| Chapter 1: | Introduction: Technology and Nationalism in India From Colonialism to Cyberspace |
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Together, they embodied the rationalist vision that informed Nehru’s dreams and aspirations for independent India. Nehru also strongly emphasized the necessity of cultivating the qualities of scientificity, or the “scientific temper,” in Indian society—attributes that embodied a rational enlightened outlook toward the world.42 In Nehru’s vision, the policies of the independent Indian nation-state would reflect the same foundational principle of scientific reason.43
In keeping with Nehru’s dream, with the onset of independence, the Indian state implemented a program of centralized planning and state ownership of heavy industry. Dams, steel plants, hydroelectric plants, and factories constructed across the country were the new symbols of modern India. Industrial development was given pride of place in the new nation. Over fifty years after independence, the Indian state also set up numerous institutes for industrial training, higher education in engineering and technology, and forty-eight national laboratories for applied scientific research.44 In independent India, science was authorized as a “reason of state.”45 It would not be an exaggeration to say that science was conferred with a quasi-religious sanctity. Visvanathan notes that “Dams and laboratories were literally the temples of India.”46 The policies of the Nehruvian state also ensured that the institutions of scientific research and development planning were placed outside the political process and immunized from the demands of popular politics.47 In postcolonial India, a scientific and technological education, especially from the premier educational institutions, operated as a marker of talent and capability and ensured job opportunities and security. Those holding an education or an occupation designated as scientific and technological were perceived as working in the service of the nation, a perception that was internalized and echoed by the Indian people—especially, but not only, socioeconomic elites.
It is one of the profound ironies of Indian history that the technology professionals in India and the United States who vocally advocate the causes of Hindutva and lambaste Nehruvian nationalism owe a significant debt to Nehru’s vision of modern India. They are the beneficiaries of the Indian state’s socialist policy of subsidizing higher education.