A Canadian crop doctor in Bengaluru
Leslie Coleman set up the Hebbal Agricultural School (today part of the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), on the same campus) in 1913, and served as its first Principal
Although we have been plagued these past weeks by extraordinary climate events, including the uncharacteristic humidity in our own city, India will be focusing today – counting day – only on its political climate. To offer a smidgen of respite on the eve of World Environment Day, let us focus instead on a remarkable Canadian who arrived in Bangalore over a century ago and transformed the lives of Mysore’s farmers.
It all began (as did the Indian National Congress), with British civil servant and political reformist Allan Octavian Hume. In 1872, miffed that the government focused more on agricultural revenue than on improving agricultural efficiency across India, he proposed the setting up of a dedicated Department of Agriculture, which was rejected. In 1879, following the devastating famine of 1876-1878, Hume lashed out against the government, and was fired for his pains. In 1889, with famine looming again, the government finally decided to act on Hume’s proposal, and English agricultural chemist JA Voelcker was tasked with generating a report on improvements required in Indian agriculture.
As always, Mysore was ahead of the game. Tipu Sultan’s passion for horticulture had been carried forward by Commissioner Mark Cubbon, who founded the Agri-horticultural Society in 1839 to educate farmers and introduce superior varieties of cotton, sugarcane and tobacco to the soil of Mysore.
In 1881, Maharaja Chamarajendra Wadiyar set up agricultural banks to finance farmers, and in 1888, instituted an Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition as part of the Dasara festivities, to stimulate growth across both sectors. Following the recommendations of the Voelcker report, Mysore went global, bringing in experts from across the world to whet its agricultural efficiency.
The first to arrive, in 1899, was German-Canadian chemist and agricultural scientist Adolf Lehmann. Setting up his office and laboratory on the 30 acres of land that Queen Regent Kempananjammanni had donated to the Experimental Agricultural Station at Hebbal, he established rigorous processes for soil fertility experiments and pest control and improved the process of turning sugarcane juice into sugar. In 1907, feeling the lack of a ‘plant protection’ expert, he invited his fellow Canadian, 29-year-old entomologist, mycologist and plant pathologist Leslie Coleman, then working in Berlin, to come to Mysore on a five-year contract.
For reasons unclear, Lehmann’s own contract was not renewed in 1908, leaving young Coleman with far more responsibilities than he had signed up for. He must have discharged them well; in 1913, the Mysore government offered him a permanent position as the first director of its Department of Agriculture. He would continue to serve in that position for 30 productive years, going well beyond his brief into areas like agricultural policy, education, community outreach, and mechanisation, including designing the efficient and inexpensive ‘Mysore plough’ to replace the wooden one then in vogue.
On the urging of then-Diwan Sir M Visvesvaraya, Coleman set up the Hebbal Agricultural School (today part of the University of Agricultural Sciences (UAS), on the same campus) in 1913, and served as its first Principal. His discovery that the so-called ‘Bordeaux Mixture’ worked very well to protect young areca trees against a major fungal disease, and his measures to prevent rot disease in coffee plants, saved the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Mysore farmers and planters. He also played a key role in the setting up of the Mysore Sugar Factory, the first joint-stock private company in India, working with sugarcane farmers to ensure their participation.
Leslie Coleman lives on in Bengaluru through the annual Coleman Memorial Lecture that UAS hosts each year on June 16, his birthday. In 2023, his India papers were donated by his family to the city where he spent so much of his working life and contributed so much to; they are now held in the archives of the National Centre for Biological Sciences.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)