Dedicating the Bose Institute, one of the earliest research Institutes in India, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose spoke, "I dedicate today this Institute as not merely a laboratory but a temple." Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose is generally acknowledged as the father of modern scientific research in India. He was not only a scientist but also a great Indian. Yognanda Parmahansaji, in his ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ refers to a conversation between a few foreign Professors that he happened to overhear. "Jagadish Chandra Bose's wireless inventions antedated those of Marconi." One of them said. "What do you mean, sir?" The other one asked. The first professor obligingly explained. "Bose was the first one to invent a wireless coherer and an instrument for indicating the refraction of electric waves. But the Indian scientist did not exploit his inventions commercially. He soon turned his attention from the inorganic to the organic world. His revolutionary discoveries as a plant physiologist are outpacing even his radical achievements as a physicist."
Bose loved to share everything with the world he lived in. Bose did not at all consider himself to be the proprietor of anything he enjoyed; he never yearned for a patent even. Still he lives in the hearts of every Indian, though not in their brains. Gautam Buddha said, “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Bose was always for the bare minimum with regard to his existential requirements; he was filled by the noble teachings of the past Indian saints. As time scrolled on and as the world became one single village ruled by a strange market economy, people think of only accumulating the maximum, irrespective of the means. A great spiritual refraction has occurred. Scriptures are interpreted and reinterpreted, letting the meanings refract degree by degree every time. Things develop as if there is the law of spiritual refraction according to which we are destined to become more and more opaque to finer waves of realisation.
I remember the story of an Abbot and an aspirant. The young man who newly joined the monastery was asked to help the other monks to copy the old canons. The young new comer notices that they are all someway copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. He goes to the Head Abbot and expresses his doubt that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! The head monk goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and the old Abbot did not return. The young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him only to find him banging his head against the wall and wailing, 'We missed the ‘R’! We missed the ‘R’! His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably. The young monk asks the old abbot, “What's wrong, father?” With a choking voice, the old abbot replied, “The word was ‘Celebrate’ not ‘Celibate”.
