The Place of Science in Indian 
National Life’ 
OR five months it has been my privilege to reside in the 
Punjab, and there to do the little that lay in my power 
to assist the cause of scientific education. I shall not forget, 
in speaking to you this afternoon, that my experience in India 
has been limited both as to time and as to place, and I shall 
try and be on my guard against those hasty generalizations 
to which one is prone under such conditions as I have described. 
I find, when I talk with my countrymen in India, that their 
readiness to dogmatize about the country is pretty well 
inversely proportional to the time they have spent in it, and 
the men who have been in it for a long time seem to have 
given up all idea of making definite affirmations as to what 
is. right and what is best in connexion with the complicated 
problem of the welfare of India. I should like, however, 
just to say this much for myself, that although it is true I 
have spent only five months in India, I have been for a long 
time interested in the scientific work that is in progress here. 
It has been my good fortune in England to have a considerable 
number of Indian students in the university with which I am 
connected, and in addition to see a good deal of students 
taking up the study of science and technology in the other 
centres in the United Kingdom. 
Now I want this afternoon to tell you very briefly some 
of the impressions that I have formed and to indicate to you, 
necessarily also briefly, what I think the position of science 
* Address at Bombay University, delivered March 1914 (reported). 
