The Hindu Business Line : Dreaming up the IITs

It has been acknowledged that the Sarkar Committee’s report was responsible for the move by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Dr Humayun Kabir, Dr B.C. Roy and others to establish the five Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) after Independence. Dr P.V. Indiresan, former Director of IIT Madras, in his article ‘IITs: Invaluable Institutions’ states that “we were lucky to have on the Viceroy’s Executive Council a visionary in Sir Ardeshir Dalal. With a rare foresight, Sir Ardeshir Dalal foresaw that the future prosperity of India would depend not so much on capital as on technology”.

However, what is not commonly known is that the Nobel laureate Prof A.V. Hill, who was a British Royal Society Secretary, had in August 1944 submitted a report titled ‘Scientific Research in India’ to the Government of India on the organisation of scientific and industrial research as part of the country’s post-war reconstruction plan.

In the summer of 1943, the Secretary of State for India had, at the request of the Viceroy, written to the President of the Royal Society asking “whether it is possible for them to spare Professor A.V. Hill” to advise on the organisation of scientific research. Prof Hill arrived in India on November 16, 1943 and visited Aligarh, Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Kanpur, Delhi, Hyderabad, Jamshedpur, Kirkee, Madras, Mysore and Poona, and left on April 5, 1944. He submitted a 40-page report on August 14, 1944.

On page 20 of the report, he says “…there is no institution as yet in the United Kingdom comparable in magnitude, in the quality of equipment and in excellence of teaching and research work, with Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, Mass, USA…” Later in the same page, he states that “the future of Indian industrial and agricultural development must depend upon the supply of first-class technical brains, trained in an atmosphere both of original research and of practical experience. ...one or two technical institutes of the highest possible standing should be founded or developed from the existing ones (e.g., at Bangalore, where the Indian Institute of Science comes most closely of existing institutions to what is wanted)…”

I stumbled upon this historical fact in October 2005, when I was visiting my daughter, Rumya Putcha, a Doctoral student in ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago; they were using Dr Itty Abraham’s book, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb in their study and Prof Hill’s report is mentioned in that book. As an alumnus of IIT Madras, I was intrigued by this information because the (Sir Nalini Ranjan) Sarkar Committee report is widely acknowledged as the impetus for Pandit Nehru and others to establish the IITs.

I showed the book to Dr M.S. Ananth, Director of IIT Madras, when he was visiting Houston in November 2007. Dr Ananth said he was unaware of this fact and that it was not known in the Indian academic or government circles. In the past few months, I also checked with Dr Indiresan and Dr E.C. Subba Rao, Director of Tata Institute of Research Design & Development, Pune and former Dean of Faculty, IIT Kanpur; both were unaware of Prof Hill’s report.

To gain further insights, I got in touch with Dr Abraham at the University of Texas, Austin and he obtained for me a copy of the report from a colleague in Germany.

I discovered from a 1942 Andhra Almanac that Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar was an Executive Council Member responsible for the Department of Education, Health and Lands of the then Governor-General Sir Archibald Wavell. Further, in the preface to his report, Prof Hill acknowledges, “To the Department of Education, Health, and Lands, I would offer special thanks for the care and efficiency of their arrangements...”

My finding is that the Viceroy’s Executive Council Members — initially Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar (1941-43) and subsequently Sir Ardeshir Dalal (June 1944 to January 1946) and Sir Jogendra Singh (July 1942 to 1946) — were aware of Prof Hill’s report. In 1946, Dr Humayun Kabir, a Czar of Education, Government of India, established a 22-member committee and made Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar the Chairman. The Sarkar Committee in its interim draft has improvised Prof Hill’s report and recommended the establishment of “higher technical institutions in the Eastern, Western, Northern, and Southern regions of the country along the model of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. Dr B.C. Roy, then Chief Minister of West Bengal, used that part of the Sarkar Committee report to persuade Prime Minister Nehru to push through a special Act to establish an IIT Kharagpur in 1951. The rest of the IITs were established later, as is well documented.

So, as we IITians celebrate IIT 2008 and the Golden Jubilee of IIT Madras at Chennai, it is appropriate that we remember with gratitude and respect Prof Hill’s vision for scientific research and technical education in Independent India on the lines of the famed MIT.

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