ARCHIV ORIENTÁLNÍ 82, 2014 • 263 In Pursuit of Laxmi: Entrepreneurship, Industry and Technology in Colonial Bengal Suvobrata Sarkar “One of the objects of our association was to encourage the manufacture of Lucifer matches and similar small industries. Each member had to contribute a tenth of his income for this purpose. Matches were wanted, but matchwood was hard to get… After many experiments we succeeded in making a boxful of matches. The patriotic fire that went into them was not their only value: the money we spent on them might have kept the family hearth burning for a year. Another little defect was that our matches would not burn unless there was a light handy to encourage them. If they could only have absorbed some of the patriotic spirit which conceived them, they might have been marketable even today.” Rabindranath Tagore, Making swadeshi match sticks (1905) 1 “I have been to the recent exhibition at the Sradhyananda Park and was delighted to find it illuminated throughout with “Bengal” electric lamps manufactured at Calcutta. The bulbs have stood the test of continued use for over a couple of months and are still going on all right. This is one of the few rare instances of a successful indigenous industry… Both in quality and in price the articles turned out compare favourably with imported goods. The organisers and workers are some of my past pupils and also of the Bengal Technical Institute who have got high scientific training to their credit.” P. C. Ray thus praised Bengal Rosney, the swadeshi electric lamp manufactured by the Bengal Electric Lamp Works Ltd, better known as Bengal Lamp (1933) 2 Entrepreneurship is an issue that has recently dominated public attention to a significant degree. At the same time, an interdisciplinary approach has developed, which requires historians, economists, sociologists and psychologists to engage in extended collaborative research activities. Today everybody will readily admit the importance of the entrepreneur’s role in society. Entrepreneurs are held responsible for economic development, as a result of their role in introducing and implementing innovative ideas. As part of this process, it is, perhaps, technological innovation, that ranks high up on the agenda. But studies on the role and impact of technological 1 Rabindranath Tagore, “Jiban Smriti,” 151. 2 The advertisement appeared in The Calcutta Municipal Gazette (hereafter CMG), Ninth Anniversary Number, November 25, 1933. ArOr – Issue 82.2 ISSN 0044-8699 © 2014 Oriental Institute (ASCR), Prague