Vikram Sarabhai and Homi J. Bhabha

The origin of the Indian space story often begins with the visionary scientist and technocrat Vikram Sarabhai, who is credited as being the father of India’s space program. But the early phase owes as much to the pioneering efforts of Homi Bhabha who was instrumental in the establishment of scientific institutions for the growth of science and technology in modern India.6 By the late 1950s, when initiatives were taken to pursue space research at a systematic level in India using scientific balloons and miniature rockets, Bhabha had already established the sci­entific ethos and the rationale for the pursuit of cutting-edge technologies in the nuclear and space domains, and had launched a major nuclear program. The duo, however, were not new to the field of space sciences; they had established their niche in cosmic ray physics even before they thought about huge scientific projects for the emerging nation state.7 In particular, Sarabhai was aware of the research opportunities, made possible by space technology, to study the upper atmosphere. Together they initiated early interactions with NASA for possible cooperative space projects.

Vikram Ambala Sarabhai was born in Ahmedabad, India, on August 12, 1919, to a wealthy family of industrialists.8 After finishing his early education in Ahmedabad he moved to St. John’s College, Cambridge, United Kingdom, in 1937 to read for his Physics and Mathematics Tripos. He returned to India after the outbreak of World War II and continued his professional training as a research scholar for several years under Nobel Laureate C. V. Raman at the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore. It was at IISC that he nurtured a friendship with Homi Bhabha who was also doing research on cosmic rays, and who established a research unit for this purpose at IISC.9

Sarabhai returned to Cambridge after the war in 1945 and his extensive fieldwork carried out in Bangalore and Apharwat in the Kashmir region of the Himalayas enabled him to receive his PhD in 1947 for his doctoral thesis, Cosmic Ray Investigation in Tropical Latitudes. He returned to a new India that became independent in 1947 after centuries of British colonial rule. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first prime minister. Trained in Harrow and Cambridge, Nehru believed science to be a panacea for the innumerable problems faced by human­ity. As he put it,

[I]t is science alone that can solve the problem of hunger and poverty, of insanita­tion and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people. Who indeed can afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid. The future belongs to science and to those who make friends with science.10

There was an air of optimism and vibrancy, and the trio—Nehru, Bhabha, and Sarabhai—with patronage from the government and private industrial enterprises like the Tata family and Sarabhai’s own family business conglomerate, would become potent actors to wield science and technology to cement the new nation­state.11

Vikram Sarabhai started a laboratory for the study of cosmic rays in Ahmedabad, which was later institutionalized by the setting up of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in 1954.12 Thanks to the business enterprise his family had established, he became in Thomas Hughes’s phrase, a heterogeneous engineer with a multitude of portfolios.13 Popular writings portray him as an institution builder, a visionary, a pragmatist, and a Gandhian. Sarabhai never wavered in his view that the development of a nation was intimately linked with the under­standing and application of science and technology by its people. He selectively appropriated the modernization theories emanating from premier institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University in the United States and created a rationale for a space program in a poor developing country, characterizing it as “a space program for rural development.” Thus for him, “Pursuit of cosmic rays and space research does not require an apology in a developing nation provided the activities are within a total scheme of priorities in the allocation of national resources.” He stressed that many of those who were engaged in pure science were also “involved in the organization and conduct of education, of planning and of industrial development in fields such as electronics and chemicals.” He himself “was actively interested in the application of science for the improvement of agricultural productivity and in the implications of science to society and problems of security.”14 For Sarabhai it was under these conditions that the indigenous development of advanced science and technology, including in space, was an imperative, not a luxury for a huge and relatively poor country like India. Indeed he believed that “what applies to the economy of India applies to the economy of most of the countries in the Indian Ocean region.” This is also why, while advocating for space, he was vocal against the superficial craving for prestige as justification for a developing nation to embark on a space program.

Vikram Sarabhai was also known in international circles as an apostle for world peace and disarmament. He was a member of Continuing Committee of Pugwash, and participated in Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and set up the Indian Pugwash Society. In the late 1960s Sarabhai became the scientific chairman of the UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and so became a vector, as it were, to publicize the benefits of space for the newly formed devel­oping nation-states. He was also interested in integrating India with the global community. His familiarity and high esteem at international meetings was recog­nized and he was also elected president of the fourteenth general Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1970. The sense of isolation that India experienced under colonial rule served as a major impetus for building a domestic program, to engage with scientific institutions around the world as an equal partner, and to create avenues for technology and idea sharing.

US officials were captivated by the unusual combination of industrialist and physicist in one man. His participation in international conferences, his accomplish­ments in basic scientific research, his visiting faculty status at MIT, the list of com­mittees, commissions, and boards that he was a member of impressed the American embassy officials in India who wrote long reports to the US State Department of his activities. These qualities played a crucial part when NASA sought to build col­laborative partnerships with the developing regions—here was a member of a native elite who could be a suitable ambassador for NASA’s peaceful programs in develop­ing countries, and not just in the region but across the world.

Seeing the emerging field of space science and technology, and the prom­ise it offered, Homi Bhabha, the secretary of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), also carved a niche within DAE in August 1961 for a rudimentary space science and research cell. Before the formation of this cell the Indian National Committee for the IGY had been asked to serve provisionally as the National Space Committee for India adhering to COSPAR. The initial cooperative relations between NASA and India were primarily negotiated by the DAE through Bhabha and Sarabhai. Prudence was the watchword at this time since, unlike Pakistan or Japan, there was no security arrangement in place with India for the protection of sensitive or classified information. The State Department was also aware of the presence of Soviet scientists and tech­nicians, including a number of Soviet airmen, in the country, and took note of the close cooperation that India sought with the USSR covering peaceful uses of atomic energy, operation of nuclear power stations, and the produc­tion and processing of uranium. Bhabha was particularly worrying: the State Department described him as one who expressed communist sentiments and who was also involved in “communist front activities.” He was seen as a poten­tial technocrat who could “utilize contacts with both sides involved in the East-West struggle in order to achieve the most advantageous opportunities to advance his objectives.”

Sarabhai died in 1971. The direction the Indian space program took under Vikram Sarabhai and the close cooperation he enjoyed with NASA, both techni­cal and managerial, for more than a decade shaped the future trajectory of the country’s space ambitions.