On his way back to Calcutta from the Fourth Scientific Deputation to the
West, Prof. J. C. Bose visited Madura, 14th June 1915. The Tamil Sangam
presented him with an address. In reply Dr. Bose made an important
speech, in course of which he said:--
I am no longer a representative of Bengal nor have I come to a strange
place, but as an Indian addressing the mighty India and her people. When
we realise that unity of our destiny then a great future opens out for
us.
It may be we may theorise and attribute to the plants all the
characteristics of the animals; but that will be merely theory: there
will be no proof. There are certain classes of people who think that
plants are utterly unlike animals and some hold that they are like
animals. The mere theory is absolutely worthless in order to find out
the truth. We have to find by investigation, by means of researches, by
means of proofs, that one is identical with the other. We have not only
to drop all theory but we have to make the plant itself write down the
answers to the questions that we have to put to them. That was the great
problem,--how to make the plant itself answer and write down answers to
the question....
If the plants are acted on by various medicines and drugs like
ourselves, then we can create an agent or a spokesman on which we can
carry out all future investigations on the action of drugs. Then there
is opened out a great vista for the scientific study of medicine. And
let me tell you medicine is not yet an exact science. It is merely a
phase of tradition. We have not been able to make medicine scientific.
Now by the data of the influence of drugs on the fundamental basis of
life, as is seen in the plant, we shall be able to make the science of
medicine purely scientific.
In travelling all over the world, which I have done several times, I was
struck by two great characteristics of different nations. One
characteristic of certain nations is living for the future. All the
modern nations are striving to win force and power from nature. There is
another class of men who live on the glory of the past. Now, what is to
be the future of our nation? Are we to live only on the glory of the
past and die off from the face of the earth, to show that we are worthy
descendants of the glorious past and to show by our work, by our
intellect and by our service that we are not a decadent nation? We have
still a great and mighty future before us, a future that will justify
our ancestry. In talking about ancestry, do we ever realise that the
only way in which we can do honour to our past is not to boast of what
our ancestors have done but to carry out in the future something as
great, if not greater than they. Are we to be a living nation, to be
proud of our ancestry and to try to win renown by continuous
achievements? These mighty monuments that I see around me tell us what
has been done till very recent times. I have travelled over some of the
greatest ruins of the Universities of India. I have been to the ruins of
the University of Taxilla in the farthest corner of India which
attracted the people of the west and the east. I had been to the ruins
of Nalanda, a University which invited all the west to gain knowledge
under its intellectual fostering. I had been all there and seen them. I
have come here also and want to visit Conjeevaram. But are you to foster
the dead honours or to try to bring back your University in India and
drag once more from the rest of the world people who would come down and
derive knowledge from India? It is in that way and that way alone we can
win our self-respect and make our life and the life of the nation
worthy. The present era is the era of temples of learning. In order to
erect temples of learning we require all the offerings of our mighty
people. We want to erect temples and "viharas" which are so
indispensable to the study of nature and her secrets. It is a problem
which appeals to every thoughtful Indian. It is by the effort of the
people and by their generosity that all these mighty temples arose; and
now are we to worship the dead stones or are we to erect living temples
so that the knowledge that has been made in India shall be perpetuated
in India? I received requests from the different Universities in America
and Germany to allow students from those countries to come and learn the
science that has been initiated in India. Now, is this knowledge to pass
beyond our boundaries to that again in future time we may have to go to
the west to get back this knowledge or are we to keep this flame of
learning burning all the time?
(_Modern Review, Vol. xviii, p. 22-23_).