Bhatnagar, the chief architect of the network of labs set up under India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He then caught the eye of scientist and technocrat S.S. Returning to India, he conducted pioneering research on Rauwolfina serpentina and other indigenous plants with medicinal properties at the Unani Tibbia and Ayurvedic College in Delhi. Born near Lucknow in 1897, Siddiqui studied at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (the forerunner of Aligarh Muslim University), learnt painting under Rabindranath Tagore in Calcutta and did his doctoral research in Frankfurt. On the other hand, those who grew up in the scientific communities of Lahore or Dhaka but elected to work in India are probably not so well known in Pakistan today.Ĭonsider the career of the chemist Salimuzzaman Siddiqui.

Accomplished scientists who emigrated to Pakistan are all but forgotten in India, even when they had made substantial contributions to Indian institutions early in their careers. For those who lived through the cataclysmic event, their identity is forever defined by which country they chose to settle in afterwards. Ganga Ram died in 1927 but this story, set some two decades later, indicates how Partition would affect the legacies and reputations of scientists and engineers – even posthumously – in what became India and Pakistan. ” That is, the man is sent to a hospital established by the very object of his ire. The story concludes wryly: “ Chunanche marham patti ke liye usé Sir Ganga Ram haspatal bhej diya gaya. As a man tries to place a garland of shoes on the statue, the police arrive on the scene and begin firing, leaving him injured. A mob targets the statue of Sir Ganga Ram, a famous engineer who is credited with the construction of many of Lahore’s landmark buildings, pioneering work in commercial agriculture and many philanthropic initiatives. In a well-known vignette titled Joota (Shoe), the acclaimed Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto describes a riot in Lahore around the time of Partition. The Wire’ s #PartitionAt70 series brings a number of stories, through text and multimedia content that will attempt to draw a comprehensive picture of those weeks and months when entire geographies and histories changed forever.Īparajith Ramnath is a historian of modern science, technology and business. Credit: David Douglas Duncan/Time Life Pictures How did migration impact the professional networks in which scientists functioned? Did they continue academic discussions with their former colleagues on the other side of the border? 1947 saw the partitioning of libraries too.

Tie-Breaker by Aparajith Ramnath