Indian Botanist, E.K. Janaki Ammal with colleagues at the Royal Horticultural Society, c. 1945. © The John Innes Centre Archives.

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Premier, inaugurating the 1949 Indian Science Congress. © Wikimedia Commons.

The Industrial Section of the Indian Museum in Kolkata will be host to a major exhibition and international conference on international networks of science and culture on 9 and 10 January 2023. The event is co-organised by the University of Sussex and the Botanical Survey of India, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

A remarkable intellectual effervescence, which began in the early 20th century led to a series of interdisciplinary debate around genetics, cytology, botany and eugenics amongst scientists globally. The outcome of these debates was a better understanding of humanity’s past and a role of humans within the natural world gradually leading to an anti-racist science movement and post-war environmentalism by the mid-20th century.

This exhibition explores for the first time the development of these debates and the network of scientists that emerged in Britain and India and the unrecognised contribution of Western-trained colonial scientists including the role of a pioneering Indian woman scientist, E.K. Janaki Ammal. We hope, thereby, to enhance our understanding of the practices of science in this period by examining the role of race, gender and indigenous knowledge from the colonies in the cross-fertilisation of ideas. The impact of these debates will be analysed in reference to scientific humanism, which continues to be a significant part of the humanist movement in Britain today and one which was also instrumental in transforming India post-independence and has been one of India’s foundational principles.

Using a range of previously unpublished archival photographs and objects this co-curated exhibition, with the John Innes Centre, Norwich and the Botanical Survey of India, uncovers this hidden history of science and the role of India and Indian scientists in some key debates on genetics, humanism and environmentalism. The exhibition will include a short 5-minute film on the life of E.K. Janaki Ammal, commissioned by the University of Sussex. It will be available in a digital form and will be hosted on the University of Sussex site, to be accessible via our project partners to British academics and a wider public both in India and Britain. The main exhibition will be complimented by two additional displays, which aim to decolonise colonial collections (Adivasi display) and current debates around climate change, by bringing in children’s perspectives from the locality (Mangrove School Project).

The launch of this exhibition will be accompanied by a public-facing conference at the Ashutosh Centenary Hall in Kolkata with academic experts and early career researchers from Britain and India, which will be aimed at university students and the general public and will engage them in debates about science and public culture. Zoom tickets for the conference can be ordered via Eventbrite.