On March 7, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) will host its much-awaited annual “Open Day”, the day on which the general public is welcomed into the hallowed halls of the 117-year-old research institute, and through lectures, live experiments, demonstrations and exhibitions, introduced to the cutting-edge, socially and industrially impactful research its 40-odd departments are currently engaged in.
The first true Indian example of a public-private partnership – in this case, between the institute’s promoter, Bombay-based industrialist and philanthropist JN Tata, who pledged a substantial portion of his personal wealth to the cause, benefactor Maharaja Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar, who made a grant of a little over 370 acres of land in Bangalore, and the colonial government, which supplied the remaining funds after taking an inordinate amount of time to clear the paperwork – IISc continues to occupy the numero uno position among scientific research institutes in India. And even though, in strict adherence to JN Tata’s instructions, the institute never formally bore his name, the memory of his munificence endures; old Bangaloreans – and auto drivers – still refer to it as the Tata Institute.
The institute’s first cohort of 24 students, who joined two years after it was formally inaugurated in May 1909, had the choice of just four departments – three under General and Applied Chemistry, and one in Electrical Technology.
{{/usCountry}}The institute’s first cohort of 24 students, who joined two years after it was formally inaugurated in May 1909, had the choice of just four departments – three under General and Applied Chemistry, and one in Electrical Technology.
{{/usCountry}}Advancements in the industrial, agricultural, and medical fields – plastics, fertilisers, antibiotics – had ensured that chemistry was in vogue, but the choice may also have been a matter of personal taste, expertise and networks; IISc’s first director was the renowned British chemist Morris Travers, who had worked with Nobel laureate Sir William Ramsay on the discovery of rare gases like xenon, neon and krypton. As for electrical technology, with electricity powering all industry, it took urgent and equal priority.
1909 proved to be hugely significant for Mysore on another front – native son Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (Sir MV – he was knighted in 1915), India’s first civil engineer, returned home after a dazzling international career to take over as Chief Engineer of Mysore state. In 1913, putting into action his deep commitment to industrialisation, he founded the Mechanical Engineering School in Bangalore which, in 1917, became the Government Engineering College (today, University of Visvesvaraya College of Engineering), the first such college in a princely state. In the same year, as Dewan of Mysore, Sir MV was nominated to the governing council of IISc, from where he directed the institute away from pure research towards applied research.
That crucial course setting would see IISc’s investigations lead to no less than six factories being set up across India, including a factory to make straw boards from bamboo in Bangalore, over the next five years. Three of those factories would have a significant impact on Mysore’s fortunes.
In 1914, when WWI ensured that the lucrative export of sandalwood to Europe came to a grinding halt, it was IISc that came up with the technology to extract oil from sandalwood, enabling sandal oil factories to be set up in Bangalore and Mysore. The process of incorporating that heady oil into a beloved product – Mysore Sandal Soap – was also IISc’s contribution. Still thriving a century later, the historic Mysore Soap Factory has little chance of fading from public memory; it is now a metro station on the Green Line.
Decades later, as the first President of its Court (1937-1947), Sir MV would continue to direct IISc’s – and Mysore’s – fortunes. It was on his recommendation that the institute established the department of aeronautical engineering in 1942, to take advantage of another wartime opportunity – the repair of American warplanes in the India-Burma theatre of WWII, at the recently founded Hindustan Aircraft Limited in Bangalore.
Once Sir MV and IISc, working in tandem, had thrown open the first gates to industrialization, there would be no looking back for Mysore.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)