It is common knowledge that the first known use of ballistics in warfare globally was by Tipu Sultan. However, what many might not know is that the Yelahanka Air Force station, where recently the prestigious air show was conducted with much pomp and glory attracting crowds in lakhs, is located not very far from one of the major armories that produced the very same rockets of Tipu used in the Anglo-Mysore wars, points out Aromar Revi, founding Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru.

Referred to as “Mysore Rockets”, these were deployed against the British in the first three Anglo-Mysore wars and were far more advanced than the British tools of warfare then. The Mysore army used high-quality iron tubes to fill in gunpowder, giving it better speed and range than the others.  

“They were successful because of the alloys and metallurgy that were locally developed, which could pack in a lot more gunpowder. These rockets could shoot over a kilometer. The battle with Cornwallis was won simply because of the range that was possible because of metallurgy,” says Vijay Chandru, academic and entrepreneur. 

Bengaluru’s road to becoming the scientific powerhouse of India did not happen overnight. It tracks its roots to its strong connection with metallurgy, an abundance of human capital trained in science and technology, and choices made by leaders and rulers over time, argued panellists Aromar Revi, Vijay Chandru and Jahnavi Phalkey, who were speaking at the recent History Lit Fest held at Christ University. 

An exceptional city

What made Bengaluru a city of its scale today despite it not being a national capital or a major trading centre? 

“This is a region which has seen the backwash of history for more than 1,500 years with multiple waves of people going back and forth. In that sense, it is a deeply cosmopolitan city… And that has influenced this place, its culture and how it functions,” said Revi, while acknowledging that it wasn’t still enough to explain the rapid growth and expansion the city witnessed.  

In the absence of a strong financial sector, he believes Bengaluru’s story was written by its people, its institutions and its legacy of innovation which seems to go as far back as Tipu and beyond.  

The metallurgy connection

Citing the recent reports emerging from the archeological digs in Tamil Nadu, Chandru pointed out that the region may have advanced to the iron age while other parts of the subcontinent were still in the Copper Age due to its capabilities and resources to smelt iron ore.  

And it doesn’t stop at the Mysore rockets. Bengaluru’s saga of metallurgy continued and saw several epochal moments, such as the setting up of the Bhadravati Iron and Steel plant and the formation of the country’s first advanced research institute, the Indian Institute of Science.  

Jamsetji Tata, who wanted to start a research institution in the country, also wanted to establish an institution that could help with his industry in the battles, pointed out Chandru. This culminated in the idea of establishing a college of electro-metallurgy in the city, which today is known as the Indian Institute of Science or IISc. 

“Of course, it expanded into many other things later, but there is a strong connection with metallurgy. The Bhadravati Iron and Steel, which was the creation of Sir M Visvesvaraya, is another connect … Metallurgy may have been part of the secret of Bengaluru … Technology was always at the core of this city,” he noted. 

The human capital

While the technological core of the city has been important in shaping Bengaluru, equally important has been the role of its human capital. 

Economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, who visited the country in 1955 at the invitation of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, observed that there is “great untapped resource of technical and scientific knowledge available to India for the taking” and he termed it “the economic equivalent of the untapped continent available to the United States 150 years ago.”

Referring to this, Chandru said, “In the 1980s, Texas Instruments and all the chip design companies started coming to the city because they could find technical talent here. It was the multinationals who discovered this talent and leveraged it. The local tech boom came 15-20 years later; it was not they who discovered it or leveraged it. And that continues till today. Why does the government make statements about GCCs? It’s nothing but the same old Milton treatment. There is talent there for the taking.” 

The ‘triangle’

While the city was always strong on science and technology, there were also very specific incidents that gave its growth the much-needed momentum. 

“There was a confluence of accidents and choices made in the early 20^th century, and Sir Visvesvaraya was very much a part of that process,” said Revi, pointing to a ‘triangle’ formed by the KRS Dam, the Bhadravati Iron and Steel, and Kolar Gold Fields.  

“The KRS was built to deal with the challenge of drought and agricultural productivity;  Bhadravati was built on the very old tradition of metallurgy, which was very well advanced in this particular region. And thirdly Kolar. The triangle of the connection between these three produced electricity, fuelled industrial processes and brought in electricity for the mines in Kolar, and Bengaluru got mixed up in the middle, making it the first electrified city in this country. It is a mix of choices and accidents,” he said.

Yet another happy turn of events was IISc being set up in Bengaluru instead of Roorkee, the location proposed for the institute by the committee comprising Colonel John Clibborn and David Orme Masson. As the city had no financial backing, the government decided to go with Bengaluru as proposed by Sir William Ramsay.

Historical accidents

According to Revi, there was also another set of “accidents” historical in nature and caused by the world war.

“The war essentially brought the western military industrial complex into the heart of this city primarily because the Japanese were in the Andamans, they attacked Kolkatta, they also shelled Chennai. So, Mountbatten’s headquarters was here.  Walchand Hirachand set up HAL here because initially, it was part of maintaining the Allied aircraft, later building out our own capacity. So, the aerospace industry also came here through an accident of fate,” he noted.  

Years later, the city saw some of the first PSUs in the country, the establishment of the Indian National Committee for Space Research (the predecessor of ISRO), and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research catalysing the formation of other institutions such as NCBS and a boom in biotech research.  

“There is a whole range of different pathways that have created a set of institutions here in the city which are both in the CSIR and public science tradition… There are these intertwined processes that created opportunities and a whole set of entrepreneurs and tremendous leaders who actually used those things whether it is in the IT industry, BT industry or even in the computer trade to actually make things work,” Revi noted.  

The misses

With regards to the PSUs that were set up in the city, Phalkey presented an interesting anecdote. 

“Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) made lathes and milling machines for industrialisation. But the precision manufacturing in watches, which is what some of us of a generation remember, also spilled onto the city in different ways, such that when the first satellite had to be launched and the work was happening at the Indian Institute of Science and ISRO then, the circuit boards were printed by a watchmaker. And that was because the city had watchmakers who were able to do that kind of work.” 

But the glory of HMT watches started fading by the 1980s and 90s, and its losses mounted. In 2016, the government shut down its last plant.  

Lost legacy

While industrialisation came to the city as early as 1884 with the establishment of Binny mills, the city has also seen its own share of misses, like in the case of HMT.

“HMT was very important to industrialization… But today, people have forgotten it, and that legacy is lost. Most people don’t realize that the single largest employer in the city is the textile sector and not the IT-BT itself. But that’s the old echo,” Revi noted.

According to him, yet another story of loss has been in the domain of solar technology. In the 1970s, India started doing cutting-edge work in solar technology, with Central Electronics Limited developing and producing the country’s first solar photovoltaic cell and solar photovoltaic panel. BEL and BHEL manufactured solar cells for space applications. 

Says Revi, “If you look at what the Chinese have been able to do over the last 20-25 years creating renewables, which is now probably the single largest emerging technology in the world, we had the opportunity to do it here, but it didn’t work. So, there are stories of missed opportunities too in some senses.”