Forging a Modern Nation: The Nehruvian Vision of Science and Technological Advancement in Postcolonial India

A noteworthy concomitant of India’s independence development was the systematic creation and expansion on the bases of scientific work. Starting in 1950, more than 300 specialized research laboratories were built in different parts of the country, whose equipment and results are generally on a world level. Tens of thousands of scholars engaged in basic research andtechnical engineers have been solving, in these “temples of science1” as Jawaharlal Nehru once called them, the most demanding tasks from the genetics of agricultural crops and utilization of solar energy to electronics and nuclear and space research.2 Like the Indian government’s postulate of economic planning, for instance, or its basic foreign political orientation, this concept too, was formed still during the course of the national liberation movement and its main protagonist, both at the time of freedom struggle and later in his post as Prime Minister of independent India, was Jawaharlal Nehru. Even Ajit Prasad Jain, one of Nehru’s biographers, who certainly was not an uncritical admirer of his, states that “Nehru’s highest contributions toIndia’s development were science and technology.”3 In the words of Homi Bhabha, “So great was his zeal for science and for the scientific approach to life that he missed no opportunity of imparting his views to others. To quote him: ‘You know that whenever the chance offers itself, I say something about the importance of science and its off-shoot, technology. I think, we should realize how modern life is an offspring of science and technology’.”4