Bengaluru’s identity as India’s technology capital is often explained through software companies, engineering talent and the rise of the startup economy. But the city’s scientific character began taking shape much earlier, through a decision made at the turn of the twentieth century to locate the Indian Institute of Science in a place that was then far from an obvious national centre of research.
The choice was not inevitable. When Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata began developing his plan for an institution devoted to higher education and scientific research in the 1890s, Bombay appeared to be the leading candidate. It was wealthier, more industrialised and more prominent than Bengaluru. Tata himself was from Bombay, and the city enjoyed strong public support for the proposed institution.
Bengaluru’s eventual selection shows that major urban institutions are not created by reputation alone. The city’s emergence as a centre of science depended on a combination of land, public patronage, administrative support, physical conditions and access to infrastructure. The Indian Institute of Science, or IISc, became both a beneficiary and a producer of that urban ecosystem.
In 1898, Tata established a 23-member Provisional Committee headed by educationist Burjorji Padshah to prepare a detailed plan for the institution. The committee consulted 76 people on possible locations. Bombay received majority support, while other cities and towns considered included Calcutta, Poona, Coonoor, Nainital, Allahabad, Bengaluru and Roorkee.
At the time, Bengaluru was not yet associated with advanced research. The city was still dealing with the consequences of the Anglo-Mysore wars. Its Cantonment was expanding because British soldiers valued the climate, while the more crowded local settlement, or pete, faced recurring famines. In 1898, the city was also at the centre of a plague epidemic.
The location debate changed after Tata visited South India in early 1899 and met Seshadri Iyer, the Dewan of Mysore State. Iyer had supported the idea of using science and technology to improve living conditions in Mysore and had previously expressed interest in a university in Bengaluru. His offer transformed the discussion from a question of prestige into one of institutional feasibility.
Mysore State offered approximately 300 acres of land and financial assistance towards construction if the institution came to Bengaluru. This was significant because the proposed institute required a large, dedicated campus. Bombay had industrial strength and civic importance, but it was a crowded island where assembling such a site would have been difficult. Its humidity was also considered unsuitable for books and scientific equipment.
Bengaluru offered a different set of advantages. It had a relatively temperate climate, available land and the backing of the Mysore Durbar. Those factors did not make the city an established research centre, but they made it a practical location for building one.
The Government later asked British chemist Sir William Ramsay to help shape the project and assess possible locations. Ramsay, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904, visited several cities during a nearly three-month tour of India. His assessment strengthened the case for Bengaluru.
Ramsay noted the city’s accessibility from Bombay and Madras, its proximity to mineral deposits including iron ore and gold, and the potential availability of electric power from Shivanasamudra Falls. He also regarded the climate as favourable for much of the year. Bengaluru’s relative lack of distractions, compared with larger cities such as Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, was considered an advantage for an institution focused on research.
These observations reveal the infrastructure logic behind the location decision. The institute was not being placed simply where intellectual activity already existed. It was being located where land could be assembled, energy could potentially be accessed, materials were within reach and a supporting authority was willing to commit resources.
The decision nevertheless remained contested. In 1901, a government-appointed committee led by Colonel John Clibborn and David Orme Masson revisited the proposal. After examining Bengaluru and Roorkee, the committee concluded that Roorkee would be preferable if it could secure the required land and financial support. That condition proved decisive. Roorkee did not receive the patronage necessary to establish the proposed institute there.
Mysore’s commitment to Bengaluru was subsequently formalised and strengthened. The Mysore Durbar promised 371 acres and 11 guntas of land, Rs 5 lakh towards capital expenditure and an annual contribution of Rs 50,000. The offer provided the institutional foundation that competing locations could not match.
The process still took years. Bureaucratic delays slowed the project, and Tata died in 1904, before the institute was established. On May 27, 1909, the Government of India issued the vesting order that brought the Indian Institute of Science into existence in Bengaluru. The institute opened its doors to students in 1911 with 24 students and two academic departments: General and Applied Chemistry, and Electrical Technology.
The early design of IISc connected research to industrial development. According to the institute, six factories were established within less than five years as a direct result of investigations conducted there. These included factories associated with acetone, thymol, straw boards, soap and sandalwood oil. Research was therefore not treated as an isolated academic activity. It was tied to production, materials and the creation of industrial capacity.
That orientation became more important as the institute expanded. During the Second World War, IISc trained personnel, manufactured military and industrial goods, and worked with Hindustan Aircraft Limited to repair and maintain British and American warplanes. New engineering departments, including Aeronautical Engineering, Metallurgy and Mechanical Engineering, emerged during the 1940s.
Later leadership widened the institution’s research base. Under director Satish Dhawan during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, IISc expanded into materials science, computer science and automation, molecular biophysics and interdisciplinary research. Former students and faculty included Homi J. Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, Anna Mani, Kamala Sohonie and C. N. R. Rao.
The institution also helped shape the wider geography of Indian science. Its contribution was not limited to research carried out within the campus. Former members, research programmes and institutional links contributed to the development of other academic and scientific organisations. Over time, the presence of a high-level research institution helped reinforce Bengaluru’s association with engineering, advanced technology and specialised knowledge.
This is the central urban lesson in IISc’s history: a city’s economic identity can be built around institutions whose original purpose predates the industries later associated with it. Bengaluru did not become a technology centre first and then acquire a research institution. The research institution formed part of the infrastructure through which the city’s scientific and industrial capacities developed.
The relationship also worked in the opposite direction. As Bengaluru expanded, IISc developed new areas of work, including brain research, nanoscience and engineering, and hypersonics. The institute also built industry links and incubated startups. Its expansion included a 1,500-acre campus at Challakere in Chitradurga district, extending its physical footprint beyond the original Bengaluru setting.
The story complicates the idea that urban innovation is produced mainly by private investment or by the sudden arrival of technology companies. In this case, land was provided by a regional government, capital and recurring support were committed to a long-term institution, and national administrative approval eventually created the legal framework. Scientific research, industrial development and urban growth accumulated over decades rather than appearing as a single policy outcome.
It also demonstrates the importance of institutional timing. In the late nineteenth century, Bengaluru had serious public-health problems and limited academic traditions. Yet the city possessed conditions that could support a large research campus: a relatively favourable climate, land availability, a supportive princely administration and potential access to energy and mineral networks. The decision recognised capacities that were not fully visible in the city’s existing reputation.
The available historical record does not establish that IISc alone caused Bengaluru’s later transformation into a technology hub. The city’s development involved many institutions, industries, public investments and social changes. But the sequence is clear: the institute gave Bengaluru an early and durable anchor in science and engineering, and that anchor became increasingly valuable as the city’s economy changed.
Bengaluru’s transformation therefore began with a location decision that connected urban land to national scientific ambition. The choice of IISc was shaped by practical considerations as much as by intellectual ones. The city offered space, patronage, climate and infrastructure potential, while Mysore’s financial commitments made the proposal implementable.
More than a century later, IISc remains part of Bengaluru’s scientific identity and a reminder that knowledge economies require physical and institutional foundations. The city that once competed with Bombay, Calcutta, Poona and Roorkee for a proposed research institute eventually became widely identified with science and technology. What remains significant is not only the outcome, but the mechanism: long-term urban advantage can begin with a public commitment to land, research and institutional continuity.
