Obaid Siddiqi: Bringing Science To Society

Jaikishan Advani (Project Fellow
Jul 12, 2015
6 min read

A warm smile, a sharp vision, a simple personality, a courageous soul, and a revolutionary outlook, this is what Obaid Siddiqi was all about to his many students and admirers! With the patience of a snail and the astuteness of an ant, with the spontaneity of a fruitfly and live curiosity like a firefly, stood this man, tall as a beacon-light in the Society of Science! He was, perhaps, one of the first few to notice the social life of Science! Many stalwarts and doyens, before him, had confined themselves to the Scientific Societies, but he was the one who caught the pulse of the True Science and marvelled in the beauty of the idea of “Societal Science“.

Born just a few kilometers away from Chaura Chauri, about a decade after the fires of the Non-cooperation movement, India, Obaid Siddiqi would have spent his early childhood, amidst active people’s participation for making a Nation. His family comprised a very socially active group with his siblings and their spouses with very strong ideological stance.1 No doubt this upbringing produced a forward looking and broad minded man like Obaid.

With the same passion and social commitment of his family to the revolutionary transformation of the Nation, Obaid continued taking baby steps. Around 1947, as a school student under the shade of his socially active family, he was a part of the students` movement. India becoming independent; when he was about 15 year old, this young man would have tasted the ultimate freedom. With this freedom, came a courage to explore. Not to bother if anyone was following him!

Even as a youngster, highly sensitive to the needs of society, he actively participated in several events of the freedom struggle. He actively played leading roles in the student federation and Communist Party of India (CPI) unit at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). In 1949 following the demonstration against the Principal of AMU Girls College, who had punished girl students taking out a procession in support of all the school teachers, Obaid was imprisoned (1949-51). This shows the fighter in Obaid, who had the guts to go to extremes and who never succumb to any force.

Obaid could have easily entered politics with these rare traits of sensitivity to the societal issues and a fighting spirit. But his tryst with Science was rescued by Dr. Zakir Husain, the then vice-chancellor of AMU, who along with Pandit Nehru helped Obaid to get released and continue his studies. His initial days at the Aligarh Muslim University in Botany and his subsequent experience at Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), with studies in genetics in wheat led him to his true calling. But a hailstorm, which destroyed the wheat fields, came as a blessing in disguise, triggering him to take the challenge head on.

He made no further delay in writing to Prof. Guido Pontecorvo, a researcher in Genetics at Glasgow. As a young researcher at Glasgow, in 1961, with the PhD in his obsession, genetics, began his courtship with a fungus Aspergillus. He conceived a real physical form to the gene, which till then, was an imaginary concept with mystical traits. This path breaking discovery altered the way Classical Genetics is taught and studied. A free mind with the luxury to spend its time with its love would always come up with some genuine idea. How unfortunate is the plight of the world that ingenuity, which should have been in abundance, has become such a rare finding. Obaid’s research is an inspiration to any young man to persevere and pursue his heart.

Around 1960s, the structure of gene was not very clear and many like Seymour Benzer, another trailblazer and Obaid’s contemporary, were working on this. It was a pursuit at the frontiers of Science pushing the human understanding of genes, clarifying the ideas of determinism, prevalent in the society, then. Hence it was indeed a very risky task for a young researcher, to take this up as a part of the PhD thesis. Thus the storm in the wheat field during his days at IARI was indeed a blessing to humanity, which moved Obaid to the right place.

With an unbound curiosity and enthusiasm to dig deeper into the gene, then widely believed to be a physical embodiment of determinism, he pursued his research in bacterial gene transfer, in a process called conjugation, revealing the finer molecular details of a gene. This research paved the path for Hargobind Khorana, Marshall Nirenberg and Robert Holley to decipher coding in the genes using codons, which was a Nobel Prize winning discovery of 1968. Thus, his research, with sheer patience and focussed perseverance, was always at the frontiers expanding the dimensions of human thought.

Just like a maggot in seclusion inside a pupa, Obaid spent these years, immersing himself in Science, unravelling the mysteries of a gene. At the peak of his career, when he was ready to eclose into a beautiful butterfly, he packed his bags to return to India on a call from Homi Bhabha to become part of building a Young Nation, India. This affection for society, shows, how strong was the childhood influence on Obaid.

Obaid would have perceived this as a great opportunity to incorporate the social dimension in his inquisitive quest for finer details. He continuously remained a torch bearer to the idea of incorporating Science in the everyday activities of an average Indian. This is when he started looking for simpler model systems, which do not require sophisticated labs for exploration. The fruit fly, stood first in the line in being a simple model system, hence more socially accessible and a key to understanding genetics. Fruit fly remained the symbol of this marriage of society and science!

Like Seymour Benzer, with whom Obaid also shared a love of progressive social activism apart from science, he started working with the larvae, an early stage fruit-fly before pupation, unlike Benzer, who mainly worked with flies. To a famous question on why he works with larvae which become adults within a few days and not with flies like everyone else, Obaid replied beautifully saying - “...larvae would let me collect all the data during the day and whole night is freely available to mull over it.”

His further research continued with the chemosensory single gene mutant fruit flies with simple experimental designs, along with Veronica Rodrigues, his PhD student. In the second half of his chemosensory studies from late 1990s, again not satisfied with continuing on safe trajectory of finding yet more genes and mapping more circuits alone, Obaid embraced complexity to the fullest by exploring the nuances of behaviour.2[2] His famous quote, “All we need is a more sophisticated mind, than a lab” sums up his work addressing learning and behaviour with the larvae of fruit-flies elaborated in his paper in 1998 on Osmotropotaxis, with a very simple experimental design. Today most of us know Obaid as a Drosophila Man, but he has contributed greatly in the area of bacteria (E.coli) and fungus (Aspergillus) as well.

Model organisms are just a means for a greater purpose, the awakening of an inquiring mind in an average man, without any barriers, freely pursuing the Truth. This pursuit of Truth is not confined to the laboratories. Siddiqi’s vision was to demolish the walls between Science and everyday life. He often brought students of varied age, to do experiments in his lab, and he always believed that if even a few of them inulcate scientific temper in their regular lives then it would be his small contribution to society. Thus, his research inspired many young scientists to think beyond the physical limitations of inadequate labs in young India. This vision of his got institutionalised as NCBS, under TIFR.

He also believed “One person can never be a scientist, alone”. He once quipped, "...college teachers are in a better place, than we scientists are. They have hundreds of hands and minds of young students which we don’t have as scientists. We make do with a handful of them." This, no doubt, has inspired M.C. Arunan and G. Nagarjuna of the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education to initiate an endeavor called the Collaborative Undergraduate Biology Education (CUBE) to prove, among others, the extraordinary ability of the collaboration of ordinary students to overcome their individual limitations and to become a force to reckon with in the field of scientific research. Being a part of CUBE programme, we cherish the thought that we may be the true inheritors of Obaid’s life and work.

1.Prabhat Patniak: Scientist and Intellectual: Obaid Siddiqi and Larger Family, The Telegraph, Calcutta, August 7, 2013.

2.Sukant Khurana: Obaid Siddiqi: Pioneering Neuroscientist, Molecular Biologist and Institute Builder from India no More, Sci-news.com, July 31, 2013.