Dispersed Radiance Women Scientists in C. V. Raman's LaboratoryAuthor(s): Abha SurReviewed work(s):Source: Meridians, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring, 2001), pp. 95-127Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40338457 .Accessed: 06/02/2012 00:37

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Dispersed Radiance Women Scientists in C. V. Raman's Laboratory ABHA SUR

I can never forget the way he treated me just because I was a woman. -Kamala Sohonie, Biochemist

But you make too much of my "equanimity," Sonya. It is simply my way When I suffer not to utter a word -Jane Cooper, "Threads: Rosa Luxumber^j jrom Prison"

I had barely introduced my project on writing a history of women scien- tists in India to Professor Anna Mani, when one of her colleagues at the Raman Research Institute came over to us. Mani, with a quizzical smile turned to her colleague and introduced me: "Meet Dr. Sur. She is from America and thinks I am history." I mumbled incoherent protests but to no avail. She continued questioning my gendered motivations and their American origins, thoroughly amused by my obvious discomfiture. "Why do you want to interview me? My being a woman had absolutely no bear- ing on what I chose to do with my life. What is this hoopla about women and science? They wanted me to participate in one such session in Trieste as well. It must be getting difficult for women to do science these days. We had no such problems in our time" (Mani 1993).

The disjunction between Anna Mani's perceptions of women in science in India and the lived reality of the majority of Indian women could not have been more acute. In 1913, the year of Mani's birth, the literacy rate for women in India stood at less than 1 percent. The total number of women enrolled in colleges (that is, above grade ten) was less than one thousand (Louis 1986). By the time Mani went to college in the 1930s, things had improved only marginally and opportunities for women

[Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 2001, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 95-127] ©2001 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.

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to pursue science were few and far between. There was a consensus at that time that education for women should be tailored to their particu- lar roles as mothers and homemakers.1 However, failures at the level of whole systems often have little or no bearing on selective successes. Statistical reality gives no indication of the experience of those who belie the probabilities.

Mani, who had risen to the post of the assistant director general of India's meteorological society and, at the time I spoke with her, was run- ning her own environmental enterprise after retirement, was being nei- ther facetious nor ironic when she claimed that women did not encounter many difficulties in pursuing science in her time. To be sure, Mani was not referring to ordinary women, rather, her "we" happened to be a highly selective and privileged group of women whose urban, upper-caste, and Western-educated families ensured their individual access to higher edu- cation.2 Even so, Mani's summary dismissal of the influence of gender in science warrants greater scrutiny. It is, on the one hand, typical of the

response of successful women scientists all over the world and, on the other, reflective of her particular circumstances in the context of Indian society. Following the lead of feminist critics of science in the West, one could attribute Mani's denial of the significance of gender to an internal- ized acquiescence to dominant ideologies which emphasize the objectiv- ity and neutrality of scientific knowledge.3

However, through many extended conversations with Anna Mani, I came to realize that while she accepted implicitly the standard criterion for success in science and guarded zealously her hard-earned recogni- tion, she was deeply aware of and willing to discuss the pervasive but very personalized gender discrimination women endured as scientists. She seemed implicitly to differentiate between social relations in laboratories, which mimicked gender relations of the society at large, and the bureau- cratic structures of scientific and technical institutions, which touted their "gender-blind" rules and regulations. Her "disavowal of difference" then could be read as simultaneously an assertion of equity with men insofar as evaluative structures in science were concerned and an expres- sion of identification with Indian women in general who faced gender discrimination in many, if not all, aspects of their lives. In this respect, for women, doing science was not any more difficult than or qualitatively different from pursuing a career in literature or history.

In this essay, through a collective history of Anna Mani and her two women colleagues Lalitha Chandrasekhar and Sunanda Bai- all of them

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graduate students in C.V. Raman's laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in the 1940s, I explore the enabling (and disabling) aspects of culture in the making of women scientists in India. I want to understand how nationalism and its incumbent cultural norms enabled women's entry into and survival in science and how family structures and class position mediated their careers. I will differentiate between the dominant nationalist ideology and its selective appropriation and modi- fication by women- what one might call received nationalism. Women, especially through their participation in all forms of nationalist struggles, from political opposition and mass nonviolent resistance to revolution-

ary armed struggle, developed their own understanding of nationalism which guided their participation in all aspects of Indian polity. I also want to revisit the question of gender identities in science. I have already indi- cated that Mani's disavowal of gender significance is qualified, and

yet this reading itself needs further elaboration, tied as it is to the myth of gender-neutral institutions, to coerced womanhood, and to types of affirmative gender identities .

Unlike standard biographies, which inevitably focus on individual

struggles and triumphs, a collective biography of similarly situated indi- viduals can highlight interactions of groups of people with society and can thus be more effective in unraveling salient processes of cultural transformations.4 However, the paucity of both primary and secondary sources and the lack of archives make the task of writing the history of women scientists, let alone a collective history, especially arduous. This

essay is based on extensive conversations with Professor Anna Mani, who

provided biographical information not only about herself but also about two of her female colleagues in Raman's laboratory. I also interviewed several contemporaries of Mani who provided insights and background material for understanding the social and cultural milieu of the period.5 My own experience in the practice of science helped in large measure in

eliciting from Mani a retrospective at times at odds with interviews that she had given earlier. Nonetheless, the scope of this essay is circum- scribed by Anna Mani's perceptions and recollections, refracted and sifted through my own understanding of science and society in India.

I have embedded the biographies of Lalitha Chandrasekhar, Sunanda Bai, and Anna Mani within the general social history of women's educa- tion in India. This format allows for a fluidity of movement between indi- viduals and society at large, where issues of nationalism, cultural prac- tices, and the imperatives of class privileges and family come to the fore.

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Visible Careers, Invisible Lives

It is estimated that there are more than a million women scientists in India today.6 The figure is impressive whichever way one might look at it. The fact that one out of every four scientists in India today is a woman seems implausible given that just three generations ago, in the 1900s, there were only a handful of women enrolled at the collegiate level and these included women in all disciplines (See Krishnaraj 1991 and Jaya- wardena 1986). And yet, women scientists appear neither in scholarship on women nor in scholarship on science.7 Different not only from their male colleagues, but also, and perhaps more important, from their non- scientist sisters, the women scientists implicitly challenge the accepted frameworks for historical analysis. Thus, the historians of science in India remain oblivious of, or indifferent to, women's presence in the field and their contributions to it.

The history and philosophy of science in India, until recently, have been

conceptualized within two broad frameworks. One exalts tradition and sees the enterprise of science as a continuation of the colonial onslaught in India, violating indigenous scientific traditions and practices (see, e.g., Sheshadri 1994, Nandi 1990, and Shiva 1989). The other rejects tradition as moribund and superstitious and embraces modern science as a means of salvation out of the morass of economic and social stagnation (Sheshadri 1994). In both these accounts, modern science becomes a bor- rowed activity forced upon a culture alien to its methods and modes. One laments the impact of colonial science on traditional Indian society, while the other decries the persistence of archaic cultural practices. Both frame- works implicitly ascribe a strict rigidity and ahistoricity to "tradition," while the "modern" is seen as all encompassing, open, and accommo- dating. Both in their own way deny the capacity of human agency to absorb, contemplate, and modify received bodies of knowledge in order to transform their own societies.8 Not surprisingly, the women scientists of India, repositories of the tradition, spirituality, and inner essence of India as women, and simultaneously the embodiment of the modern, material and Western as scientists, find no place in these accounts.9

More recent critiques, which promote a more nuanced view of post- colonial science, suggest that science was simultaneously alienating and counter-hegemonic for its practitioners in India. The estrangement derived from the discourse of science was imbued with the dogma of domination, while its execution in the cultural idioms of India

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destabilized its meaning and dispersed its authority and hence made it counter-hegemonic (see, e.g., Prakash 1999). The overarching centrality of colonial domination in these critiques subsumes the more local imper- atives of class, caste, and gender except in a very superficial way. Thus, these discussions, too, remain steadfastly silent on the question of women scientists in India. Yet women scientists are crucial to under- standing the social process of science in India as they interface between the competing forces of modernity and tradition, a struggle in which the

impetus to transform material reality by advanced science and technology invariably is punctuated by the desire to keep intact India's spiritual and cultural sanctity.

The entry of women into advanced science was unobtrusive, though not uncontested. Kamala Sohonie, the top student at her undergraduate university in 1933, recounts that C.V. Raman, 1930 Nobel laureate in

physics and unarguably India's preeminent physicist in the twentieth

century, was less than welcoming to women students. She had applied for admission to the graduate studies program at the Indian Institute of Science only to be dismissed by Raman, who reportedly retorted, "I am not going to take any girls in my institute." When Sohonie confronted him, he relented and admitted her, although not as a regular student. Sohonie completed her course of study with distinction in 1936 and went on to earn a doctoral degree from Cambridge University.10 Although heroic stories of valor and courage where defiant women triumph against all odds to gain acceptance in the male-dominated realm of science are few, the accounts by women scientists underscore their ingenuity in mak-

ing the best of a less than perfect situation.11

C.V. Raman: A Brief Biography

The Indian Institute of Science was the brainchild ofjamsetji Tata, India's

leading industrialist. Founded in 1909 by his benefaction, the institute's mission was to promote original investigations in all branches of knowl-

edge and to foster the close association of scientific research with indus-

try (Subbarayappa 1992). C. V. Raman was appointed the director of the institute and the professor and head of the physics department in 1933. Raman was the most distinguished scientist in India. He was born in November 1888 into an upper caste Brahmin family in the southern state of Tamilnadu, and by the age of nineteen he had obtained a master's

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degree in physics and had published his first independent paper in the

Philosophical Magazine. Opportunities for research careers for Indians were nonexistent, unless one had been trained in Britain. Consequently, Raman joined the Financial Civil Service as assistant accountant general and was posted in Calcutta, where he came into contact with the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (iacs). iacs was "entirely under native management and control" and was a forum for discussing new ideas in scientific developments (A Century of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, 5). The laboratories of the association pro- vided a remarkable opportunity for Raman to pursue experimental research in physics. In the ten years he spent in Calcutta, working days as an accountant and early mornings and nights doing science, he pub- lished twenty-seven scientific papers, including many in the prestigious British journal Nature (Venkataraman 1988).

In 1917, despite an almost 50 percent cut in his salary, Raman accepted the Palit chair in physics at Calcutta University, where he devoted all his time to research and teaching. Raman's particular strength lay in the

study of waves. His work on optics, vibrations, and musical instruments shows a profound understanding of the nature of waves. His many con- tributions include studies on the blue color of the sea, on whispering gal- leries, on the acoustics of the violin, veena (an Indian string instrument), and various percussion instruments, oh colors in nature, on crystal dynamics, and on lattice dynamics. Raman is best known for his discov- ery of the effect named after him, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.12

In 1933 Raman moved from Calcutta to Bangalore to assume the direc- torship of the Indian Institute of Science. His directorship was, however, short-lived. Raman soon was embroiled in major conflicts at the institute. He was seen as an autocrat determined to build his own department of physics at the cost of seriously undermining other programs. Students outside the physics department and other faculty members mounted strong opposition, and a committee was appointed to look into Raman's leadership. The Irvine Committee, as it came to be known, recommended that Raman step down from the director's position and stay on at the institute as a professor of physics.13 Raman complied with these recom- mendations; he gave up the directorship in 1937 but continued as a pro- fessor of physics at the Institute.

Lalitha Chandrasekhar joined Raman's research laboratory in 1936, in

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the midst of his most turbulent year at the institute, while Sunanda Bai and Anna Mani followed a few years later, in 1939 and 1940, respectively.

Colonialism, Social Reform, and Women's Education

The entry of women into higher education depended crucially upon the social reform movement and the educational programs of missionaries in nineteenth century India. Indian reformers saw women's education as essential for the elimination of such social evils as child marriage, sati, polygamy, and the denial of property rights to widowed women.14

They further saw education as a means to "improve women's efficiency as wives and mothers and strengthen the hold of traditional values on

society, since women are better carriers of these values" (Jayawardena 1986, 88).

The social reform movement and the efforts of Christian missionaries found ready acceptance amongst the emerging professional class of Indians. "For many men of the times, the aspirations to educate a wife or a daughter became a driving passion- pushing them to disregard the sentiments or even the protests both of the women they were educating and other members of the family" (Chitnis 1992) . Anandi Gopal Joshi, the first Hindu woman to study medicine in America (she received her degree in medicine in 1886) was coerced into "schooling" by her authoritarian husband, who later denounced university education for women

(Chakravarty 1998, 211-15). The introduction of English education in India gradually gave rise to

new social structures and ideologies that made possible women's entry into higher education. By the 1880s women had started graduating from universities, although the number of women in colleges and universities was very low. Calcutta University accepted women students on its rolls before the University of London (Borthwick 198). Chandramukhi Bose and Kadambini Ganguli graduated from Calcutta University in 1883. Kadambini Ganguli and Ananda Gopal Joshi were among the earliest women physicians in India. The newness of scientific institutions in India

protected the women somewhat from the historically entrenched gender bias of the old universities and scientific societies in the West.15 The officials of Calcutta University agreed quite readily to admitting women to degree programs upon a request from Chandramukhi Bose to sit for

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the entrance examination in 1876, and by 1878 the Calcutta University syndicate had formulated and approved policies for women candidates (A Hundred Years of Calcutta University 1957, 121-22; Murshid 1983, 48-50).

More important, as women began to get educated, some became more aware of their subjugation by men and began to write with greater assur- ance about the reasons for their low status in society. "God certainly does not wish that only men would enjoy the pleasure of learning and women the agony of ignorance. On the contrary, He has given men and women the same physical and mental abilities so that both can enjoy endless hap- piness by acquiring the wealth of learning" wrote Madhumati Ganguli in Bamabodhini Patrika, a monthly magazine for women started in 1863 (Ganguli 1864, cited in Murshid 1983, 53). Saudamini Debi wrote a year later, "Why should men keep us in such deplorable condition? Aren't we the daughters of God? Isn't it unjust to deprive women of education, which alone could give them the "heavenly" pleasure now being enjoyed by men alone?" (Debi 1865, cited in Murshid 1983, 55). The social reform movement, howsoever selective and circumscribed it may have been in its

adaptation or adoption of Western liberalism, nonetheless expanded significantly the educational opportunities available to women in India (see Sarkar 1985).

Nationalism, Science, and Women Scientists

The importance of science and technology in generating the material wealth of a nation had been firmly established by the late nineteenth cen-

tury. Modern science had made its impact on India through the various scientific institutions -such as the Geological, Meteorological, Zoolog- ical, Botanical, Archeological and Trigonometric Surveys- established

by the British. Indian nationalism was not oblivious to the obvious supe- riority of the West in this domain. Partha Chatterji has argued that nation- alism in India, in its quest for reconciling opposition to colonialism with fascination for science, implicitly divided the cultural sphere into mate- rial and spiritual domains. In the material domain, science and technol-

ogy took center stage as the Indian intelligentsia demanded and estab- lished technical and research institutions of their own. At the same time, the spiritual domain became the venue for the expression of national culture and self-identity. This not only allowed the nationalists to retain a sense of their own spiritual superiority as they strove to adopt the

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material ways of the colonialists, but created gendered dichotomies as well. The material domain was public and masculine, while the spiri- tual became private and feminine (see Chatterji 1989).

While Chatterji's analysis perhaps is useful in explaining the persist- ence of certain patriarchal structures, the stark absence of the voices of women themselves from his study precludes a more nuanced under-

standing of gender relations. The nationalism of individuals and of

marginal groups, often significantly different from the ideologies and intentions of dominant leaders, played a disproportionate role in social and cultural transformation. Women were prominent and visible in the nationalist struggle. They were in the forefront of the nonviolent resist- ance, they participated in the growing movement of political opposition, and they were actively involved even in the so-called terrorist organiza- tions. Their experience necessarily engendered a very different notion of

nationalism, in which the line between the public and private domains became increasingly blurred. Indeed, after independence women did not

just recede into their private oblivion but continued to play an active role in public life. Thus, in order to understand the nexus of gender and

nationalism, it is imperative that we heed not only the organized and articulate agenda of the male leaders but also the oppositional and at times contradictory voices on the periphery.

There is little doubt that women's education was further consolidated in the nationalist phase. The question now was not whether women should be educated but rather what kind of education was suitable for them. By far the general consensus was that their education must be cog- nizant of women's distinct role in society. Mahatma Gandhi reflected the dominant view of educated Indians: "As Nature has made men and women different, it is necessary to maintain a difference between the edu- cation of the two. True, they are equals in life, but their functions differ. It is woman's right to rule the home. Man is master outside it. Man is the earner. Woman spends and saves.... In this scheme of Nature, and it is

just as it should be, woman should not have to earn her living."16 The assertion of biological difference, and consequently the legit-

imization of sexual division of labor, in the writing of Gandhi is hardly surprising. The material /spiritual, outer /inner, public /private, and masculine /feminine dichotomies have been the mainstay of Western liberalism as well.17 However, the particular ways in which sexual dichotomies operated in the nationalist discourse and in the cultural substrate of Indian society were markedly different. The pursuit of

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science as a higher calling, a quest for knowledge of the natural world made it more of a spiritual than material endeavor. Reflecting upon "the age of intellect," of science, Rabindranath Tagore wrote: "We all know that intellect is impersonal. Our life, and our heart, are one with us, but our mind can be detached from the personal man and then only can it freely move in its world of thoughts. Our intellect is an ascetic who wears no clothes, takes no food, knows no sleep, has no wishes, feels no love or hatred or pity for human limitations, who only reasons, unmoved through the vicissitudes of life. It burrows to the roots of things, because it has no concern with the thing itself" (Tagore [1950] 1985, 20).

The element of sacrifice evinced in the unceasing quest for knowledge, coupled with the relative insignificance of the rational/emotional and the objective/subjective dichotomies in Eastern philosophies, perhaps made it more agreeable for Indian women to pursue science.18 The Indian polity contained radically different strains of thought on this question. Addressing the audience at the foundation-laying ceremony of a college for women in Allahabad in 1928, Nehru was openly critical of the col- lege's prospectus, which claimed that "woman's place was in the home, and that her duty was to be a devoted wife, bringing up her children skill- fully" (Jayawardena 1986, 98).

The demand for equality in education, although voiced by a minority, was nonetheless persistent. In 1916 the Indian Government had recom- mended a thorough and exhaustive review of the University of Calcutta. The Calcutta University Commission was formed and solicited the opin- ions of leading academicians, community leaders, and government officials on all aspects of Calcutta University. The twelve-volume report generated by the commission runs into several thousand pages. The voices of women are entirely absent in this report, except on the question of women. Here too, however, women are in the minority- of more than one hundred responses, women contributed fewer than twenty. Most respondents decry "purdah" (veil), show concern about the delicate health of women and the strain examinations put on them, and suggest a softer curriculum, which will allow students to hone the skills of moth- erhood and homemaking. Others, albeit in a tiny minority campaigned for gender equality (Calcutta University Commission Report [hereafter Report] 1919, chap. 14, vol. 12).

More often than not it was the younger women who took up the cause of gender equality in education. The response from the students of the all- women Bethune College was striking both in its diametric opposition to

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the conventional wisdom and in the emphasis it placed on science edu- cation for women. The Bethune students argued categorically against a

separate university for women, claiming that gender segregation neces-

sarily would limit competition. Their primary concern was that standards

might be lowered for an exclusively women's university, and they did not want women to lag behind men. The students lamented that "if the standards were lower than that among men, we women could not stand

properly by the side of our brothers. " They further recommended that "in the mufassal where colleges for men exist women students should be admitted. This would give many girls the opportunity of having a college education who at present cannot find a seat in the Calcutta colleges or whose parents, for a variety of reasons, do not see their way to sending them to colleges in Calcutta" (Report: 409, 410). They demanded that Bethune College, without delay, begin to offer courses leading to the hon- ors degree standard in "philosophy, economics, history, mathematics, geography, botany, and in the other science subjects, such as physics, chemistry, physiology, zoology, as soon as the latter can be introduced"

(Report, 409). The Association of University Women in India, although not quite as

progressive as the students of Bethune College, nonetheless recom- mended "better science teaching" in women's colleges (Report, 459). Support for science in women's education stemmed from multiple considerations. The Association of University Women no doubt was reit-

erating the need felt by the colonial state for trained professional women in medicine and teaching (Pearson 1982, 139-40). The Bethune College students, however, seemed equally concerned with equality of the sexes as with the occupational needs of society.

The assertion of equality of sexes in the demands of the women stu- dents emphasizes that women were not simply passive recipients of the dominant nationalist ideologies. Rather they developed and asserted their own understanding of the role women would play in modern India. Lalitha Chandrasekhar, Sunanda Bai, and Anna Mani had entered univer- sities in the late 1920s and mid 1930s. The social and political milieu in this post world-war era was decidedly anti-imperialist. The fervor of the

independence movement, the mobilization of large numbers of women in grassroots political opposition, and the rhetoric of women's emanci-

pation in left-wing politics permeated the consciousness of women students of Anna Mani's generation. Socialist politics had entered a

variety of student, youth, and peasant organizations which became

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increasingly aware of the need to integrate nationalism with social jus- tice. Reminiscing about her university days Mani recalled, "In those days, we had respect only for the leftists." Both Sunanda Bai and Anna Mani

gravitated toward socialist politics during their years in graduate school. According to Mani, they associated with left-leaning people, read social- ist literature, and considered themselves quite "enlightened." Egalitarian politics thus became an integral part of their ideological makeup.

Mani remembered how impressed both she and Bai had been with

Sarojini Naidu's presidency of the Indian National Congress. Naidu, an eminent poet and a respected nationalist leader, symbolized the new Indian woman for her- an independent and self-assured woman who could scale new heights. As a child, Mani had been drawn to Gandhian

politics, particularly to Gandhi's vision of swaraj (self-rule). Gandhi had visited Mani's hometown when she was a little girl. He spoke there of self- reliance and self-help and promoted a large-scale boycott of foreign goods, especially of cloth from British mills. Mani recalled, with a touch of pride, how she took to wearing only khadi, the homespun Indian cloth, after hearing his talk. In spite of this influence, Mani, did not share Gandhi's views on women's education, nor did she imitate his renuncia- tion of modern industrial civilization. Similarly, Asima Chatterjee, the eminent natural-products chemist at Calcutta University who grew up in a devout Brahmo household, is an ardent follower of the social reformer

Vivekananda, who, among other proposals, prescribed that women should not be educated in modern sciences but should be trained to achieve fulfillment within the family. Heedless of Vivekananda's views in this area, Chatterjee has devoted herself entirely to the cause of science.

Long retired from Calcutta University, she continues to put in a ten-hour

day at her laboratory overseeing the work of her research assistants

(Chatterjee 1977, Chatterjee 1995). The claims of some critics that pursuing Western science would neces-

sarily be alienating for Indians notwithstanding, neither Anna Mani nor Asima Chatterjee expressed any qualms about doing science. On the con-

trary, at least during Mani's and Chatterjee's careers, most scientists in India felt that creating a strong base for science and technology was a pro- ductive and nationalist endeavor. Anna Mani's admiration for Gandhi and Asima Chatterjee's devotion to Vivekananda is also not incongruous with their careers. While both the women implicitly rejected certain

aspects of these reformers' philosophies, both voluntarily took up a Gandhian way of life and Chatterjee assumed a devoutly religious

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perspective as well. Indeed, this selective adoption of certain cultural norms of nationalism helped, rather than hindered, their career choices. The strict adherence to a simple and virtuous life made doing science a

higher calling, a kind of asceticism. It helped dissolve the public/private dichotomy, as the integrity of the private feminine domain with its incum- bent social norms easily could be transported to the public sphere.

The Role of Family

Within the constraints of colonial education and nationalist ideology, the

background of her family, more than any other social institution, deter- mined whether a woman would pursue higher studies or not. Active sup- port for the pursuit of science was not necessary, benign indifference was

enough. The middle and upper classes, to which almost all of the scien- tific personnel in India belong, felt little need to link women's education to employment opportunities. Education for women was seen by the fam-

ily as a means to become better and more informed wives and mothers. It mattered little, therefore, whether a woman studied literature or history or chemistry or physics, as long as college education did not destabilize the hierarchical family structure. However circumscribed, women's admission to higher education ensured that a few women would end up studying even the most unlikely of disciplines.

However, detached from employment opportunities and active partic- ipation in society at large, women's education acquired an ornamental

status, at least in the eyes of the family. Anna Mani, who is averse to wear-

ing any form of jewelry, told me that on her eighth birthday when she was offered diamond earrings, as had become a custom in her family, she

opted instead for a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Anna Mani continued, "In the olden days they would compile all the family assets on papyrus. If a woman's worth had to be measured by her jewelry and assets, wouldn't it be easier for the woman to wear a list of these assets around her neck?" Aware of the growing schism between her perspective and her family's, Anna Mani "got on pretty much on her own" especially after she left her home to pursue a bachelor's degree in physics honors at Presidency College, Madras.

Anna Mani came from a large family (she is the seventh of eight chil-

dren, three girls and five boys) in the state of Travancore in the southern

part of India. Her father was a prosperous civil engineer who owned

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cardamom estates. Although Mani's family belonged to an ancient Syrian Christian church, her father was an agnostic. The state of Travancore was one of the few states in India where matrilineal traditions prevailed. "Education of both girls and boys was free and was almost compulsory up to high school, thanks to the maharani of the state/' Mani informed me.

By the time she was eight, Mani had read almost all the books in Malyalam at her public library.

One of the youngest children in the family, Mani followed her brothers, who were groomed for high-level careers in government service, rather than her sisters. While there was no persistent opposition to her desire for higher education in physics from her family, there was little encour- agement. Her brothers, on the other hand, had been supported in pursu- ing their careers. Retrospectively, Anna Mani was not in the least bit trou- bled by the differential treatment meted out to her. She seemed fiercely independent as she told me that her parents had had little impact on her decision to pursue a career in physics and to go abroad for meteorologi- cal training. While she was critical of her brothers' decision to work for the British in India, she justified her own acceptance of a British scholar-

ship on the grounds that "they thought it was their money but I knew it was ours." Here Mani was repeating what was in her young adulthood a standard complaint of the Indians with respect to budget allocation. In 1920-21, for instance, while the net imperial revenue was more than Rs 14 trillion, the total annual expenditure on education per head remained abysmally low, a mere Rs. 0.74 (Basu 1974, 96).

Sunanda Bai, the second woman student in Raman's laboratory, came from a Brahmin family from the province of Maharashtra. She is no longer living, and in conversations with several of her peers at Raman's laboratory, I was able to piece together only a few basic facts about her. She was married off at an early age but lived an independent life. Mani thought that Sunada Bai's husband was a liberal man who may have encouraged Bai to pursue higher education. At Benares Hindu University, from which Bai obtained her Master's degree in physics, she had lived in a women's dormitory. She joined Raman's laboratory in 1939 as a gradu- ate student in physics at the Indian Institute of Science. In Bangalore, too, she lived alone; her husband, who resided some two hundred kilometers away, visited her occasionally. Most of her colleagues and friends, how- ever, did not know her marital status, and there were frequent aspersions in Raman's laboratory about how only women who are unable to get mar- ried take up the study of physics (Mani 1993).

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Lalitha Chandrasekhar, Raman's first woman student, came from a

family which had been especially influenced by social reforms.19 Lalitha's maternal aunt Subalakshmi had become, by the age of eleven, a child widow. The lot of widows in India used to be, and, to a large extent, con- tinues to be particularly harsh. Tradition demanded that when a child widow reached puberty, her hair was to be shaved off, she was not to wear any ornaments, and she was only permitted to wear a coarse cotton sari. The child widow was doomed to live as a maid in a relative's house for the rest of her life. Not only that, she had to keep away from all religious func- tions, for she was considered a bad omen. Subalakshmi's father, whose own sister had gone through this devastating life, could not bear to see his daughter forced into a similar situation. He resolved to educate not

only his widowed daughter but all of his five daughters. Subalakshmi received a B.A. degree in 1911 with honors- she had outperformed all the men in her year.

Subalakshmi was educated in a missionary school. Christian mission- aries who took up the task of educating women and girls "were keen to use education for proselytizing and for ensuring that, if the women became Christians, there would be no lapses back to the old beliefs

by male converts" (Jayawardena 1986, 81). Despite fear of conversion

attempts and of association with lower caste women, which kept most

upper-caste Hindus from participating in the missionary efforts, Subalakshmi's father opted for missionary education for his daughters because the alternative was much too dreadful. Subalakshmi eventually converted to Christianity and ran a teacher's training school for widows from her home. She dedicated her life to women's education and the rehabilitation of widows.

Subalakshmi had a deep influence on young Lalitha. Lalitha's father was a physician who died when Lalitha was barely ten years old.

Consequently Lalitha, with her mother and her two elder sisters, moved in with her grandparents. In their household, women's education was by then taken for granted. Lalitha's sisters went on to become physicians. Lalitha herself opted for a master's degree in physics at Presidency College in Madras, from which she graduated in 1931.

Lalitha Chandrasekhar wanted to pursue graduate research in physics but her family would not consider sending an unmarried girl to England for further studies (see Wali 1991). She taught physics and science at a high school in Madras for a year and then went to Delhi to teach at a women's medical school, Lady Harding Medical College. She

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subsequently returned to South India and joined Raman's laboratory in 1935.

In August 1936, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, her classmate in

physics at Presidency College, returned from Cambridge for a brief visit. Lalitha and Chandrasekhar had kept up their college friendship through frequent correspondence, and it was no surprise to anyone when within two months of his arrival, the two had married. Chandrasekhar and Lalitha left India soon and subsequently settled in America. Lalitha took courses in astrophysics and astronomy at the observatory at Williams Bay, Illinois, where Chandrasekhar taught, but she decided not to pursue research. It is clear from accounts of Chandrasekhar' s life that Lalitha gave up her aspirations of a career in science to provide support for her husband. Chandra, as he was known, went on to become a renowned astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, and won the Nobel Prize in 1983.

Unlike Anna Mani, who was the only one of three sisters to have pur- sued higher education, Lalitha Chandrasekhar came from a family of

highly educated women. Three of her aunts were teachers and both of her sisters were physicians. Yet, Lalitha gave up her own aspirations for a research career to devote herself to her husband. "I had to give up the idea of further studies," Lalitha tells Kameshwar Wali, Chandra's biogra- pher. "Chandra was not too happy about it: he felt that I was ready to undertake a research problem, but I made the decision not to continue since I felt that I would not be able to devote my full time. I understood that Chandra had to give most of his time to his science. That is the way a scientist is made."

The incompatibility of marriage and a career in science seems to be a recurrent theme in the lives of women scientists in colonial India. Anna Mani is most candid about it. She has never regretted her decision to remain single. Her elder sister was married at the age of seventeen, and

according to Mani "could have used her brain more usefully had she not married." Mani could "handle only one Syrian Christian at a time" as, in her own words, they were always "hatching, matching, and dispatching." Alamelu Venkataraman, a contemporary of Mani with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Madras University, voices a similar sentiment: "Once you get into science, marriage becomes troublesome. You can neither do one nor the other" (Venkataraman, 1993). Alamelu Venkataraman did marry a fellow biochemist but chose to remain in India to pursue her career when he moved to New Jersey.

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The lives of these women scientists reveal the cracks that had begun to

appear in the largely traditional even if "embattled" family structures of the nineteenth century (see Chakravarty 1998 and Sangari 1991). The new

generation of women, who had access to higher institutes of learning, began slowly to erode the worldview of the older generation of women who had been schooled to please their men. They began to confront the contradictions between marriage and doing science by charting out their own trajectories, and marriage was often subordinated to work.

Gender Blind Science?

The reasons behind women's entry into scientific disciplines remain

something of an enigma. What motivated the women to study physics in the first place, when there was neither precedent nor encouragement to do so? I sensed in Anna Mani a very matter of fact view of her life and achievements. She saw nothing unusual in her pursuing physics in an era where it was possible to count all the women physicists in India on one's

fingertips. There were no stories of an intrinsic love for physics, nor of an insatiable thirst to understand the natural world. Of the many options available for graduate studies, she chose physics because she happened to be good in the subject.

Familial pressures and cultural taboos that prevented most women from pursuing any higher education, let alone science, became mere abstractions for the women who were allowed to enroll in the universi- ties. It was the outsiders and the women who did not make it into the world of science who saw and felt intimidated by social forces. Women

scientists, imbued with the promise of a new era and confidence in their own ability, ignored, for the most part, the hostility they encountered from some of their male colleagues. For the successful, achievements overshadowed personal struggle, and the deep capacity for endurance into which women are often socialized made their particular difficulties seem trivial.

In an interview granted to the Bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization (hereafter Bulletin ofwMO 1992, 287-97), Anna Mani states, "For myself, I must say that at no time did I experience professional dis- crimination as a woman in what was considered largely a man's world. I did not feel I was either penalized or privileged because of being female."

Having been schooled in feminist and cultural critiques of science, I had

DISPERSED RADIANCE III

been inclined to read Mani's response as typical of established women scientists, who have been perceived, by and large, as being inattentive to

gender.20 However, Mani's assertions that the institutions of science were

gender neutral reflected neither insensitivity to women's condition nor a

strategic ploy to ensure a place in science by decrying attention to difference. Rather, Mani probably saw herself as a beneficiary of the insti- tutional and social privileges that accrued to her class, in comparison with which the individualized gender discrimination encountered in

doing science, painful as it might have been, would fade into insignifi- cance. Indeed Anna Mani seemed acutely aware of the subtle and overt differences between the men and the women of her generation of schol- ars. The twenty women who sailed with her to Britain were "remarkably broadminded" and "socially conscious/' she recalled, while some of the men, especially her juniors at the Meteorological Department were quite "resentful" of her success.

Another likely explanation of Mani's attitude is nationalism. National- ist ideology, which had a profound influence on women scientists of that era, tended to mask class, caste, and gender differences as it asserted a self-conscious and self-confident Indian identity. Her insistence on

downplaying gender in science can also be seen as a form of resistance to coercive identities imposed in the society at large, which limited women's

potential. It did not entail a blanket denial of all difference but rather the denial of those formulations that posited different intellectual capabili- ties in men and women. Anna Mani displayed a healthy disdain for victim

politics as well. To the extent that the discourse of discrimination carries with it aspersions of inequality, so that personal achievement and success become contaminated with "special consideration" and patronage, the stoic and proud Anna Mani would have no part of it. "I had worked hard to gain my academic qualifications and was judged fit to carry out the work that was needed," she would insist when asked whether her being a woman had any impact on her work. "Selection for the scholarships at

Bangalore and in the United Kingdom had nothing to do with one's sex" (Bulletin of wmo 1992).

Yet, as I asked Anna Mani about the social environment and the support of her peers, a deep-seated hurt and anger surfaced anew. "He was an odi- ous man," she said, referring to a colleague who had done his best to make the women feel inept both as scientists and as women. Any slight error the women made in handling instrumentation or in setting up an

experiment was immediately broadcast by some men as a sign of female

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incompetence.21 When Mani and Bai audited a course on theoretical

physics, it was generally assumed that the material would be beyond their ken (which Mani, with her characteristic humor, admits it was).

Educational and research institutions are seen primarily as gender- blind admission granting bodies concerned only with merit and excel- lence in their pursuit of knowledge, and not as cultural and social sites. This helps perpetuate the myth of gender neutrality in science. The gen- der and caste prejudices embedded in the interactions of the laboratory are not seen as reproductions of the social relations of the society at large, but as individual actions. The merit -based admission process helped to establish the gender-neutral credentials of the institutions. However, the academic credentials of the women students were brought into question again and again by some of their male colleagues as every action of theirs was minutely scrutinized with suspicion and doubt, undermining their

position and slowly eroding their sense of belonging to the laboratory. Women students received more than their share of the ridicule and

banter so pervasive in the life of a university. Every woman student was

given a derisive "nickname." The women seemed to have taken the ban- ter in stride, seeing it as a part of university rituals. But whereas Anna Mani related to me the names given to some of her colleagues in the

chemistry department, she steadfastly refused to reveal the name given to her or to Sunanda Bai. The nicknames were well thought out. They struck at the core of the woman's personality, setting her apart from the other women students. The cultural images embodied in this process de-cen- ter the focus from the collective treatment of a social group to an individ- ual peculiarity. The women, even as they were targets of this insidious

practice, participated in the game, masking their individual embarrass- ment in the jovial mockery of their friends.

The Laboratory as a Differential Space

Women scientists were not immune to social and cultural taboos, despite the demands of their new vocations. The segregation by sex insisted upon by Indian society found its way into the research laboratories, severely limiting the intellectual contact so essential for full participation in sci- entific life. Raman maintained a strict separation of sexes in his labora-

tory. Mani and Bai for the most part worked alone, isolated from their

peers. The crucial practice of discussion and debate about scientific ideas

DISPERSED RADIANCE II3

among peers was denied to them, rendering the women peripheral to the scientific enterprise. Casual, informal association with male colleagues was strictly out of bounds. Raman frowned upon any interaction between men and women. Mani recalled how he would mutter "Scandalous!"

every time a male and a female student walked together by his window. With a touch of amusement, Mani noted that Raman must have had an

uncanny sense, for even while bending over a microscope, he would be able to catch a glimpse of an "offending" couple. She remembered one incident vividly. She was talking to Nagamani, one of her male colleagues in the laboratory. In the middle of a sentence, Nagamani looked up to find Raman at a distance, cycling slowly ("like a big bear") toward them.

Nagamani turned pale and fled the scene as fast as he could,she remem-

bered, "leaving me to face the music alone." Mani laughed at the recol- lection but communicated nevertheless the loneliness and professional seclusion forced upon the women.

Mani and Bai spent long hours in the laboratory. To record weak spec- tra plates had to be exposed for twelve to fifteen hours, which meant that the women often spent nights in the laboratory. They would snatch a few hours of sleep curled under the table on which they had set up their exper- iments. The introverted interior cultural spaces that women symbolized made the physical spaces available to them constricted as well. While men students under similar experimental constraints could have rested in the corridors or on the patches of green outside the laboratory, the women felt confined to the limited privacy afforded by the tabletop.

The austere conditions under which Mani and Bai worked and the iso- lation they suffered were perhaps the reasons they were accepted at all in the scientific community, as well as in the society at large. Anna Mani recounts that on a visit to a famous Hindu temple near Madras, Mrs. Raman smuggled her into the inner sanctum, which was forbidden to non-Brahmins and widows. The priest, horrified to see Anna Mani with- out red kumkum on her forehead, which signifies a Hindu woman who is not a widow, was about to throw her out of the sanctum when Mrs. Raman intervened. She deftly put kumkum on Mani's forehead and chided her in front of the priest. "Saraswati," she said, "why are you so careless about your appearance?" Anna Mani told me that she was pleased Mrs. Raman had referred to her as Saraswati, the goddess of learning and wisdom, and not as Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.

The figure of an ascetic, oblivious of personal needs and desires in the

single-minded quest for knowledge, is deeply respected in Indian culture.

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Women scientists, with their devotion to science and their spartan non- familial lives, are ascribed a status similar to that of an ascetic, if not by their fellow male scientists, then certainly by those scientists* wives and mothers. Mani felt grateful to these women for welcoming her into their homes and for being her surrogate mothers and sisters.

These cultural contingencies notwithstanding, the scientific institu- tions perpetuated their own gender biases. Neither Anna Mani nor Sunanda Bai was ever granted a doctoral degree. Their completed Ph.D. dissertations remain in the library of Raman Research Institute, indistin- guishable from other bound dissertations with not a trace to suggest that these were eventually denied degrees. Madras University, which at that time formally granted degrees for work done at the Indian Institute of Science, claimed that Mani did not have an M.Sc. degree, and therefore they could not possibly grant her a Ph.D. They chose to overlook the facts that Mani had graduated with honors in physics and chemistry, had won a scholarship for graduate studies at the Indian Institute of Science, and had published five single-authored papers on the luminescence of dia- mond for her thesis work. However, Mani insisted that the lack of a Ph.D. degree made little difference in her life, as she left for England on a gov- ernment scholarship to train as a meteorological instrumentation spe- cialist soon after finishing her research work in Raman's laboratory. Although her preference had been to pursue research in physics, the only scholarships available at that time were in meteorology, and Mani was "grateful that things turned out as they did." In England she was "treated like a princess" because Indians were "so rare" in Britain at that time.

Regardless of her scientific achievements, something troubled Sunanda Bai deeply. Just before her intended departure to Sweden for postdoctoral work in experimental physics, Bai and her friend Sharda together attempted suicide. Sharda' s brother was able to save his sister but evidently could do nothing to save Bai. Sunanda Bai's death is shrouded in mystery even today. Former colleagues and friends remain disquietingly silent; all that is ever said is that her suicide had nothing to do with her work or with the Indian Institute of Science.

According to Anna Mani, Bai's last wish had been to be granted the Ph.D. degree that she so rightfully deserved, posthumously. Officials at Madras did not fulfill her wish, ostensibly for bureaucratic reasons. Mani who had accepted graciously the reasons Madras University had given for denying her a Ph.D. degree, nonetheless felt tormented by the injustice of their decision vis-a-vis Sunanda Bai.

DISPERSED RADIANCE II5

The Women and Their Science

Sunanda Bai was one of six students whose work Raman personally supervised. The other students worked under various senior scientists and postdoctoral fellows in Raman's laboratory (Ramaseshan 1993). From all accounts, Bai was an excellent researcher. She did pioneering work in recording and analyzing the composite nature of the scattered

spectrum of liquids.22 During the five years that Bai spent in Raman's laboratory, she published ten single-authored papers, which in itself is a remarkable achievement, considering the complexities of the problems she was working on as well as the experimental difficulties in working with low-intensity scattered radiation (Bai 1942).

In 1940, a year after finishing college, Anna Mani obtained a scholar-

ship to do research in physics at the Indian Institute of Science. She was accepted in Raman's laboratory as a graduate student. There Mani worked on the spectroscopy of diamonds and rubies. Raman had become

increasingly obsessed with the study of diamonds because of his ongoing controversies with Max Born about crystal dynamics (Sur 1999) and with Kathleen Lonsdale about the structure of diamond. He had a collection of three hundred diamonds from India and Africa; practically all of his stu- dents worked on some aspect or another of diamonds. Mani recorded and

analyzed fluorescence, absorption, and Raman spectra of thirty-two dia- monds. She studied temperature dependence and polarization effects in these spectra. The experiments were long and painstaking: the crystals were held at liquid air temperatures, and the weak luminescence of some of the diamonds required fifteen to twenty hours of exposure time to record the spectrum on photographic plates (Mani 1944). Mani spent long hours in the laboratory. Between 1942 and 1945, she published five single-authored papers on the luminescence of diamonds and rubies. In August 1945 she submitted her Ph.D. dissertation to Madras University and was awarded a government scholarship for an internship in England, where she specialized in meteorological instrumentation.

Mani returned to Independent India in 1948. She joined the Indian Meteorological Department at Pune, where she was in charge of con- struction of radiation instrumentation. She published a number of papers on subjects ranging from atmospheric ozone to the need for inter- national instrument comparisons and national standardization of mete- orological instrumentation. She retired as the deputy director general of the Indian Meteorological Department in 1976 and subsequently

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returned to the Raman Research Institute as a visiting professor for three

years. She published two books, The Handbook for Solar Radiation Data for India (1980) and Solar Radiation over India (1981), and was working on a

project for harnessing wind energy in India in 1993. Despite her interest in and involvement with issues of environment,

Anna Mani "got out of the business," as environmentalists ("carpetbag- gers" as she called them) seemed to be "always in orbit." She preferred to

stay in one place.

Moral Regulation and Painful Transitions

The early woman scientists lurked hesitatingly at the margins of Indian

society. In their demeanor and way of life, they abided very much within the bounds of tradition, yet their scientific vocations made them different. However, unlike their male colleagues, who inspired admira- tion, women scientists for the most part invoked curiosity, as they appeared remarkably traditional in their bearing yet quite modern in their career pursuits.

Despite having chosen modern, nontraditional, and until then entirely male dominated fields of study, Indian women scientists were accepted, by and large, within the folds of traditional society precisely because they did not challenge social and cultural norms. Anna Mani recalled with

gratitude the warmth with which the wives of her male colleagues wel- comed her into their homes: "Mrs. Venketeswaran, [the wife of her immediate supervisor at the Meteorological Department] was like a god- dess. She had not had much education but was more broadminded than so called educated people." As a graduate student, Mani became close to Mrs. Raman, who treated her "as if I was her own daughter." As long as these women did not undermine cultural norms or the social fabric of

family life, their nontraditional professions were not only tolerated but

perhaps even encouraged. The lives of these women illustrate the process by which change is

slowly incorporated within the continuity of tradition. The hegemonic sense of tradition as "a deliberately selective and connective process, which offers a historical and cultural ratification of a contemporary order," is invariably rooted in morality and religion (Williams 1977, 116). And, given ancient India's plethora of goddesses of wisdom and wealth, it becomes relatively easy to legitimize women's ventures into new fields

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by invoking selective traditions, provided that the women maintain a cer- tain social decorum. Thus, the women scientists could be identified with the heritage of Lilavati, the author of a ninth century treatise on mathe- matics, of Avyar, a scholar of astronomy, medicine and geography, and of

Gargi and Maitreyi, learned women of ancient India. However, the

acceptance rests on implicitly differentiating between culture as "the general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development," and culture as a way of life, comprising social relations, norms, and etiquette (Williams 1983, 90). Dramatic changes in the intellectual and aesthetic

development of women in India, as indicated by the numbers of women with tertiary education, invariably have been accompanied by the fear that educated women will undermine male dominance and control, the way of life as it were. This fear has had to be assuaged time and again by educa- tors and public leaders. On the graduation of the first women students from Calcutta University in 1883, the vice-chancellor, Mr. H. J. Reynolds, assured the audience:

No one wishes, no one expects, that the extension of education to Indian Women will lead them at once to throw aside the restraints of caste, the habits of seclusion which the practice of the country jus- tifies, or even the timidity of the temperament which characterizes them today. Those who apprehend anything like a disorganization of the present social system of India may lay aside their fears. The cus- toms of the nation are not so easily changed. (Quoted in Borthwick

1984, 96 n. 129)

But the "customs of nation" do change albeit though slowly, unevenly, and erratically. The accommodation of change within the continuity of tradition implies a certain fluidity or plasticity of traditions. However, the differential evolution of "way of life" and "aesthetic and intellectual development" ensure that the plasticity of traditions at any given time in history is finite. The containment of the "modern" within the more slowly evolving social norms is often unstable. At critical junctures in women's personal histories, social constraints become overwhelming, often with painful or dire consequences for the women involved. As noted above, Sunanda Bai, the most accomplished female student of Raman's, took her own life on the eve of her departure to Sweden for postdoctoral stud- ies. The reasons for her suicide are shrouded in silence even to this day, and the secrecy serves to heighten the sense of a scandal surrounding a social transgression. Anna Mani's lasting recollection of this tragic event

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was the visit of Sunanda Bai's physics professor from Benaras Hindu

University a few weeks after her death. The frail old man had been visibly shaken by Sunanda Bai's death and had wept bitterly at the loss of his favorite pupil.

Conclusion

The lives of the women scientists in Raman's laboratory evince an ongo- ing tussle between individual agency and societal discrimination. If Kamala Sohonie's perseverance and academic success opened doors for Lalitha Chandrasekhar, Anna Mani, and Sunanda Bai, perhaps a per- ceived social transgression by Sunanda Bai may have closed them, at least in Raman's eyes, for subsequently there were no women students in his

laboratory. In an era preceding the articulation of a feminist conscious- ness and collective agency, these women scientists struggled alone. And

yet their individual actions, their personal achievement, and their failures assumed larger-than-life proportions in the eyes of the society which

posited in them the womanhood of science- the acid test of whether women should be doing science. The absence of women in the post- Sunanda Bai phase of Raman's laboratory perhaps indicates the price of

doing science for Indian women. Survival in science demanded from the women social conformity and conservatism.

Nonetheless, in the microcosm of Raman's laboratory, the three women embody clearly different modes of intersection of gender, culture, and science. All of them were from the middle or upper class, all had fam- ilies that valued women's education, and all studied physics under simi- lar circumstances. Their lives illustrate how different cultural influences within India adapted to modernizing forces. Lalitha Chandrasekhar epit- omizes the educated woman visualized by the Indian religious reformers; her education made her the ideal wife, willing to forego her career to be a

supportive companion. About Sunanda Bai, one can only surmise. The

glimpses of her life and her lively intellect that seep through the guarded quiet of her peers suggest an insistent dissidence. The tension exuding from the stony silences of her peers is as palpable today as it must have been fifty years ago.

Anna Mani, on the other hand, represents the confluence of the

modernizing aspects of science, nationalist, and gender ideologies. She is a success story to which few women (or men) could aspire. She

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transcended the delimited cultural and physical spaces available to her and created not only a room of her own, or a laboratory of her own, but a whole workshop, a mini-factory of her own. In the industrial suburbs of

Bangalore, Mani heads a small company that manufactures instruments for measuring wind speed and solar energy. Here one witnesses an almost

complete reversal of gender roles. Some thirty workers, largely men, stood up with alacrity and deference as Anna Mani walked in the door, much as schoolchildren rise from their seats to greet their teachers. The

gesture was both amusing and perplexing. The unhesitant respect Mani commanded seemed refreshing. However, even as the gender roles were

being redefined, class relations remained intact and unfaltering in Anna Mani's workshop.

The role of upper class women in the history of their education was at once complicit with and antagonistic to patriarchal authority as they were simultaneously beneficiaries of their social location and subordi- nated to its gendered organization (see Bannerji 1992). Similarly, the his-

tory of women scientists in India is inherently a history of incongruities and diametric oppositions. These histories embody a quagmire of con- tradictions- of privilege and penalty, of exaltation and damnation, and of power and subservience. The success of women scientists, it seems to me, sits rather uncomfortably within the larger context of science and society.

The survival of women in the hallowed halls of science has been

poignantly difficult, and yet their presence in these halls does not dis- suade or dissolve the gender and class inequities embedded in the larger system. There has been a lingering hope among feminists that the par- ticipation of large numbers of women in traditionally male-dominated fields of inquiry would change not only the institutional biases but also more importantly the very nature of these fields. The slow trickle of women into the higher echelons of education in the late nineteenth cen- tury did over time change the institutional response to women. However, altering the very nature of science would have required a self-conscious affirmation of gender identities by the women scientists in opposition to the coercive womanhood forced upon them by their male colleagues and the society at large.

Anna Mani's resistance to coercive gendered identities and to the imposition of "difference from above" cannot, however, be interpreted solely as a negation or repudiation of gender in order for her to be fully included in the enterprise of science. Rather, her assertion of gender

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neutrality can perhaps be seen as an expression of her spirit of egalitari- anism.23 The received enlightenment of Mani's generation was washed clean of its tainted history- the history of exclusion of women and peo- ple of color from political participation in the West. The constitution of

Independent India granted equal rights to all citizens, eliminating the need for Indian women to organize as women. The demand for gender equality in education, although constrained by dominant nationalist ide-

ology, was not directed against the state or the public institutions but

against familial taboos and that, too, in an individual capacity. The bat- tles for access to higher education were, for the most part, fought in the

privacy of homes. The women of Indian enlightenment were not gender- blind but perhaps mistakenly took gender equality for granted. Indeed, toward the end of our many conversations, Anna Mani, who until then had steadfastly resisted the notion of gendered science, became wistful as she began to realize that during the years when she had worn the mantle of science, had had the authority to hire women as scientists, and could have been a conscious role model for younger women, she had been unaware of the need to do so.

Perhaps the contention between egalitarian feminism and feminism of difference lies not in their visions of a gender-just world but rather in their

perceptions of how best to achieve it in particular historical and social contexts.

NOTES I would like to thank Mario Biagiolli, Deborah Fitzgerald, Sumi Krishna, Javed Malick, Katy Park, Modhumita Roy, and Amy Slaton for their useful comments and criticisms. I also owe special thanks to Susan Van Dyne of Meridians and to the two referees, Ravi Rajan and Banu Subramaniam for their invaluable insights and suggestions. Any errors or omissions that remain are entirely my own responsibility.

i. The Calcutta University Commission Report (1919) published the response of intel- lectuals, administrators, university and college faculty, and students in India on the question of women's education. By far the majority of the respondents argue for a separate curriculum for women to reflect their needs as homemak- ers and mothers (see vol. 12: 401-61).

2. Although the women scientists came largely from upper-caste and upper-class families, Sumit Sarkar has argued that their families cannot be considered elite in that they did not self-consciously promote their own caste and class inter- ests. More often than not the English-educated Indians supported measures that directly or indirectly undermined upper-caste privileges. They agitated for

compulsory primary education and started many private colleges at the time when government aid to higher education was being cut severely due to the

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recommendations of the Hunter Commission (1882). (See Sarkar 1083: 72-73). 3. Keller (1989), in particular, has argued persuasively that "for women scientists

as scientists, the principal point is that measures of scientific performance admitted of only a single scale, according to which, to be different was to be lesser. Under such circumstances, the hope of equity, indeed the very concept of equity, appeared - as it still appears - to depend on the disavowal of difference." She also notes that "any acknowledgment of gender based difference was almost invariably employed as a justification for exclusion. Either it was used to exclude them from science, or to brand them as 'not women' - in practice, usually both at the same time."

4. Gary Werskey (1978) has developed the concept of collective history and the interaction of groups of individuals with society at large.

5. 1 conducted interviews with Professor Emeritus Asima Chatterjee, natural products chemist, University of Calcutta; Professor Rajeshwari Chakravarty, retired professor of electrical engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; Dr. Alamelu Venkataraman, organic chemist, and former director of the Botanical Institute in Lucknow; and Dr. Bhavani Bedawadi, retired deputy director of the National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad.

6. The figure of one million refers to the number of women trained as scien- tists. Only a small fraction of these (about 5000 women) are engaged in research and development (Chakravarty et al. 1984).

7. Apart from a number of reports commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) on the status of women scientists in India, very few scholars have examined critically the sociology/anthropology of women in science. Exceptions are Subrahmanyan (1998), Mukhopadhyay and Seymour (1994), and Krishnaraj (1991).

8. Recent work by Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina emphasizes a new approach toward the history of science by focusing on the idea of "science in struggle." See, for instance, Habib and Raina (1989: 51-66).

9. In an essay Madhu Kishwar divides the students at Miranda House, a women's college affiliated with Delhi University, into three categories: "the westernized Mirandians who come from elite schools, the science types, and the Hindi-speaking bhenjis" (Kishwar 1995: 10) Apart from this characteriza- tion, as the "science types," science students get no mention at all in the rest of the article, relegated once again to obscurity, this time in the pages of the lead- ing women's journal in India. Similarly, Vandana Shiva in her critique of "western science" posits an insuperable dichotomy between white men and rural Indian women, and in the process chooses to overlook the inconvenient category of women scientists (Shiva 1989).

10. Tethinraj (1997). The story of Kamala Sohonie has only recently come to light. Apparently, Anna Mani and her coworkers were unaware of the difficul- ties faced by Dr. Sohonie.

11. According to the Indraprastha College Alumni Association newsletter, Professor Radha Pant of Allahabad University, for instance, forged a scientific career in biochemistry through the circuitous route of a home science degree

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with specialization in nutrition. Also, many women who had aspired to be physicians, including Anna Mani, instead took up opportunities in science because of the paucity of medical schools for women.

12. The Raman effect, or Raman scattering, is observed when a monochromatic incident beam of light is irradiated on a sample where it collides with the mole- cules and in the process either gives up some of its energy to the molecules or collects energy from the molecules. The exiting beam thus emerges with a modified frequency, either a lower (Stokes radiation) or a higher (anti-Stokes radiation). Since the energy transfer depends upon the energy levels of the mol- ecules, the modified scattered radiation contains the imprint of the molecular energy levels of the irradiated sample. The discovery of the Raman effect opened up new fields of experimental research, as the internal energy structure of molecules could be explored and the chemical composition of molecules studied by Raman spectroscopy.

13. Report or the Quinquennial Reviewing Committee or the Indian Institute or Science 1936, India Office Library, London (v/26/865/4). See also "The Saha Raman Controversy." For a brief history of Raman's tenure at the Indian Institute of Science, see Subbarayappa (1992: 112-51).

14. One of the earliest reformers, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, for instance, campaigned for both women's education and scientific and technical education. Ghulam Murshid suggests that Roy might have been influenced by Mary WollstonecrafVs Vindication qfthe Rights qfWoman. See Murshid (1983).

15. For a discussion of gender discrimination in scientific institutions in the West, see for instance, R. Strachy, The Cause (New York: Kennikat Press, 1969 and 1928). See also, Londa Schiebinger, "The History and Philosophy of Women in Science: A Review Essay" in Sandra Harding and Jean F. O'Barr (eds.), Sex and Scientific Inquiry, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). See also Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1989, 1996).

16. Gandhi gave this speech at the Second Gujrat Educational Conference, 20 October 1917. Quoted in Gandhi on Women, P. Joshi, ed. (New Delhi: Centre for Women's Development Studies, 1988) p. 14

17. Elizabeth Fee has argued that "the liberal ideology of rational man is actually dependent on an unstated clause: that the characteristics of "man" are actually the characteristics of males, and the rational man is inextricably bound to his less visible partner, emotional woman. In fact, the construction of our political philosophy and views of human nature seem to depend on a series of sexual dichotomies, involved in the construction of gender differences." See Elizabeth Fee, Lowe, and Hubbard (1986).

is. brajenaranatn fceai, writing on the scientinc method or the Hindus expounded this criterion of truth: "Truth is found not in mere cognitive presentation, but in the correspondence between the cognitive and the practical activity of the self, which together are supposed to form the circuit of consciousness" (see Appendix: "On the Scientific Method of the Hindus," in P. C. Ray, History of Hindu Chemistry, vol. 2 [London: Williams and Norgate, 1904, 1990]). The

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dissolution of objective/subjective in the scientific method of the Hindus might partially explain recent statistics on the proportion of women studying mathe- matical sciences. It appears that a significantly larger percentage of Asian women scientists (16%) are physicists and mathematicians as compared to American women scientists (6%).

19. This section is based on conversations with Anna Mani in July 1993 as well as on information obtained from Wali's biography of Lalitha Chandrasekhar's husband, the astrophysicist Chandrasekhar (see Wali, 1991).

20. Feminist scientists began to study the question of women in science in the 1970s. For a useful bibliography on gender and science, see Nancy Tuana (ed.), Feminism and Science (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989). In the chapter "Seventies Questions for Thirties Women: Gender and Generation in a Study of Early Women Psychoanalysts," Nancy Chodorow notes that the early women psychoanalysts "were relatively gender-blind, or unattuned to gender, regarding both their role in the profession and their pro- fession's theory." See Nancy Chodorow, Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

21. 1 formed this impression from conversations with one of Anna Mani's male contemporaries who, even after fifty years, recalled with hostility incidents where certain scientific instruments were perhaps mishandled by the women students.

22. A simple experimental innovation that allowed her to separate the rotational contribution to the scattered spectrum led Sunanda Bai to assert that the Placzek-Teller formulation of the ratio of the Q branch intensity to the total intensity of the rotational wing was inadequate and that molecules were not completely free to rotate in a liquid. Her carefully and painstakingly designed experiments and theoretical models also confirmed that the bulk of density fluctuations giving rise to Raman scattering in a liquid are adiabatic rather than isothermal processes. (See Bai 1941 and 1942). See also Venkataraman, 1988: 318-19.

23. It is important to note that the women who affirmed a distinct feminine iden- tity in that era also campaigned for a separate educational curriculum for female students which would have foreclosed the options of studying science.

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