by its writer from Jagadischandra's lecture at the Royal Institution. The priority of Jagadischandra's paper was established by the enquiry committee, for both Vines and Howes had seen proofs of his paper five months before the communication now claiming priority. Even this was not enough reason for the Royal Society either to release his paper or to open its doors to him.

This made Jagadischandra start writing books giving the results of his researches and experiments. In 1902 his book Response in the Living and Non-Living was published in England and was widely appreciated in scientific circles. After delivering lectures, on invitation, at a number of societies in England, and offering papers for publication in Paris, he returned home and devoted himself to the study of plant-life, the results of which he communicated in seven papers to the Royal Society in December 1903. Again, because of opposition from the same quarters, their publication was withheld, the Society informing him that judgements on these papers had to be reserved until the plants themselves could record their answers to questions put to them.

Acharya Jagadischandra now applied himself to the work of inventing devices through which the plants would record their answers in response to questions. He entered upon a new realm of his researches which in a couple of years produced remarkable results embodied in his books Plant Response (1906) and Comparative Electro-Physiology (1907). He was now ready to demonstrate these results and in 1907 the Government of India sent him on his third scientific deputation to England and America where he addressed several universities and scientific associations.

On his return Jagadischandra concentrated on devising suitable apparatus one of which was 'Oscilating Recorder' whose magnifying power was raised to 10,000 times. 'This new series of apparatus was designed to confirm and verify the results obtained by him previously and to demonstrate the transmission of nervous excitation in plants against the generally accepted view that there was nothing in the plant comparable to the nervous system in animals.' These results were communicated to the Royal Society and published in its Philosophical Transactions in 1913. Jagadischandra's next book Researches on Irritability of Plants, published in the same year, brought him invitations from scientific societies of Europe. In 1914 he sailed for England on his fourth scientific mission carrying with him his new apparatus as well as plant specimens. This time he set up his own laboratory where one day Sir William Crookes, then President of the Royal Society, paid a surprise visit. He told Jagadischandra that it was his casting vote which prevented the publication of his papers in the journal of the Royal Society, adding, 'I could not believe that such things

were possible and thought your oriental imagination had led' you astray. Now I fully confess that you have all along been right.'

Jagadischandra's lecture-tour of British universities elicited rapturous praise from distinguished men of science who presided over his lectures. His lecture-demonstration before the Royal Institution 'led his learned audience from marvel to marvel. His 'Resonant Recorder' registered the speed of transmission of excitatory impulse; the 'Oscillating Recorder' traced the throbbing pulsations of the telegraph plant and revealed their striking similarity with the pulse-beat of the animal heart; and, finally, the 'Death Recorder' indicated the death-throes of the plant.' As in 1909, so in 1914, Jagadischandra did not limit himself to the language of science for conveying his thoughts to the assembly. Referring to the plants he said : 'These mute companions, silently growing beside our door, have now told us the tale of their life, tremulousness and their death spasm in script that is as inarticulate as they are.' His lecture-demonstration before the Royal Society of Medicine, London, brought him unqualified eulogy from Sir Lander Brunton, a collaborator of Darwin who in the course of a letter to Jagadischandra said : 'AH the experiments I have yet seen are crude in comparison with yours in which you show what a marvellous resemblance there is between the reactions of plants and animals.'

Meanwhile the Acharya received a number of invitations from the Continent but he could not respond to all of them because of the outbreak of the First World War. The meeting he addressed in Vienna was attended by many leading scientists of Austria and Germany who paid the singular tribute that 'Calcutta was far ahead of them in these new lines of investigation'. An eminent scientist of Vienna, told Jagadischandra, 'you have left us practically nothing to do.'

He then went to America and gave lecture-demonstrations before a number of universities. In Washington he addressed the State Department—a rare honour for an Indian. The Scientific American, one of the foremost scientific journals of the world, wrote: 'What is the tale of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp compared with the possibilities of Dr. Bose's 'Crescograph'. In less than a quarter of an hour the action of fertilizers, foods, electric currents and various stimulants can be fully determined.' In an article Dr. Jakob Kunz of the Department of Physics, University of Illinois, compared Acharya Jagadischandra with the pioneers of science such as Newton, Faraday, and Charles Darwin. He concluded : 'The uniformity of responses by animals, plants and metals are recorded by diagrams so identical that one could not tell which belongs to the animal kingdom or to the plant or to the dead metal. The laws of nature hold uniformly through the whole material world.'

On return home in 1915 Jagadischandra having completed his term at the Presidency College, Calcutta, retired from service that year but remained associated with it as Professor Emeritus. For two years from then

he gave all his thoughts to the realisation of a dream he had been cherishing in the depths of his heart. A laboratory in his Himalayan retreat at Darjeeling and several field research stations came into existence. But his dream took final form when on 30 November 1917 he inaugurated his Research Institute in Calcutta, which he called "not merely a Laboratory but a Temple'. And a temple really it is. Indian in style and decoration, the building is a fine piece of architecture reminiscent of the cave-cathedrals of Ajanta. Among the exquisite pieces of decoration in the lecture theatre are a symbolic painting entitled The Quest' and a great relief in bronze, silver, and gold of the Sun-god rising in his chariot to dispel darkness and instil life. Both works are a close translation of the founder's ideas done by the master-artist Nandalal Basu. Jagadischandra represented a happy blend of art and science. 'He had the insight of a scientist, with the soul of an artist,' and everything about him bespoke this combination. Nandalal Basu says that he owed to Jagadischandra many sublime ideas about artistic creation. Jagadischandra had great admiration for the neo-Bengal School of Painting whose founders Gaganendranath and Abanindranath Tagore were his friends.

At the entrance of the Institute there is a striking bas-relief in bronze of a woman carrying a lamp, placed above a lotus-pool. This is how the founder wanted to perpetuate the memory of his friend and inspirer Sister Nivedita who in one of her birthday greetings to Jagadischandra wrote : 'Be a light unto the people and a lamp unto their feet and be filled with peace—you the great spiritual mariner who found new worlds.' Both Jagadischandra and, as Vivekananda called her, his 'peerless wife' remembered all their life with love and gratitude their valued friendship with Sister Nivedita of whom Lady Bose once said : 'As a woman, I knew her in everyday life, full of austerity and possessed with a longing for righteousness which shone round her like a flame. Others will know her as the great moral and intellectual force which comes to us in time of great national need.' Here is another soul-utterance on Nivedita from an English friend of hers, with which all her Indian friends and admirers will most heartily agree : 'Those to whom she gave the ennobling gift of her friendship hold the memory of that gift as this world's highest benediction.' Nivedita's favourite symbol, the thunderbolt, towers above the Institute building suggesting the sacrifice of Rishi Dadhichi so that evil might perish and righteousness grow.

In his inaugural address at the Institute—an inspired utterance and a testament of his soul to the noble mission of his life—Jagadischandra, inviting workers from all countries, avowed, 'in this I am attempting to carry out the traditions of my country, which as far back as twentyfive centuries ago, welcomed all scholars from different parts of the world, within the precincts of its ancient seats of learning, at Nalanda and Taxila.' It was a call to dedicated service in the sacred 'cause of advancing human

knowledge'. Recalling how his forefathers strove and achieved, Jagadischandra said : 'And in this country through millenniums, there always have been some who, beyond the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, sought for the realisation of the highest ideal of life—not through passive renunciation, but through active struggle. The weakling who has refused the conflict, having acquired nothing, had nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won, can enrich the world by giving away the fruits of his victorious experience. In India such examples of constant realisation of ideals through work have resulted in the formation of a continuous living tradition. And by her latent power of rejuvenescence she has adjusted herself through infinite transformations. Thus while the souls of Babylon and the Nile Valley have transmigrated, ours still remains vital and with capacity of absorbing what time has brought, and making it one with itself.'

The Acharya wanted his countrymen to recover this spirit of their forebears and prove to the world the racial aptitude for scientific pursuits. The love of country and the understanding of its genius as reflected in his words were innate in him. In almost every letter he wrote to Rabindranath from England he said that what he was doing was for the greatness and glory of his motherland, and never for his own. Once he said that if he were to be born a hundred times, he would like every time to be bom in 'Hindusthan'. He personally knew Dwijendralal Roy the famous poet and playwright for whose writings he had great admiration. At his ardent request to write a song that would stir his countrymen Dwijendralal wrote that famous song Amar desk or 'My country'. Though not connected with any political movement of the time the fact is there that he was in full sympathy with the rise and growth of the revolutionary nationalism in India, about whose high-priest Sri Aurobindo he knew everything through Sister Nivedita.¹

The Bose Institute today has expanded into a research centre of international importance. Besides Plant Physiology and Plant Chemistry, its scope of research includes Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Zoology and Anthropology. In the course of his memorial address at the Institute in 1938 Rabindranath Tagore said : 'Victory is the inalienable claim of the genuine power having the might of attraction that naturally exploits all kindred elements on its path and moulds them into an image of glory. And such an image is this Institute, which represents the Master's (Jagadischandra's) lifelong endeavour taking a permanent shape in the form of a centre for the inspiration of similar endeavours.'

On the termination of the First World War Jagadischandra decided to go to England in order to make known to his friends what his researches in the meantime had produced. He reached England in November 1919 and found the country ready to accord him a hearty welcome. 'It was

¹ From Nolini Kanta Gupta.

as though the entire British world had been prepared, by every sort of experience, to receive and acclaim the discoveries which, in previous years, had seemed to be problematical and remote,' writes Patrik Geddes in his excellent biography of Jagadischandra.

In 1930 Acharya Jagadischandra Basu was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, England. The press and the world of learning hailed it as a distinction accorded to the first Indian for scientific work. All this was too much for his opponents—small in number now—to bear. They challenged him to give demonstrations in a laboratory other than his own. When he did this a number of distinguished men of science in England in a letter to The Times said : 'We are satisfied that the growth of plant tissues is correctly recorded by this instrument (Crescograph) and at a magnification of from one million to ten million times.' Yet another hurdle to overcome : this was in Germany encountering Professor Haberlandt, the greatest plant physiologist, whose theory had been upset by Acharya Basu. Nevertheless he welcomed the latter as 'an Indian savant' in whom there 'lives and moves that ancient Indian spirit which sees in every living organism a perceptive being endowed with sensitiveness. It is remarkable that the same old Indian spirit which has carried to its utmost limits metaphysical speculation and introspection wholly withdrawn from the world of sense.. .that this same spirit should have brought to light on its modern representative, who is our guest today, such an extraordinarily developed faculty for observation and such an ecstasy in scientific experimentation.' This was Acharya Jagadischandra's final victory and he was now a scientist of international fame and achievement whose discoveries and inventions were acknowledged by the greatest scientists of the world as having 'advanced human knowledge' and, in particular, as having 'extended the realm of science in an undreamt-of manner'. Leading universities and societies honoured him as also the League of Nations which nominated him a member of its Committee of Intellectual Cooperation. Men of letters did not lag behind the men of science in their appreciation of his work. At a lunch given in his honour by the Editor of the Spectator some of them spoke of Jagadischandra as 'one who had in so eminent a degree enriched human thought' and regarded him, as they regarded Rabindranath Tagore, as 'a cultural ambassador of India'.

In the twenties the writer had the joy of attending several anniversary addresses of Acharya Jagadischandra at his Institute. He remembers two lecture-demonstrations, on two fascinating subjects : 'The Dividing Line between Life and Death', and 'Plant is an Anchored Animal'. In the first lecture the life-force of the plant was through an apparatus projected on the screen as a vertical line of light crossing a black horizontal scaled line (fixed on the screen) called the region of life, separated from the region of death by a thick longer black vertical line also fixed on the

screen. Inviting the audience to come and see the operation, the Acharya injected African venom into the plant, and to the amazement of all, the line of light started moving towards the black thicker vertical line, and when it passed through it into the region of death becoming almost invisible, the Acharya, so declaring, injected into the plant a more powerful poison called suchikavaran in Ayurveda. To the wonder of all, again, the line of light became faintly visible and started moving back through the black 'dividing line' towards its original position and when it definitely reached it it became fully visible. Thus was the plant saved from death. And it showed visible signs of the strain of the poison. All this looked like magic, in the hands of the magician; but it was a reality all through. Then the Acharya invited the spectators to inspect the apparatus. Distinguished European scientists present had nothing but headrest felicitations for the Acharya on his 'marvellous achievement'. In his address he acknowledged his indebtedness to his Rishi-ancestors whose spirit guided him in his pursuit of truth. In the other lecture-demonstration he showed with equal clarity how plants behave almost exactly like animals according to fixed physiological laws.

Rapturous tributes of homage and admiration from men of science and men of letters the world over came to Acharya Jagadischandra when his seventieth birthday was celebrated in Calcutta on 1 December 1928. Rabindranath who sponsored the celebration said : 'Your fame resounds today far and near, here and overseas. You are resplendent in your own splendour. Your vast achievement is a vibrant utterance of your mantra. Today in this festival of lights, in this assemblage of luminaries, you are seated encircled by a thousand lights. With these I mingle my own, the light lit by a friend. When in the critical hour, in the evening dusk of doubt your field of tapasya beseiged by opponents was in seclusion, this friend of yours without waiting for the approbation of the multitude lit his lamp of greetings to you. Today along with thousands, let me proclaim : Blessed you are, blessed are your friends, blessed is your land of birth.' Prof. Hans Molisch, one of the greatest plant-physiologists of modern times and a former Rector of the University of Vienna, who had joined the Bose Institute as a visiting professor, called Acharya Jagadischandra 'a vibrant figure, a fighter and also a dreamer, an inventor more subtle in mind and hand than others.. .a man who sees the world as one and who proclaims the unity of science.' Prof. Goeble, the eminent plant-physiologist of Munich University, said that Prof. Bose's work had made a deep impression not only upon the minds of the specialists, but also upon all those who are interested in the intellectual and moral progress of humanity.' Bernard Shaw wished him 'many more years of splendid service to humanity', while Romain Rolland acclaimed him as 'the seer' who 'by the light of his poetic and spiritual insight has penetrated into the very heart of nature.'

Jagadischandra was in failing health during the last years of his life. On 23 November 1937 he left his body. A mighty warrior of the Light, Jagadischandra's was a life of heroic struggle and victorious fulfilment, the struggle to vindicate the truth of his vision, the fulfilment was of the vision in which, said Romain Rolland, he saw a new world. Its significance for science in particular and for humanity as a whole is for the future historian properly to assess.

While humanity will remember him for his unique contribution to the world of science, his countrymen will cherish his memory as of one who, in the words of Patrick Geddes, 'removed the long-standing prejudice in the West regarding the incapacity of Indians to do advanced scientific work. He was in fact the pioneer who succeeded in breaking through what had so long seemed a closed door, and thus opened the highway into active and productive science for his countrymen.' It was he, again, who established the Indian spirit in science, and whose life and work were an unparalleled glory of her resurgence in modern times. Jagadischandra humanised science which, he said, if properly prusued, might confer untold benefit on mankind. His wonderful achievements pointed to how science could be spiritualised, how by following the line of the Indian tradition, along with other forms of culture, it could help in building up the spiritual civilisation of the future. This would evolve, says Nolini Kanta Gupta, 'out of a profounder synthesis, harmony and unity : on one side the hoary East, on the other the modern West; on one side the suprasensuous, on the other the senses ; on one side Spirit, on the other Matter—a bridge between this twofold Truth.' Jagadischandra is perhaps the first in modern times to initiate the quest of Science for its spiritual root. Sri Aurobindo says that no knowledge of the physical is complete without the knowledge of its supraphysical source, Matter being 'a form of the Spirit,' 'massed Consciousness'. To this truth Science today is tending, however slowly.

Significantly enough, the work of almost all those who helped in building the new India of today suggested or made possible more than they actually achieved—a fact which clearly indicates that India's resurgence in modern times is yet a process and has yet to go a long way to reach its ultimate goal. Acharya Jagadischandra's discoveries opened up possibilities the fulfilment of which will be among the bases of the future spiritual culture of mankind, every form of which will evolve out of the vision of the Light and will therefore be a luminous expression of that Light.

'Jagadischandra', says Nolini Kanta Gupta, 'brought matter through the corridor of life right almost to the door-step of consciousness. The ancient Aryan vision of our land has objectified itself in his genius.

'AH that we see is one, not many. That one is not inanimate matter, it is instinct with life, it is living, nay, not only living but conscious. The truth that the Rishi in his divine vision has seen, and experienced in his

soul, how it manifests itself, how it proves itself, how the rhythm of the subtle has played into the gross, how the Self of the Spirit has not concealed itself outside or beyond its creation but has infused itself into the whole creation, how its light has made the creation luminous—tasya bhāsā sarvamidam bibhāti, 'by His light all this is illumined'—something of this knowledge Jagadischandra has placed before the physical eye of our ordinary belief.'

In course of a survey of Jagadischandra's discoveries Sri Aurobindo wrote in the first issue of his monthly philosophical review Arya in 1914 under the title 'The Soul of a Plant' : 'The title sounds like a phrase of idealistic or even fanciful poetry fit to precede some reverie or ethereal dream of the imagination; but actually it is no more than the final idea which naturally suggests itself after a perusal of the accounts given in English journals of the strictly controlled and severely careful experiments and results demonstrated by Dr. J. C. Bose in London and Vienna.' Then quoting the words of Dr. Bose : 'Thus community through the great ocean of life is seen to outweigh apparent dissimilarity. Diversity swallowed up in unity'. Sri Aurobindo remarks : 'Diversity swallowed up in unity'!—it might have been a phrase from some free rendering of an ancient Upanishad.' In concluding the survery Sri Aurobindo says : 'In any case, a great step has been built between man and inert matter. Even, if we take Dr. Bose's experiments with metals in conujnction with his experiments on plants, we may hold it to be practically proved for the thinker that Life in various degrees of manifestation and organisation is omnipresent in Matter and is no foreign introduction or accidental development, but was always there to be evolved. Mind, which modern Science has not yet begun rightly to investigate, awaits its turn.

'The ancient thinkers knew well that life and mind exist everywhere in essence and vary only by the degree and manner of their emergence and functionings. All is in all and it is out of the complete involution that the complete evolution progressively appears. It is only appropriate that for a descendant of the race of ancient thinkers who formulated that knowledge, should be reserved the privilege of initiating one of the most important among the many discoveries by which experimental Science is confirming the wisdom of his forefathers.'