In Pursuit of Laxmi:

Abstract

There is an abundance of literature on the history of industrialization in India. This has engaged the attention of scholars for long and even today has a huge audience. It has been generally recognized that the colonial government consciously and deliberately adopted policies that had deleterious effects on the economy and industry of the subject country. Along with such exploitation paradigm, there are few issues which need to be investigated in the interest of a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of economic change during the British rule. The attitude adopted by the Indian promoters of industry for the selection of technology for their industrial ventures is one of such issues. Were they self-sufficient in the realm of production technologies or the borrowers of such technologies from the west? Can one locate Bengali entrepreneurship in the engineering industry? How did the Bengali entrepreneurs situate modern technical knowledge in the project of establishing large-scale industries? For example, Prafulla Chandra Ray, the great chemist, endeavoured to make his science directly relevant to the immediate needs of the society. He started the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works Ltd. (1892) which sought to put scientificknowledgetoimmediateindustrialuse.Taking into account two case-studies,Sir Rajendra Nath Mookerjee and Dr. Prafulla Chandra Ray, the article investigates the perceptions and response of the Bengali entrepreneurs towards modern technology and their role in transforming the industrial life of Bengal.