A serious public discussion about the history of science is rare in India, rarer still is a TV series which is based on important junctures and personalities involved in the history of science of Independent India. So, when a series like Rocket Boys comes along one could only hope that it will trigger some curiosity into the history of science. One can even be excused for feeling enthusiastic about the series being a medium to introduce a generation of young Indians to personalities about whom they would have little knowledge of. But alas, that is hoping for too much. The problem is not only that Rocket Boys plays fast and loose with history and science, that much can be conceded in the name of artistic license. Far more insidious and dangerous is the portrayal of characters and the hidden transcripts of meaning embedded in that portrayal that end up legitimizing the subversion of civil liberties and the rampant Islamophobia in India today.

Rocket Boys is a portrayal of the development of India’s nuclear and space program and the two scientists who initiated and headed it, Homi J Bhabha and Vikaram Sarabhai. Even though the setbacks to making India a player in nuclear energy and space missions portrayed are nowhere near the actual barriers that India’s nuclear and space programs faced, the tone and tenor of the series is a triumphalist pean to science. But it is the portrayal of certain characters that allows the film to cater to present day Hindu supremacist construction of Muslims and dissenters in India. This is nowhere clearer than in the casting of a ‘side-lined’ scientist Raza Mehdi, based on the real-life personality of Meghnad Saha, (complete with dark complexion and short and stocky built) as a Muslim, communist and supporter of Muslim separatism. Of course, how could the makers miss the chance to not cast the ‘good Muslim’ Kalam vs the treacherous and anti-national Muslim whose loyalties are with the ummah rather than the nation! Add to this a twist of the presence of a CIA spy and echoes of ‘Make in India’ and Atmanirbhar Bharat and lo behold we have a production which has all the ingredients for a commercial success and has also kept the lynch mobs happy!

Any creative project based on history will end up excluding certain things and will also invent characters and events, that much is understandable. But when the medium has the potential to create deeply entrenched and dangerous stereotypes about communities and the past, the message that is being conveyed becomes all the more important. On this count Rocket Boys only regurgitates troll level Islamophobic stereotyping. The profiling of Mehdi as a communist who is against the interests of the nation not only mirrors today’s profiling of dissenters as criminal and ‘anti-national’ but actively hides the connections of India’s scientists with leftist scientists and political radicals.

Let us take the case of Meghnad Saha himself who is shamefully portrayed as a traitor and a ‘rival’ of Homi Bhabha. Saha was born in a lower caste family in present day Bangladesh in a poor family. He lost his school scholarship because he participated in the movement against the partition of Bengal by Curzon. He came to study in Presidency College in Calcutta at a time when universities in India were just starting to become places where not just teaching but also research would be done. As a lower caste student, he faced acute discrimination in the Hindu hostel of Presidency College. But during the same time, he came to know Subhash Chandra Bose and his brother. During his time as a student in Calcutta University he became involved with groups that advocated armed resistance to British colonialism like Jatindra Nath Mukherjee (better known as Bagha Jatin). In the meanwhile, he along with S.N. Bose learnt German because all the important new work in Physics in the early twentieth century was happening in Germany and German was the lingua franca of global science. Both Saha and Bose were probably the first Indians to learn quantum physics and they were entirely self-taught. On the strength of this came their greatest work in Physics. First both of them together authored the first translation of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in 1919. S.N. Bose then went on to collaborate with Einstein to develop Bose-Einstein statistics. Saha’s work was in many ways more significant.

In a series of four papers published in 1920-21 Saha developed his study of thermal ionisation. He developed an equation to study the spectrum of radiation of stars through which one could determine the physical elements that made up the star. The unique genius in this approach was that Saha used methods of physical chemistry, thermodynamics and atomic theory, a combination hitherto unknown, to study astrophysical phenomenon. He singlehandedly inaugurated the field of theoretical astrophysics. For this he won a Fellowship to the Royal Society in 1927. Even here Saha’s political beliefs and sympathies caused enough worry to warrant an in-depth investigation by the colonial police into his activities. But the weight of his scientific achievement meant that he was made a Fellow irrespective of his political beliefs. While doing a research stint in Berlin in 1921, he is known to have been a conduit for Indian revolutionaries travelling to and from the USSR.  Saha was also a member of the National Planning Committee set up by the Indian National Congress in 1938.

Yes, as the British left India and a fresh start was sought to be made in the field of science and technology, Saha and Bhabha developed major differences. Understanding their difference would also require us to understand that a dramatic shift happened in the organisation of science research after the Second World War. It was no longer possible to work in small groups with small labs in areas such as nuclear physics or space research; it was the age of Big Science. Bhabha was quick to recognize this. While Saha recognised the importance of nuclear physics nearly a decade before Independence, he still felt that cutting edge research in nuclear physics could still be done as before. Bhabha’s scheme was more appealing to Nehru and other leaders as a way of India leap frogging stages of scientific development and catching up with the rest of the world. Saha also became an MP in 1952. He contested on the RSP symbol and was supported by the CPI. He became a strong critique of Nehru and India’s atomic policy and the secrecy surrounding it. Even in his critique of India’s atomic policy, Saha was echoing the views of an already emerging global anti-nuke movement. Many of his warnings about secrecy and the lack of accountability in the workings of the atomic energy establishment continue to be relevant today. Saha remained a political radical throughout his life. In all likelihood, it was this aspect of his life that made the makers of Rocket Boys uncomfortable. After all, it would be far easier in today’s climate to have a Muslim, communist and admirer of Jinnah as the villain and prop him against a Bhabha portrayed as the darling of the nation. But the reality wasn’t that simple!

Both Bhabha and Sarabhai obtained their PhDs from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge in cosmic ray physics. In the 1930s, the time that Bhabha was there, the Cavendish Laboratory and Cambridge was the hotbed of leftist and socialist scientists who were mobilized against Hitler. This included J.D. Bernal, JBS Haldane, Joseph Needham, Lancelot Hogben and others. Some of the most well-known cosmic ray physicists to pass out of the Cavendish Laboratory during that period, PMS Blackett and C.F. Powell, were associated with the left. Blackett was in fact the scientific advisor to the India’s Defence Ministry. Many Indians including MGK Menon who was Bhabha’s deputy in TIFR were trained under C.F. Powell. Bernard Peters a well-known leftist scientist who had escaped to the US from Denmark fleeing the Nazis, subsequently left the US fearing the McCarthy witch hunts and was brought to TIFR by Bhabha, who himself wasn’t averse to quoting Marx in his speeches!1 His socialisation into the Cambridge scientific left also enabled Bhabha to enlist their help in building India’s scientific research infrastructure. As a result, we see that many of the leftist scientists mentioned above visiting India often during the 1950s.

So, if the historical record is scrutinised, there is enough evidence to suggest that being a communist was hardly a deterrent against being involved in India’s science program. In fact, it is on record that India in as early as 1950 had nearly sealed the deal to get a nuclear reactor from France. This was largely due to the fact that the French Atomic energy establishment was headed by the leftist Fredric Joiliot-Curie who was known to many Indian scientists through scientific and political networks. This plan was jeopardised when the Americans came to know about it and blocked it. The history of science actually reveals that the Indian scientists, even the ‘rocket boys’ had strong connections with leftist and communist scientists across the globe whose help and expertise they unhesitatingly mobilised to develop India’s own capacity.

While APJ Abdul Kalam, the poster boy ‘good Muslim’ is introduced to us at the cost of other important personalities it is quite obvious why this is so. But the more serious omission is that of Satish Dhawan. After Sarabhai’s untimely death it was Satish Dhawan who headed ISRO for more than a decade and under whose leadership India became a space faring nation. But Satish Dhawan was also a peacenik. He ensured that at a time when the Cold War was moving into space, India’s space program would not be weaponised. Dhawan himself was part of the scientific workers’ movement, a global trade union organisation of scientists. We know that his family members like sister Primla Loomba were well known left activists. Dhawan himself had attended the Pugwash Conferences against nuclear weapons. So, unlike the triumph of the scientific-military establishment in Rocket Boys the history of India’s space program and the people who led it was very different. A peacenik like Dhawan as the head of the space program will not fit the triumphalist narrative, but an Abdul Kalam who has come to be associated with the Pokhran Blast in 1998 will, and hence he makes an appearance even though he was a fairly junior engineer during the time of Sarabhai’s death.

The series is anything but a starting point to understand the history of science in India. One sincerely hopes that people after seeing the series question the stereotypes the series legitimises and furthers. It is a series made with one eye on the political rulers of India and the troll armies working on their behest. It doesn’t only play safe, it legitimises their propaganda.