The man who brought ISRO to Bengaluru
India's national space agency, ISRO, is in the spotlight for its efforts to land a spacecraft on the moon.
Last week, as the glorious sight of the Chandrayaan-3 successfully blasting off from Sriharikota filled our hearts and screens, India’s national space agency, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), was once again in the global limelight, this time for its efforts to make India only the fourth country in the world to land a spacecraft on the moon’s surface. While we keep our fingers firmly crossed for the rover’s soft landing on August 23, let us turn our attention to a soft-spoken, much-loved, hugely admired Bengalurean, the post-graduate in English literature after whom the space centre in Sriharikota is named.
To be fair, Satish Dhawan, who was born in Srinagar and grew up in Lahore, had many other degrees besides the MA in English – a BA in maths and physics and a BE in mechanical engineering, both from Punjab University, an MS in aerospace engineering from the University of Minnesota, and a PhD in aerospace engineering and mathematics from Caltech. In 1951, he returned to India and came straight to Bengaluru, to join the Indian Institute of Science as a senior scientific officer. Thenceforth, his rise was nothing short of mercurial. A decade later, only 42, he took charge as the IISc’s youngest-ever director. He would helm the Institute for over 17 years, exerting a huge influence on its intellectual character, and deploying his unique vision to turn IISc from an excellent institute of technology into a temple of application-based research and education.
Professor Dhawan’s own interests in a vast and varied number of subjects, apart from his strong social conscience and a deep love for nature, ensured the setting up of several centres of interdisciplinary research at IISc, including ASTRA (Cell for Application of Science and Technology to Rural Areas) and CES (Centre for Ecological Sciences). In the early seventies, he had just launched a global campaign to recruit the brightest minds as faculty for the institute when India’s fledgling space programme suffered a huge setback – on December 30, 1971, its brilliant architect, and the founder-chairman of ISRO, Vikram Sarabhai, succumbed to a cardiac arrest, only 52.
The idea of ISRO, a government agency that devoted itself to space research, had been mooted by Sarabhai as far back as 1962; in 1969, it took shape as ISRO. With Sarabhai gone, the then PM Indira Gandhi offered professor Dhawan the chairmanship. That was when, in a now-legendary counter-offer, professor Dhawan requested two assurances: one, that ISRO would be hq-ed at Bengaluru, which, following the setting up of Hindustan Aircraft (now Aeronautics) Limited in 1940, and IISc’s Aeronautics Engineering department in 1942, had become the perfect ecosystem for such an organisation; and two, that he would be allowed to continue as director of his beloved IISc. Gandhi agreed, and ISRO came to Bengaluru.
Satish Dhawan retired from IISc in 1981 and ISRO in 1984, continuing as chairman of the Indian Space Commission until his death in 2002, 50 years after he had first arrived in the city. It was during his tenure at ISRO that India’s first two satellites – Aryabhatta (1975) and Bhaskara (1979) – were placed in orbit around the earth (by Soviet rockets), and the first indigenously built SLVs (satellite launch vehicles) announced India’s entry into the global space club. For all his great achievements as scientist, researcher and institution-builder, however, professor Dhawan is cherished far more by his colleagues as a great leader – one who, to use the most-quoted instance, shielded them from public ire when the SLV had a disastrous first outing in 1979, and stayed in the background when the same team, with his encouragement, triumphed the next year, successfully placing Rohini into orbit.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)