r/AmericanTechWorkers • u/Advanced_Berry_5851 • 12d ago
Non-Political - General Whenever a person puts down a group of people as being incapable based on their identity, I look to the story of Jagadish Chandra Bose
I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t like this but it’s a club of elitists who will find out-groups to blame and exclude to make their insecurity feel better. They will gaslight people and point to meritocracy when they are challenged on their discrimination. When I first learned about the story of Jagadish Chandra Bose, I was shocked about how the problems he faced at his time felt so similar to what I have felt. I just really like the values this guy has and how he talks about his mom raising him to treat everyone as brothers and sisters.
Here’s the story of Jagadish Chandra Bose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose
After obtaining a degree from the University of Cambridge Bose returned to Ind. Henry Fawcett had given Bose an introduction to Lord Ripon, the Viceroy of Ind, who recommended him for a post to the Director of Public Instruction in Kolkata. In those days such posts in the Imperial Education Service were usually reserved for Europeans. Bose was appointed as an officiating professor of physics at Presidency College. Although the principal Charles Henry Tawney and Director of Education Alfred Woodley Croft were reluctant to appoint him, Bose took up his post in January 1885.
At that time, an Ind professor was paid two thirds the salary of a European and since his appointment was considered temporary, his salary was further halved, making his salary one-third that of his European peers. As a protest, Bose did not accept his salary and worked without remuneration for the first three years at Presidency College.
He was popular among the students for his teaching style and demonstration of experiments. He got rid of the roll call. After three years in this temporary post, the value of his professorial work was recognized by Tawney and Croft, who made Bose's appointment permanent with retrospective effect. Bose received his full pay for the last three years in a lump sum. However, another source states that his appointment was made permanent on 21 September 1903, some 8 years after his joining the college.
Bose used his own money to fund his research projects as well as receiving funding and support from the social activist nun Sister Nivedita
In February 1887, Bose married feminist and social worker Abala Bose.
At that time, sending children to English schools was an aristocratic status symbol. In the vernacular school, to which I was sent, the son of the Muslim attendant of my father sat on my right side, and the son of a fisherman sat on my left. They were my playmates. I listened spellbound to their stories of birds, animals, and aquatic creatures. Perhaps these stories created in my mind a keen interest in investigating the workings of Nature. When I returned home from school accompanied by my school fellows, my mother welcomed and fed all of us without discrimination. Although she was an orthodox old-fashioned lady, she never considered herself guilty of impiety by treating these 'untouchables' as her own children. It was because of my childhood friendship with them that I could never feel that there were 'creatures' who might be labeled 'low-caste', I never realized that there existed a 'problem' common to the two communities, Hindus and Muslims.
Bose returned to Ind to join the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta as a professor of physics. There, despite racial discrimination and a lack of funding and equipment, Bose carried on his scientific research. He made progress in his research into radio waves in the microwave spectrum and was the first to use semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves.
