How does your biography of M Visvesvaraya differ from the existing literature on his life and career, and what unique archival materials and biographical details did your research reveal?
Visvesvaraya’s CV – the list of his concrete achievements – is quite renowned. The book serves to chronicle his long career (he lived from 1861 to 1962). What were the social, political, commercial contexts and historical currents that shaped them? How do we understand his intellectual formation and his rise to prominence? It seeks not to deify him but to understand him, to provide a clear view of his personality and his strengths and limitations.
My approach in this book draws from my background as a historian of science and technology, whose previous research has been on the history of the engineering profession in late colonial India. This allows me to focus on the technical details and professional context of their work as an engineer – something that is not typically emphasized. I also trace the connections between his early career as a public intellectual and his later interventions.
Importantly, the book establishes Visvesvaraya not only as a great Mysorean but as a pan-Indian personality – a man who contributed not only to the country’s physical infrastructure but also to its political imagination.
The book is based on archival material obtained from Visvesvaraya’s personal papers, the State Archives of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Telangana, the Prime Minister’s Memorial Library in New Delhi, the British Library, the Institution of Civil Engineers and the National Liberal Club in London.
Did Visvesvaraya face any racial prejudice from the colonial engineering establishment during his PWD days?
We do not know of instances where Visvesvaraya personally faced direct prejudice; In fact he had a very good rapport with his owners. But by the time he worked in the Bombay Public Works Department (1884–1909), the prevailing discourse about Indian engineers was not favourable. Their colonial masters deemed them lacking “character”, a vague notion that combined ideals of decisiveness, physical courage, impartiality, etc. Indians rarely reached the top ranks, and were paid less than their expatriate colleagues. I believe this environment shaped Visvesvaraya’s self-presentation. They made it a point to dress immaculately in Western style, demonstrate their reliability and diligence, show independent thinking and backbone when dealing with their superiors, and keep up with the latest developments in what they saw as scientifically progressive nations. In terms of his expectations from his subordinates, his working style and his insistence on global benchmarking, he did all this in his work in Mysore and other princely states.
The book provides a nuanced reappraisal of Visvesvaraya’s career. Why do you think he is often seen outside Karnataka as an indigenous engineer and uncompromising administrator?
I think he is one of those figures who is famous in the sense that everyone has heard of him, but generally we have very specific associations: Engineer’s Day, Diwan of Mysore, KRS Dam, economic planning, “industrialize or perish”. And yet, there’s more to it than just these keywords. He was a political thinker in his own way. He thought deeply about constitutional issues. He was a supporter of primary education and a strong supporter of social reform. I think our understanding of modern Indian history is a bit divided – on the one hand, we have the stories of some famous scientists and institution-builders, and on the other, the mainstream narrative of the nationalist movement. Perhaps because Visvesvaraya was not a full-time politician, his role in conceptualizing the modern nation was not given adequate attention.
Apart from his engineering achievements, what was his role in the development of Indian nationalism and post-independence governance?
One of Visvesvaraya’s major contributions to the nationalist movement was to advocate multi-party talks between Indian political leaders of all stripes and the colonial government during the 1920s (along with MM Malaviya, MR Jayakar and others). All this culminated in the historic Round Table Conference of the 1930s.
He also played an important role in sustaining and further developing the economic nationalist ideas of thinkers like Dadabhai Naoroji and MG Ranade. This included an emphasis on government support and economic security for industrialization in general and indigenous industries in particular. But his most important intervention was in the vigorous promotion of economic planning from the 1930s.
Visvesvaraya thought deeply about what type of constitution India should have. He recognized the importance of clearly resolving the status of the princely states within self-governing India. Within the princely states, he supported the movement demanding advanced democratic rights for the residents of the states. In 1922, despite having no formal legal training, he prepared a draft of what dominion status within the British Empire – the holy grail of nationalist demands in the interwar period – would be for India. He had ideas on the institutional mechanisms that an autonomous government would require. He mentioned the need for a Reserve Bank in a 1920 publication. He also wanted statistical organizations and planning bodies to be established within the government at the central and provincial levels.
Even when Visvesvaraya came out with manifestos on economic planning and constitution making, you point out that he maintained good relations with the British authorities amid rising nationalism. How did he balance his relations with both the British authorities and the Congress nationalists?
He mastered the cultural and organizational codes of the colonial bureaucracy. By the time he spoke out on the economy and constitutional reform in the period between the World Wars, he had already interacted with top officials of the colonial state for decades: first as a highly-respected engineer officer, and later as the Dewan of Mysore. He was even given the title of knight. But along with all this, he also exercised his right to mix with and learn from nationalist thinkers (though mostly of the liberal variety). MG Ranade, GK Gokhale and VS Srinivas Shastri were the prominent interlocutors during his days in Poona. We know of at least one instance when he took leave to attend a session of the Congress amid his duties in Mysore. In the interwar period, he worked closely with MM Malviya and MR Jayakar, and remained associated with Gandhi (despite their ideological differences). Nevertheless, the colonial state saw him as a trustworthy interlocutor because he firmly believed in constitutional norms and did not participate in non-cooperation or other forms of grassroots anti-colonial activism.
You write that Visvesvaraya measured the government’s performance on the basis of what it was doing to help India industrialize rapidly. What kind of progress did he see in rapid indigenous industrialization, especially at the rural level?
I assume you are talking about the post-independence years, when Visvesvaraya was in the eighties and nineties. In his personal capacity and through the organization led by the All India Manufacturers Organisation, Visvesvaraya often commented on the government’s performance. He was not happy with the pace of industrialization under the First Five Year Plan and criticized the harsh regulatory regime for businesses. For his part, he continued to advise the Mysore government on village industrialization based on lessons learned from Japan. The program appears to have made solid gains in terms of new ventures started. At the national level, he lived to see the manifestation of the “Community Development Block” system, although it was not very successful.
You write describing the aged Visvesvaraya as a sharp critic of Nehruvian democratic and welfare policies. What does this tell us about their technological worldview? What similarities do you see in today’s debate on top-down versus people-driven development in India?
The outlook of the two men was actually largely similar, particularly on the centrality of state-driven industrialization. But they differed on points of detail. Visvesvaraya thought that the state should only serve as a model and then allow private capital to enter. He did not agree with Nehru’s emphasis on public sector industries and the controls imposed on private business. He also thought that they were moving too slowly in setting up industry, especially at the provincial level. This reflects a certain impatience with the demands of democratic governance. There was tension between two sides of Visvesvaraya, each side being honest. On the one hand he believed strongly in liberal democracy. On the other hand, they had a clear preference for expert-led policy-making, a strong belief in the universal efficacy of large-scale technological interventions, and some difficulty in understanding the non-economic factors behind human behavior. We see some parallels today in the hopes for smart cities, the datafication of governance, and the obsession with “world-class” status. However, there is one obvious difference. Visvesvaraya was never motivated by cultural exclusivity or the need to prove that India was in any way superior to the rest of the world. In this sense he was a universalist.
What important things do you hope readers will take away from your biography?
I hope they will see Visvesvaraya, in addition to his already renowned influence in Mysore, as a national figure and as a multifaceted personality who was deeply engaged with political and governance-related questions far beyond his professional sphere. His life also reminds us to what extent global currents shaped the imagination of the Indian nation. I think the story illustrates the vast possibilities as well as the pitfalls of technological imagination, and suggests the need to complement it with approaches from other branches of learning. But most of all, I hope we take away something of the basic motivation behind all of Visvesvaraya’s interventions: humanistic concern for the material well-being and dignity of the average citizen.
Majid Maqbool is a freelance journalist based in Kashmir.
