Chandrima Shaha: The Indian Scientist Who Shatters Stereotypes

Sometimes scientists dabble with music and art, and many excel. Homi Jehangir Bhabha was a painter and a great connoisseur of art, while Satyendra Nath Bose played the esraj (a violin-like instrument) and Raja Ramanna was a pianist. K. Radhakrishnan, former chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), is a trained Kathakali dancer and vocalist. 

But can you think of an Indian scientist who has played professional cricket, been a radio commentator, a science writer, and a photographer, along with making pathbreaking scientific discoveries and becoming the head of one of the highest academic bodies in the country? That’s Chandrima Shaha for you. Her diverse personality and career has few parallels in the contemporary Indian scientific community, and this is what a new biography of hers captures beautifully.

Written by Rajinder Singh – a leading historian of science based in Oldenburg, Germany – along with Calcutta-based physicist Suprakash C Roy – the biography is titled Chandrima Shaha: A Lifelong Journey of Scientific Inquiry. Singh has made a mark with his biographies of Indian scientists – not just the likes of C.V. Raman and D.M. Bose but those of lesser-known figures of Indian science.

In recent years, he has brought to the public gaze many unsung scientists such as Bibha Chowdhury, Snehamoy Datta, Bal Mukund Anand and Purnima Sinha. Several scientists whose lives Singh has documented happen to be women, correcting the unsaid bias in conventional history telling. Chandrima’s biography is in the same series. 

In 2020, Chandrima was elected as the president of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the first woman to lead the academy which is celebrating 90 years of its founding this month. She is currently the J.C. Bose Chair distinguished professor (Infectious Diseases and Immunology) at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata.

Chandrima was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to accomplished parents – her father Shambhu Shaha was a creative photographer and her mother Karuna was a painter and singer. Shambhu Shaha is known for the perceptive pictures he shot of Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan during Tagore’s twilight years.

Tagore appreciated his work as he captured important cultural happenings at Santiniketan. The book contains a picture of young Chandrima with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru when he inaugurated an exhibition of Tagore’s pictures shot by Shambhu Shaha. In 2001, Chandrima wrote a book on her father. 

The atmosphere at the Shaha household was eclectic and creative, with frequent visits from artists, art lovers and contemporary intellectuals of the city including eminent scientific figure, Satyendra Nath Bose. The book contains a picture of Chandrima and her mother with famous painter M.F. Hussain. Chandrima shot a candid portrait of Hussain with her camera and it was later published in the Illustrated Weekly of India in 1973.

Chandrima’s interest in science was kindled in her childhood when her father gifted her a small telescope and encouraged her to look at stars and planets. Soon, she thought of becoming an astronomer. The aspiration changed when her father brought a monocular microscope from an auction house.

“A drop from a puddle formed by rainwater, examined under the microscope, opened an amazing world not visible to the naked eye. Moving creatures of various shapes and sizes visible under the microscope intrigued Chandrima. This was very different from the static view of the sky,” the book points out.

The young Chandrima would often wander into neighbours’ gardens to collect insects. Such visits opened her eyes to the beautiful phenomenon of metamorphosis – the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly and so on. Such exploration of the natural phenomena led her to dream of becoming a biologist – possibly the kind who wanders through jungles gathering insects to learn more about their existence. To further encourage her interest, her father gifted her the book on the origin of life by Charles Darwin on her fifteenth birthday.

As a student of Zoology at Calcutta University where she did her graduation and post-graduation, Chandrima would often go on field trips to coastal Bengal to collect and study specimens. This allowed her to pursue her interest in photography as well as study marine animals in their habitat.

Then Chandrima joined the PhD programme at the Indian Institute of Experimental Medicine (later renamed CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology) which is known for its work on plant-based products. She worked in the laboratory of Anita Pakrashi who was engaged in research in reproductive sciences, experimenting with compounds from the plant Aristolochia indica Linn for their medicinal properties as described in folk medicine.

For postdoctoral work, Chandrima joined the laboratory of Gilbert S. Greenwald, a reproductive biologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, as a Ford Foundation Fellow in 1980. Here, she worked on various aspects of ovarian cellular functions. She joined the biomedical laboratory of the Population Council in the spring of 1982 and started working on peptides that regulate the ovary and the testis. 

While at the Population Council, she happened to meet G.P. Talwar who was building the laboratories of the National Institute of Immunology (NII) and was recruiting scientists under a scheme to bring back Indian scientists from the United States. Chandrima was invited to join NII to build an independent laboratory addressing pressing problems in the country. After a long spell of 28 years at the laboratory, she was appointed director of NII in 2012. 

Also read: Reproductive Futures: The Promises and Pitfalls of In-Vitro Gametogenesis

At NII, her work focused on hunting for possible candidates for a sperm vaccine, building upon her work on testicular physiology and germ cells. For designing a sperm vaccine, the idea was to find a protein in human sperm that is essential for sperm function and would be able to block the interaction with the egg when necessary.

The work established the role of glutathione S-transferase (GST) in testicular cells. GST M1 found in germ cells could bind to sex steroids and is secreted by the seminiferous tubules, making it an important protein for the functioning of the testis. Her research provided important leads for the development of an anti-fertility vaccine.

Her laboratory also addressed problems associated with cell survival and death in unicellular and multicellular organisms and made significant contributions to Leishmania biology. The Leishmania parasite is the causative agent for leishmaniasis or Kala-Azar. The original contribution of the laboratory was the demonstration of apoptosis-like death in the parasite, much like metazoan apoptosis.

This opened an opportunity for intervention of parasite survival through the manipulation of apoptotic proteins. Studies relating to the mechanisms by which the parasite deals with anti-leishmanial drugs showed how parasites respond to drugs, become resistant or die.

While providing details of her scientific work and its impact, the book also presents some less-known aspects of Chandrima’s life. For instance, it reveals that her entry into professional cricket was linked to her passion for photography. She accidentally saw an advertisement of the newly formed Women’s Cricket Association, while visiting a publisher’s office, and decided to rush to the stadium to take pictures of the cricket team. There, she found that the selection process for the team was in progress and decided to enrol herself and to her surprise, she got selected.

Chandrima represented West Bengal in the National Women’s Cricket Championships in 1973 and 1974 and was included in the East Zone team as the vice-captain. Her first major assignment as a radio commentator for first-class cricket was the match between East Zone and the visiting Sri Lanka team in November 1975. 

The authors have presented a well-researched account of the life of an eminent scientific personality of contemporary times. It is an important addition to the literature on women in STEM and the modern history of science in India.

Dinesh C Sharma is a journalist and author based in New Delhi. His latest book is Beyond Biryani – The Making of a Globalised Hyderabad.