How does your biography of M Visvesvaraya differ from existing literature on his life and career, and what unique archival materials and biographical details did your research uncover?
Visvesvaraya’s CV — the list of his tangible achievements — is fairly well known. What this book does is to historicise his long career (he lived from 1861 to 1962). What were the social, political, professional contexts and the historical currents that shaped him? How do we understand his intellectual formation and
How does your biography of M Visvesvaraya differ from existing literature on his life and career, and what unique archival materials and biographical details did your research uncover?
Visvesvaraya’s CV — the list of his tangible achievements — is fairly well known. What this book does is to historicise his long career (he lived from 1861 to 1962). What were the social, political, professional contexts and the historical currents that shaped him? How do we understand his intellectual formation and his rise to prominence? It seeks not to deify him but to understand him, providing a clear-eyed view of his personality and his strengths and limitations.
My approach in this book is informed by my background as a historian of science and technology whose previous research has been on the history of the engineering profession in late-colonial India. This allows me to focus on the technical details and the professional context of his work as an engineer—something that is not usually stressed. I also trace the connections between his early career and his later interventions as a public intellectual.
Crucially, the book establishes Visvesvaraya as not just a great Mysorean but a pan-Indian figure — one who contributed not just to the nation’s physical infrastructure but also to its political imagination.
The book is based on a wealth of archival material from Visvesvaraya’s personal papers, the state archives of Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Telangana, the Prime Ministers Memorial Library in New Delhi, the British Library, the Institution of Civil Engineers, and the National Liberal Club in London.
Did Visvesvaraya face any racial prejudice from the colonial engineering establishment during his PWD days?
We don’t know of instances where Visvesvaraya personally faced overt prejudice; in fact he got on quite well with his bosses. But throughout the time he served in the Bombay Public Works Department (1884-1909), the prevailing discourse about Indian engineers was not favourable. Their colonial bosses thought of them as lacking in “character”, a vague notion that combined ideals of decisiveness, physical courage, impartiality, and so on. Indians rarely made it to the top ranks, and were paid less than their expat colleagues. I believe that this environment moulded Visvesvaraya’s self-presentation. He made it a point to dress immaculately in Western style, to demonstrate his reliability and diligence, to show independent thinking and spine when dealing with his superiors, and to keep up with the latest developments in what were seen as scientifically progressive nations. All this he carried over into his work in Mysore and other princely states, in terms of his expectations from his subordinates, his style of work, and his insistence on global benchmarking.
The book provides a nuanced reappraisal of Visvesvaraya’s career. Why do you think he is often viewed narrowly as just an indigenous engineer and uncompromising administrator outside Karnataka?
I think he’s one of those figures who is famous in the sense that everyone’s heard of him, but usually we have very specific associations: Engineer’s Day, Dewan of Mysore, KRS dam, economic planning, “industrialise or perish”. And yet, there’s much more to him than these keywords. He was a political thinker in his own way. He pondered constitutional matters deeply. He was a champion of primary education and a keen advocate of social reform. I suppose our sense of modern Indian history is a bit compartmentalised — on the one hand, we have stories of a few famous scientists and institution-builders, and on the other hand, the mainstream narrative of the nationalist movement. Perhaps since Visvesvaraya was not a full-time politician, his role in the conceptualisation of the modern nation has not received enough attention.
Beyond his engineering feats, what was his role in the evolution of Indian nationalism and post-Independence governance?
One of Visvesvaraya’s key contributions to the nationalist movement was his advocacy through the 1920s (along with MM Malaviya, MR Jayakar, and others) for multiparty talks between Indian political leaders of all stripes and the colonial government. All this culminated in the landmark Round Table Conferences of the 1930s.
He also played a key role in perpetuating and further developing the economic nationalist thought of thinkers like Dadabhai Naoroji and MG Ranade. This included an emphasis on industrialisation in general, and particularly on government aid and economic protection for indigenous industries. But his most important intervention was in his vigorous promotion of economic planning from the 1930s.
Visvesvaraya thought carefully about what kind of constitution India should have. He recognised the importance of resolving clearly the position of the princely states within a self-governing India. Within the princely states, he supported the movement seeking enhanced democratic rights for the states’ residents. In 1922, despite having no formal legal training, he sketched out a draft of what dominion status within the British Empire — the holy grail of nationalist demands in the interwar period — would look like for India. He had views on the institutional apparatus that an autonomous government would require. He mentioned the need for a reserve bank in a 1920 publication. He also wanted statistical organisations and planning bodies to be set up within government at central and provincial levels.
Even as Visvesvaraya came up with manifestos on economic planning and constitution-making, you point out that he maintained good relations with British officialdom amid rising nationalism. How did he strike a balance in his ties with both British officials and Congress nationalists?
He mastered the cultural and organisational codes of the colonial bureaucracy. By the time he spoke out on the economy and constitutional reform in the period between the World Wars, he had already interacted with the top officials of the colonial state for decades: first as a highly-regarded engineer officer, and later as Dewan of Mysore. He had even been knighted. But alongside all this, he also exercised his right to mingle with and learn from nationalist thinkers (though mostly of the moderate variety). MG Ranade, GK Gokhale, and VS Srinivasa Sastri were key interlocutors from his days in Poona. We know of at least one instance when he took leave to attend a session of the Congress in the midst of his duties in Mysore. In the interwar period, he worked closely with MM Malaviya and MR Jayakar, and engaged with Gandhi (despite their ideological differences). Nevertheless, the colonial state viewed him as a trustworthy interlocutor because he was a firm believer in constitutional norms and did not participate in non-cooperation or other forms of grassroots anti-colonial activism.
You write that Visvesvaraya measured government performance based on what it was doing to help India industrialize rapidly. What kind of progress did he see in rapid indigenous industrialization, especially at the village level?
I assume you’re referring to the years after Independence, when Visvesvaraya was in his eighties and nineties. Both in his personal capacity and through a body he headed, the All India Manufacturers’ Organisation, Visvesvaraya frequently commented on government performance. He was not happy with the pace of industrialisation under the first Five-Year Plan, and criticised the rigid regulatory regime for businesses. For his part, he continued to advise the Mysore government on village industrialisation, building on his learnings from Japan. This programme appears to have made solid gains in terms of new enterprises started. At the national level, he lived to see the articulation of the “community development block” system, although this does not seem to have been very successful.
You write of aging Visvesvaraya being a sharp critic of Nehruvian democratic and welfare policies. What does this tell us about his technocratic worldview? What parallels do you see with today’s debates on top-down versus mass-driven development in India?
The two men actually had a largely similar outlook, particularly on the centrality of state-driven industrialisation. But they differed on points of detail. Visvesvaraya thought the state must merely serve as a model and then allow private capital to step in. He did not agree with the Nehruvian emphasis on public sector industries and the controls placed on private business. He also thought they were moving too slowly in establishing industries, especially at the provincial level. This reflected a certain impatience with the demands of democratic governance. There was a tension between two sides of Visvesvaraya, each of them sincere. On the one hand he believed strongly in liberal democracy. On the other, he had a clear preference for expert-led policy-making, a strong belief in the universal efficacy of large-scale technological interventions, and some difficulty understanding the non-economic factors behind human behaviour. We see some similarities today in the hopes around smart cities, the datafication of governance, and the obsession with “world class” status. However, there’s one clear difference. Visvesvaraya was never motivated by cultural particularism or the need to prove that India was superior to the rest of the world in any manner. In that sense he was a universalist.
What key takeaways do you hope readers will gain from your biography?
I hope they will see Visvesvaraya as a national figure in addition to his already well-known impact in Mysore, and as a multi-faceted personality who ranged far beyond his professional domain and engaged deeply with political and governance-related questions. His life also reminds us of the extent to which global currents shaped the imagination of the Indian nation. I think the story also shows the immense promise as well as the pitfalls of the technocratic imagination, and suggests the need to supplement it with perspectives from other branches of learning. But most of all, I hope we take something away from the fundamental motivation behind all of Visvesvaraya’s interventions: a humanist concern for the material well-being and dignity of the average citizen.
Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist based in Kashmir.
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