CIAO DATE: 01/2014
June 2013
Center for the Advanced Study of India
The first day of Indian independence is popularly identified with Nehru’s famous “tryst with destiny” speech delivered at the Red Fort – the symbolc seat of power at New Delhi, the capital of the new nation. At the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, that the physicist Homi Bhabha had set up two years ago, the day was celebrated quietly, though not without its lessons for the scientists who now had to be nurtured into becoming scientist - citizens. The available records of TIFR do not have any reference to the ceremonies that took place on August 15, 1947. However, the oral history interviews of a scientist present on that day bear testimony to the relationship that was being imagined between nationalism and science.
Resource link: The Laboratory and its Double: The Making of the Scientist-Citizen at TIFR [PDF] - 470K