Gender,Race and Science in Twentieth-Century India: E. K. Janaki Ammal and the History of Science

Thomas William L. , (ed.), Man's role in changing the face of the earth (Chicago, Illinois, 1956).

Ibid. Introduction.

Shaler Nathaniel , Man and the earth (New York, 1905).

Ibid.

E.g. Glacken , lecture to the University of Virginia Summer School, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 18 July 1981 entitled “Writing a successor to Traces on the Rhodian Shore”; and personal communication with Richard Grove.

Darlington C. D. Ammal E. K. Janaki , The chromosome atlas of cultivated plants (London, 1945). Ammal was to note many years later that the meeting was in Preston, that she was the “only participant from India” and that ” There were over 70 participants and we were treated royally by the Wenner Gren Foundation”. Ammal to Darlington, 11 August 1979, CD Darlington Papers, The papers and correspondence of Cyril Dean Darlington, 1903–81, GB0161 (hereafter DP) Bodleian Library, Oxford.

MacLeod Roy , Nature and empire, science and the colonial enterprise (Chicago, 2000), 1–2.

See Basalla G. , “The spread of western science”, in Science, clvi (1967), 611–22. Pyenson Lewis , Cultural imperialism and the exact sciences: German expansion overseas, 1900–1930 (New York, 1985), and Empire of reason: Exact sciences in Indonesia, 1840–1940 (Leiden, 1989). MacLeod Roy , Nature and empire, science and the colonial enterprise (Chicago, 2001); Grove Richard , Green Imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge, 1995). Sangwan Satpal , “From gentleman amateurs to professionals: Reassessing the natural science tradition in colonial India, 1780–1840”, in Grove R. Damodaran V. Sangwan S. (eds), Nature and the Orient: The environmental history of South and South East Asia (Delhi, 1998).

Grove Richard , “Conserving eden: The (European) East India companies and their environmental policies on St Helena, Mauritius and in Western India, 1660–1854”, Grove Richard , Ecology, climate and empire, colonialism and global environmental history, 1400–1940 (Cambridge, 1997), 66–67.

Harrison Mark , “Science and the British empire”, Isis, xcvi (2005), 60. See also Chakrabarti Pratik , Western science in modern India: Metropolitan methods, colonial practices (Delhi, 2004); Raina Dhruv Habib S. Irfan , “The unfolding of an engagement: ‘The dawn’ on science, technical education and industrialisation, 1896–1912”, Studies in history (1993), 87–117.

Krishna V. V. , “The colonial model and the emergence of national science in India, 1876–1920”, in Petitjean Patrick Jami Catherine Moulin Anne Marie (eds), Science and empire (Dordrecht, 1992).

Kumar Deepak , “The culture of science and colonial culture, India 1820–1920”, The British journal for the history of science, xxix (1996), 204–5.

See for example the article by Sur Abha , “Dispersed radiance: Women scientists in C. V. Raman's laboratory”, in Kumar Neelam (ed.), Women and science in India: A reader (Delhi, 2009).

Subramanian C. S. , “Edavaleth, Kakkat Janaki Ammal”, Resurgence, xii (2007).

Royal Horticultural Society, Timeline.

Ibid.

Ammal E. K. Janaki , “Preliminary memorandum on the reorganisation of the botanical survey of India” (Calcutta, 1953, Calcutta botanic Garden Archives).

Ibid.

Abir-Am Pnina G. Outram Dorinda , Uneasy careers and intimate lives: Women in science, 1789–1979 (New Brunswick, 1987). The sources of this paper are sadly limited and based largely on the correspondence and private papers of individuals such as Darlington, which include letters to him from Ammal. Janaki Ammal's papers and slides were not preserved by the family and did not go into any archive or herbarium. With the sale of her family home at Edathil in the 1980s many of her papers, herbarium collection and library were destroyed (personal communication Ram Damodar).

Lambert David Lester Alan , (eds), Colonial lives across the British empire: Imperial careering in the long nineteenth century (Cambridge, 2006), 3. For earlier work that looks at imperial networks of science, see Grove Richard , Green Imperialism, colonial expansion, tropical island edens and the origins of environmentalism (Cambridge, 1995), 309–79.

Shortland Michael Yeo Richard , (eds), Telling lives in science (Cambridge, 1996), 14, quoted in Lambert and Lester, Colonial lives (ref. 20), 20.

Clifford J. , “Hanging up looking glasses at odd corners: Ethnobiographical prospects”, in Aaron D. (ed.), Studies in biography (Cambridge, 1978), quoted in Lambert and Lester (ref. 20), 20.

See recent conference call; “Between subaltern and sahib: Equivocal encounters across the British world” (Leeds, July 2012).

His father John Caulfield Hannyngton born 1807 was deputy commissioner Chotanagpur 1843–56. John Caulfield was credited with having invented a useful slide rule; his largest work was a table of logarithms used in computing distances for the nautical almanac. In the 1881 census he is recorded as living in Lewisham in Kent. He died in 1885.

Feukes Martha died on 7 July 1884 in childbirth. Hannyngton was devastated. He wrote to his Indian son-in-law, Krishnan E. K. , “your letter of the 9^th to hand. I feel I am not equal to the task of writing details regarding Martha's death…. I feel her loss to me to be the loss of everything”, Hannyngton to Krishnan, 14 July 1884. Personal family papers courtesy Ram Damodar, Bangalore.

According to William Dalrymple in the late eighteenth early nineteenth century one in three British women in India were living with Indian women, many taking on Indian ways, clothes, habits and even religions, crossing cultures to become “white mughals”. See Dalrymple William , White mughals (London, 2003).

Marshall P. J. Williams Glyn , The great map of mankind: Perceptions of new world in the age of enlightenment (Harvard, 1982).

Hannyngton to Krishnan E. K. , 27 March 1883, Personal family papers, Ram Damodar, Bangalore.

1897 Diary of E. K. Damodaran born 1879, died of plague in 1904. Personal family papers, Ram Damodar, Bangalore.

Ibid.

This is an argument not made in the recent work of Osella Filippo Osella Caroline , Social mobility in Kerala: Modernity and identity in conflict (London, 2000). Elsewhere, among Anglo Indians as in Bengal, social mobility and choice of professions was confined to certain professions for example, the railways which tended to be dominated by Anglo Indians.

Queen Mary's which opened its doors in 1917 was one of the few colleges started by the British to further women's education in India.

Memoirs of Sita E. K. , in author's possession.

Ibid.

One sister Sumitra's E. K. married life was exceedingly unhappy and she was fed up of the reckless and wild ways of her husband.

Recent research has shown that despite constraints, women were able to break the barriers of the separate spheres in Britain. L. Davidoff argues that after World War 1 in the more “transparently public institutions meritocratic rules gave women opportunities to make claims on the basis of individuality and enhanced educational qualifications”. See Davidoff L. , “Gender and the great divide: Public and private in British gender history, Project muse, xv (2003), 20–21. Elsewhere, Ann Meredith has argued that while domesticity and home were the main function for married middle class women there was a contradiction in the increasing number of single young women who worked and the importance given to providing them with an appropriate training. See Meredith Anne M. , “Middle class women in horticultural education, 1890–1939” (Unpublished thesis, University of Sussex, 2001). Meredith however also shows how most of the organisations offering horticultural education in the period including John Innes Institute, Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, had a strong male culture and excluded women from its horticultural training until well after World War I. See p. 217.

Kumar Neelam , (ed.), Women and science in India: A reader (Oxford, 2009), p. xvi.

Sur Abha , “Dispersed radiance: Women scientists in C. V. Raman's laboratory”, in Ibid., 99.

Endersby J. J. , quoting Ann Shteir, Imperial nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian science (Chicago, 2008), 121.

Ammal to Darlington, 11 August 1978, DP.

Harman Oren Solomon , The man who invented the chromosome (Harvard, 2004).

Ibid., 83.

Ammal to Darlington, 29 May 1931, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 14 November 1931, DP.

Harman (p. 85) mentions Ammal in his book dismissing her as one of many women Darlington had affairs with at this time that included another colleague Eileen Erlanson.

Ammal to Darlington, see letters dated 10 August 1934, 31 October 1934, 22 November 1934. The 10 August letter was addressed as “dearest Cyril” and signed as “yours passionately”. Ammal to Darlington, DP.

Abir-Am Outram , Uneasy careers and intimate lives (ref. 19), see chap. 9–11 section 2 on the careers of mathematician Sofia Koral Evisham, physicist Marie Curie and astronomer, Cecelia Payne Gaponschkin.

Lambert Lester , Colonial lives across the British empire (ref. 20), 28.

Ammal to Darlington, 31 October 1934, DP.

The scientific practices of T. D. Lysenko later were to bring many areas of science especially agricultural genetics in Russia into disrepute. As director of agricultural affairs under Stalin Lysenko used his position to denounce the traditional scientific practices of biologists giving Russian science a bad name.

Ammal E. K. Janaki , “A Saccharum-Zea Cross”, Nature, 1938. The abstract of the paper noted; “both Saccharum and Zea are distinguished by the readiness with which they cross with related genera. For example, while Mangelsdorf and Reeves1 have crossed Zea Mays with Euchlcena and Tripsacum, Venkatraman and Thomas2 Have crossed S. officinarum with a species of Sorghum and even the remotely related Bambusa3. I have also crossed S. officinarum with ImperataCylindricaBeaew. and S. spontaneum L. with Sorghum Durra and Sorghum halepense. In spite of Zea and Saccharum being in two different sections of the Gramineæ –- Andropogoneae and Maydeae (Bews) –- I thought it worth while to cross them, and after several attempts using many thousands of flowers of a male sterile variety (Vellai) of S. officinarum 2n = 80 = 8x as the female parent, and variety Golden Beauty of Zea Mays 2n = 20, 2B as the male parent, I obtained a single seedling. This plant has received the expected 40 chromosomes from the Saccharum parent and 12 chromosomes from the male parent Zea. Amongst these the VI nucleolar chromosome of Zea Mays is recognizable”.

Ammal to Darlington, 8 August 1938, DP.

Venkatraman T. S. (1884–1963) from 1912 to 1942 head of the Sugarcane Breeding Institute (knighted by the British in 1942).

John Russell to Darlington, 10 May 1937, DP.

Darlington to John Russell, 13 May 1937, DP.

Krishna V. V. , “The colonial model and the emergence of national science in India, 1876–1920”, in Petitjean Jani Moulin (eds), Science and empire (ref. 11).

Reginald Ruggles Gates was professor of Botany at King's College London 1921–42. A FRS in 1931 and an anthropologist, botanist and geneticist he seems to have been regarded as an expert by Indian scientists who took his views seriously. By the 1930 he, like most geneticists including Darlington, was very interested in human genetics, founding the Mankind quarterly. In 1937 when he encountered Janaki Ammal he had travelled to India to collect material on jungle tribes. He returned in 1958 to study the Kurumbas and Kanhars in south India and the Asurs and the Maria Gonds in north India. He was briefly married to Marie Stopes.

Ammal to Darlington, 28 August 1938, DP.

Ammal E. K. Janaki , “Chromosome numbers in sugarcane × bamboo hybrids”, Nature (1938), research article. The Abstract noted: ” The sugarcane × bamboo hybrids recently produced at this station (Venkatraman, 1937); provide material for the study of the phylogenetic relationship of the genus Saccharum with other grasses. The gap covered by this cross is considerably wider than in the case of the Saccharum × Sorghum hybrids, or the Saccharum × Erianthus hybrids effected in Java”.

Geddes Patrick was a Scottish biologist who taught botany at Dundee and sociology in Bombay. He can be seen as a precursor to the modern environmental movement. See Guha R. , Environmentalism a global history (New Delhi, 2000), 59.

Bose J. C. to Geddes , 20 October, 1917, quoted in Kumar D. , “The culture of science and colonial culture, India 1820–1920”, The British journal of the history of science, xxix (1996), 205.

Another letter to Nature, “On chromosome numbers in sclerostachyafusca”, was published on 23 March 1940.

Darlington C. D. Ammal E. K. Janaki , Chromosome atlas of cultivated plants (London, 1945).

Darlington to Carstairs, 27 September 1946. See also the correspondence between Carstairs of the Colonial office and Darlington, 30 August 1946, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 20 November 1950, DP.

Krishna V. V. , “The early history of the CSIR, 1934–47”, in MacLeod Roy Kumar Deepak (eds), Technology and the Raj: Western technology and technical transfers to India (Delhi, 1995), 311 On the science and culture group which was active in shaping questions about India's future scientific development, see Abrol D. , “Colonised minds or progressive national scientists: The science and culture group”, in Ibid., 265–88.

Ibid., 312.

Ibid., 316.

Ibid., 314.

Ammal to Darlington, 8 July 1969, DP.

Ammal to Darlington 24 November 1948, DP.

Ammal to Darlington 22 February 1950, DP.

Ammal E. K. Janaki , “Preliminary memorandum on the reorganisation of the botanical survey of India”.

Ammal to Darlington, 6 March 1950, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 25 September 1953, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 4 October 1954, DP.

Abir-Am Outram , Uneasy careers and intimate lives (ref. 19), 8.

Ammal, “Preliminary memorandum on the reorganisation of the botanical survey of India”, 6.

Ibid., 7.

Ammal to Darlington, 21 May 1969, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, November 1948. About Ladak she wrote, “I am back from a most interesting and breathtaking trip to Ladak … I brought back a lot of plants and seeds. They grow naked barley there –- I have handed over the seeds to Dr B. P. Pal and his staff”. Ammal to Darlington, 13 August 1962, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 8 July 1969, DP.

Harman , The man who invented the chromosome (ref. 41), 196.

Ibid., 208.

Majumdar Pauline M. , Eugenics, human genetics and human failings: The Eugenics Society, its sources and its critics in Britain (London, 1992).

Tredoux Gavan , Two geneticists: J. B. S. Haldane and C. D. Darlington, http://www.cycad.com/cgi-bin/pine/apr2000/articles/tredoux-haldane-darlington.html.

Ibid.

Harman , The man who invented the chromosome (ref. 41), 154–5.

The journal of genetics was the oldest English language journal in genetics, founded by Bateson W. Punnett R. C. in 1910 and later edited by Haldane J. B. S. , When Haldane and his wife Helen Spurway went to India in 1957 they took the journal with them. Haldane edited the journal from India until his death in 1964 after which Helen Spurway continued to publish the journal with Madhav Gadgil and H. Sarat Chandra. The journal was discontinued after her death in 1977 and was restarted by the Indian Academy of Sciences after permission from the Haldane estate, and Haldane's sister Naomi Mitchison.

Haldane J. B. S. to Ammal, 30 December 1960, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 16 February 1960, DP.

Lambert Lester , Colonial lives across the British empire (ref. 20), 20.

Ammal to Darlington, 3 June 1961, DP.

Ammal to B. L. Burtt, 12 October 1974, RBGE.

Ammal to Darlington, 9 November 1979, DP.

Ammal to PioKollar, 16 January 1976, DP.

Lambert Lester , Colonial lives across the British empire (ref. 20), 12–13.

Stoler Ann , “Tense and tender ties: The politics of comparison in north American history and (post) colonial studies, The journal of American history, lxxxviii (2001), 23–24, quoted in Lester and Lambert, Colonial lives (ref. 20), 13.

Krishna V. V. , “The early history of CSIR, 1934–47”, in MacLeod Kumar (eds), Technology and the Raj (ref. 66), 316.

Ammal to Darlington, 21 May 1969, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 11 June 1969, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 29 October 1970. DP.

Darlington to Jinks , 30 July 1971, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 14 August 1977, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 31 August 1977, DP. This work was published as scientific papers some of them after her death, see, Ammal E. K. Janaki with Prasad P. Nagendra , “Chromosome number report form some plants from Silent valley”, Indian journal of forestry, 1985.

Ammal Janaki to Darlington , 10 December 1979, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 31 August 1978, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 17 October 1978, DP.

Ammal to Darlington, 18 July 1980, DP.

Subramanian C. S. , “Edavaleth, Kakkat Janaki Ammal”, Resurgence, xii (June 2007).

Sur Abha , “Dispersed radiance: Women scientists in C. V. Raman's laboratory”, in Kumar Neelam (ed.), Women and science in India (ref. 13), 99.