In 2023, sociologist Gita Chadha was chosen as the third Obaid Siddiqi Chair in the History and Culture of Science at the Archives at NCBS. Over her year as Chair, she focused on archiving the gendered experiences of women in science and exploring questions about masculinities in science. Nandita from Labhopping caught up with Gita to ask her about the making of, thinking behind, and the impact of a special series of video interviews she did with male scientists at NCBS.
In the popular discourse about equity in STEM, the focus has largely been on women in science. When did you realise that speaking with male scientists about masculinity would be of value?
In my own journey with feminism, or let’s say as feminism progressed in India in the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in masculinity. During the Delhi gang rape case in 2012 [dubbed the Nirbhaya case], a lot of young men who came on the streets, in protests, said things like, “Not in my name…this is not the kind of masculinity we want”. They were signaling towards a different imagination of masculinity. A lot of work in masculinity studies followed (some of these are listed in end notes), work that was not hostile (like the men’s rights movements) to feminism but, in fact, drew on feminist lineages and articulated allyship.
In the last decade, while designing and teaching courses in Mumbai University on Contemporary Feminist Theory, I started putting masculinity studies centrally in the syllabus. In fact, the first time we redesigned this course at Mumbai University, I added masculinity; I think this was sometime in 2015.
Traditionally, men, and a socially constructed masculinity, have supported women in the social reform spirit, which is fairly paternalistic and which reproduces patriarchy. The question then is how do we move away from this model? How do we shift from it and start looking at masculinity itself, in terms of what it does to men themselves? And of course, what [masculinity] does to the society around us? I wanted to examine the question of men and masculinity in science from these perspectives.
The Obaid Siddiqi Chair was constituted at NCBS to host distinguished scholars with a substantial body of work that deepens our understanding of the history and culture of science. When you were invited to occupy the chair in 2023, did you intend to pursue masculinity as a topic to explore during the year?
When I joined NCBS, and went into the wonderful archives there for the first time, I was shown the MS Swaminathan collection, the Obaid Siddiqui collection and so on and so forth. So I asked them where the collection on Veronica Rodrigues was, because after all she was a leading figure in Indian biology and at NCBS, and I wanted to look into her papers to see if I could find the story of her life, probably to write her biography. They told me that [for certain reasons] there couldn’t be a separate collection on Veronica, but that she is there in all these files. So that raised several questions: what are the challenges of archiving women, and what are the feminist ways of archiving? These led to some great conversations culminating in a conference called Archiving Like a Feminist.
Veronica Rodrigues (second from right) with Obaid Siddiqui (centre) and others. Credit: Pinky Kain
There was another thing that happened around Veronica. During my field work, I would sit in the canteen and talk to people about Veronica and how I am interested in telling her story from a feminist perspective. There was one interesting reaction that I got: “Oh, Veronica was hardly a feminist!” So, do we archive and document women who are [perceived as] “not feminist”? Or should we not? This is a dilemma I grapple with throughout my work in Feminist Science Studies.
The conversations I had led me to the question of toxic masculinity among successful women in science led me to examining masculinity in science. This was not a new narrative for me, yet I learnt to ask the right questions only at NCBS. Why is it that when a woman is “toxic”, she is less understood? Why is the onus to be different, or to change, on her and not on the system that makes her so? Why is toxic masculinity in men normalised and taken for granted? I found myself thinking that toxic masculinity is common to men and women in science and yet the lived experiences of it are so different.
When I joined as chair, my first impulse was, of course, to conduct in-depth interviews with women Principal Investigators (PIs), both for research purposes and for the public domain. Once I finished these, I decided to explore questions of men and masculinity. I was fortunate that the men PIs were cooperative and came on board.
The practice of interviewing is nothing new for you. What was it like this time round, as a relative outsider in one of the most prestigious research institutes in the country?
The interviews I conducted at TIFR (Mumbai) in 2001 for my PhD thesis focused on the creative processes in science. Those interviews were also mixed, with men and women scientists. At that time, I was living on the TIFR campus because my husband K. Sridhar was a theoretical physicist there. In that sense, I was an insider-outsider in my ethnographic field.
(left to right) K Kalyani, Manjima Bhattacharjya, Bidisha Mahanta, Uma Maheshwari Bhrugubanda, Sneha Gole, Gita Chadha, Chayanika Shah and Urvashi Butalia at the ‘Archiving Like A Feminist’ conference. Credit: Hetal Vora
When you are interviewing someone you already know socially, there is always a tension—between trust, suspicion and also curiosity. Why is this sociologist trying to interview us? This was the question written on my respondents’ faces! They were interested in the interview, but it was a playful interest. I would hear things like ‘oh you’ve come to get some gossip, haan’. It took me a lot of time to navigate that casualness and gain their trust. Historians and economists, even psychologists, get the nod more easily from scientists; a qualitative sociologist-anthropologist like me finds it much harder. I would give them a background of the project, get them to sign consent forms… I think they eventually realised that even if my research was not valuable in their mind, it was serious business for me.
This time around, when I came into NCBS, I came with the privilege—or let’s say, the position—of being the Obaid Siddiqui Chair. Frankly, I think it is a big vindication that a critic of science like me was invited to be the Obaid Siddiqui Chair. When I got the email asking me to apply, I thought it was a phishing email! When the position was offered to me, I was thrilled, because it opened up a way to do ethnographic work in a space where I would otherwise not have had easy access to. So, I think it is the position of the OS Chair that made people more open to me. Also this time around, I didn’t know them socially. That analytic distance helped, I think.
I think it is a big vindication that a critic of science like me was invited to be the Obaid Siddiqui Chair. When I got the email asking me to apply, I thought it was a phishing email!
There are 12 interviews across the two seasons of Gender in/of Science: Feminist Conversations on Youtube. But these were not the only interviews you did, nor was this the first time you were interviewing them, right? Can you say more about how you went about this process?
As I mentioned, I did two kinds of interviews. First, there were archival interviews of both men and women, which are relatively long, very detailed and far more intimate. These interviews were about their own journeys into science, their life histories. I asked some very difficult questions about science, relationships, emotion, reason, all of that. The archival interviews are intended to help further research; they have that kind of depth. In a sense, it’s like making a collective biography… but each is also a biography in its own right. I can actually imagine a series of short monographs on each. These are held by the NCBS Archives and can be accessed on request.
Second, there are the public interviews that went on Youtube. Here, the intent was to reach out to the public. So though the content was similar, the tenor was very different. Some of my respondents gave me the longer archival interviews, but did not want to do the public interviews, and we respected that. And then there were those who were comfortable enough to do both. And were absolutely honest in both.
Gita delivers one of the Obaid Siddiqi Lectures in Bangalore International Centre. Credit: Ravi Kumar Boyapati
At many points during these series, I marvelled at how easily the scientists seemed to be willing to open up to you about topics such as upbringing, identity, caste, faith and privilege. Surely, it wasn’t as easy as you made it look?
There’s a little recording room in the archives at NCBS—it’s small and grey, with two chairs for the interviewee and me, and a whiteboard. (I keep telling Venkat, who heads the Archives, we have to make it a little brighter!) After one of the interviews, I remember writing on the board that people tell you their stories, not because you ask them to, but because they want to. What I am saying here, Nandita, is that there was a ripeness to the moment; my respondents wanted to tell their stories, and I just had to listen. It was almost as if they were waiting to tell. I just had to ask the right questions, touch the right chords. The fact that I knew my ground helped immensely. If you know the soil, you sow right.
When I conceptualised the idea of interviewing male scientists at NCBS, I wasn’t sure whether they’d come along. Sridhar was quite sure they wouldn’t! I do think that the community thought it only fair that I wanted to interview women and men, they probably thought of it as a balancing act. But for me, the masculinity interviews stand as an independent set. Once they put their faith in my work, magic happened! Many said: “You’ve made us comfortable to say things that we otherwise wouldn’t.” That was quite a humbling remark for an ethnographer. One of them said that the whole process of being talked to, being questioned, brought in an opportunity to reflect. So yes, I think it was a mix of many things that helped me to get these rather rare interviews.
You start off each interview in the series telling the audience about the four axes of separation you use to explore the idea of the “man of science” and how scientists embody that space. Can you describe why and how you went about this approach?
Even today, if you go to a school and ask children to paint an image of a scientist, you’ll generally get a man, right? So the image of the scientist is predominantly male, and the number of men in science is obviously larger than the number of women in science. The idea of the “man of science” continues to be present, so much so that I’d say even the women in science have to fit into this idea.
Gita interviewing R. Sowdhamini, a faculty at NCBS, for the Gender in/of Science series on Youtube. Credit: Hetal Vora
My interviews with the male PIs were curated around four major axes of separation that I identified: emotion, faith, politics, and aesthetics. The methodology of looking at the axes of separation came to me as a way of looking at how—historically and sociologically—the man of science has been constructed. And also how science has been constructed as very rational—separate from religion, separate from politics, separate from art and aesthetics, you know? I think these axes of separation produce tensions and anxieties in the scientific intellectual. I have seen a lot of this in my personal observations, but these are also well-documented binaries created within Cartesian modern worldviews.
That’s true. The first axis ‘emotion’ is not something most of us associate with science—and definitely not with ‘masculinity’!
Yes. At some level, emotion is perceived in many discourses as feminine, right? Other than anger and loyalty, many scholars of masculinity point out, men are discouraged from being or showing emotions. How men navigate this space is something that masculinity studies has been discussing for a long time. When I explored this aspect with the scientists, they came up with such beautiful answers. All the men agreed that there is a place for emotion, but very interesting patterns emerged from how they answered the question. One of my respondents said that emotion does play a very important role in the practice of science—for example, when one receives an unfavourable review, one is disappointed, sometimes even angry—but we have to learn to keep it aside, he said.
As a culture, what does it mean to truncate your emotional self? While I was working with these ideas on separation from emotion, I was struck by the reality on the ground: that most of these men are so deeply emotional! Nandita, four of my respondents broke down in the interview room, from grief, from separation, from death…So what do you do? How can you then come out of the interview room and make sense of these general ideas about the separation of emotion and the man of science? It’s really quite overwhelming.
While I was working with these ideas on separation from emotion, I was struck by the reality on the ground: that most of these men are so deeply emotional!
When it comes to politics, there’s a lot to talk about given the current context where there is a steep and often explicit penalty to be paid by scientists who choose to publicly hold political and ideological views, especially if they are opposed to the dominant views. That said, the scientists you interviewed had a range of refreshing takes. What struck you the most?
Yeah, the man of science is not supposed to be a man of politics. That is why I chose this as one of the axes of enquiry. In fact, one is supposed to keep politics out of science. Yeah. In LS Shashidhara’s interview, he drew the distinction between politics in the sense of direct state interference, politics within the scientific community, and the politics of citizenship. Archishman Raju, after his education in the US, comes back thinking that the early stage of Indian nation state building—the nationalist movement—has a whole lot of possibilities for him to reflect upon: on the question of what it means to be Indian in a global context. Jitu (Satyajit Mayor) was actually pulled back to India after the Babri Masjid demolition. He said that he was sitting there thinking ‘what am I doing here?’ And he and his wife decided to return to India. That is pretty unusual! So, there were many reactions, varied and complex.
Absolutely. That said, one of the most fascinating exchanges from the series for me was your discussion with Sufyan on politics, which I will paste a transcript of here, for readers who may not have watched the interview yet.
Sufyan (S): I believe that the path of acquiring knowledge requires a certain discipline. It requires a certain focus. It does not mean that you are socially irresponsible. But it means that you choose to not engage in certain high entropic activities.
Gita (G): Political activism is what you’re talking about. I think this comes out of your respect and training and very scholastic [nature].
S: (laughs) So, in part of my training, I tried to be politically active. I burnt my finger. I tried to express political opinions and have faith in the political process… I think that public polity or civil politics… is not a scholastic space.
G: Isn’t there a danger that students will get alienated and cut off from larger social issues that impact knowledge production or seeking of knowledge? For example, if we look at scientific institutions globally and in India, we hardly have any exposure given to students here to study philosophy, to study politics, literature, sociology, history and therefore they have developed some very narrow telescopic views—
S: I totally agree with you that as an epistemological discipline, as a curriculum and pedagogy it’s important. I vouch that there should be at least philosophy in science. Yeah a doctorate of philosophy sounds like an oxymoron without studying philosophy! I also have an experience where one of my postdoc colleagues did a PhD in neuroscience after an undergrad in philosophy and language. And I respected her logic a lot.
But as a social practice… Maybe it is also because we have not really brought in politics in our pedagogy the way it should have been brought in. Maybe what we understand from politics is what we see as a political practice, and that impacts how we respond to this topic. In an academic setup we are very politically aware. This is about intuitive learning right? Everything cannot be transferred as a set of rules or logic. There are certain things that you So when we talk about political awareness, we try to create an all accommodating, all inclusive environment in our research group and in our institution. If that is politics, then I’m totally for it.
What I don’t want to do is say that this is my political stand. Then I am creating a binary, right? And more often than not, there’s no binary in even in knowledge or in life. And this kind of binary, like a religious versus science binary, is very divisive. So we are excluding a certain set of people who could have benefited from interactions with us.
I understand that this point of view challenged you at first, but what did you make of it after you heard him out?
Compared to the others, Sufyan has a very different biography. For him education was the aspirational route for a meaningful and successful life. His response to the question of politics on campus came out of what I’d call a ‘sanitised’ dedication to science, right? Where nothing but the singular pursuit of science matters. Many scientists are raised to think in that fashion. Scientific institutions and cultures reinforce that narrative. I see his answer within that context. But this does not mean he is apolitical. He comes from a minority, relatively underprivileged location. If he got into politics, you know, he definitely would have gotten ‘distracted’ from making a career in science, and that was crucial to his sense of self and well-being. So maybe his views come from there.
A screenshot of Gita’s interview with Sufyan Ashhad for Gender in/of Science. Credit: Youtube/NCBS
For people who come from marginalised backgrounds like him, the price to pay for being political may be much higher.
That’s exactly what I think. And I respect that.
Now that they are out there, and it has been two years since your chairship concluded, do you feel the interviews did what you intended for them to do?
Sometimes, I look at these interviews and wonder if I am doing anything different. Everybody is interviewing, everybody is putting it on the net, right? So, are mine serving any different purpose? In some sense, they are.
In terms of responses, there have been very touching responses, especially on the interview with Raj. This is probably the first time, Nandita, that he has come up so directly and spoken about his Dalit identity. After one of my lectures—this was before the interviews were out—one of my colleagues at NCBS asked me: “Where is caste? Who are you talking about?” At the time, it was not for me to reveal identities, but the public interviews helped to give a name to the face. In my research writing, I might conceal identities, but these are biographies in the open.
…there was a ripeness to the moment; my respondents wanted to tell their stories, and I just had to listen. It was almost as if they were waiting to tell. I just had to ask the right questions, touch the right chords.
Also, one of my women respondents came back to me later and said that all the Dean appointments made after my stint have been women. Is this an intended consequence? Maybe. But I know that becoming Dean is a pain for a woman. We might view it as a fair distribution of power, but a woman may see it as tokenistic and a burden. The narrative can be “I’m not getting to do my science, and men are not doing administration.” It is success and also not success! There is complexity. And the story never ends. All I am hoping for is that the interviews would speak to that complexity.
I’m still exploring this outreach space, and I think doing outreach is not a replacement for institutional reform that needs to be done to make scientific institutions more open, diverse and equitable. But if this exercise in outreach serves the purpose of giving strength to younger people, it’s good. As Sufyan said to me after his interview, “I’m hoping that people from my background will see that it’s possible to do this.” That should suffice, at some level. No?
Some of the writing that influenced Gita Chadha’s ideas on masculinity
- Essays in Gita’s volume Re-Imagining Sociology in India, especially the ones by Pushpesh Kumar and Vishal Jadhav.
- Essay by historian Madhumita Mazumdar on the scientist JC Bose and the making of new nationalist masculinity in colonial Bengal. This appears in Gita and Sumi Krishna’s volume Feminists and Science.
- Ashish Nandy’s book Alternative Sciences, a psychoanalytical reading of both Bose and Ramanujan and their relationship with the mother goddess, and also the nationalism that comes with it.
- In the book, Science and Religion in India, Renny Thomas shows that religion is often practised in the closet by many scientists, in a compartmentalised way.
