Tamil Heritage Trust
THT's monthly talk titled Sir M Visvesvaraya: The Quest to Engineer a
Nation, Aparajith Ramnath in conversation with R Gopu and Ashwin
Prabhu.
Online talk in English on April 5, 2025, 5.30 pm IST
How do we assess Visveswaraya's technical achievements against
those of his professional contemporaries? What were the intellectual and
professional influences that shaped him? In what ways did his
background as an engineer mould his conception of economic development?
Register
Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (1861 - 1962) was arguably the most famous
Indian engineer of the twentieth century. But he was also much more. His
legacies as public administrator, constitutional analyst, and
development thinker continue to shape life in India. They include
innovations in irrigation, multipurpose dams, and piped water supply
systems, technical institutions, industrial enterprises, and transformed
cityscapes.
In his new book, Engineering a Nation, Aparajith Ramnath provides a
vivid portrait of Visvesvaraya’s eight-decade-long public career, based
on in-depth archival research, field visits, and interviews. To explore
Visvesvaraya’s life, he argues, is to explore afresh the emergence of
the Indian nation itself.
Aparajith Ramnath is a historian of science, technology and
business. He is the author of two books—Engineering a Nation: The life
and career of M. Visvesvaraya (1861–1962) (Penguin/Viking, 2024) and The
Birth of an Indian Profession: Engineers, Industry, and the State,
1900-47 (Oxford University Press, 2017). He is an associate professor in
the School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University.
Aparajith was educated at BITS Pilani, Oxford University, and Imperial
College London. He has been an International Scholar of the Society for
the History of Technology, a Liverpool India Fellow, a Sangam House
Writing Fellow, and a recipient of the Young Historian of Science Award
(2018) from the Indian National Science Academy. In addition to his
scholarly work, he has written articles on history for various news
outlets.
R. Gopu was conferred the Vedavalli Heritage Award for his
contributions to culture. He speaks, writes and blogs about history,
temple architecture, science, technology and much more. He is a
co-founder of the Varahamihira Science Forum. He conducts classes on
topics such as Indian Astronomy and Mathematics and Pallava Grantha
script.
Ashwin Prabhu’s meanderings have taken him to the worlds of
banking, teaching, heritage education, writing and development sector
work. His first book, “Classroom With A View - Notes from the
Krishnamurti schools”, came out in 2022. He enjoys working with teachers
and children in thematic areas where philosophy, history, art and
literature happily intersect.
Tamil Heritage Trust
tamilheritage.in
tamilheritage.in@gmail.com
youtube.com/@TamilHeritageTrust
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