A few years ago I came across an academic paper by Ross Bassett, who catalogued every Indian graduate from MIT from its founding to the year 2000. In MIT-Trained Swadeshis: MIT and Indian Nationalism, 1880–1947, he writes about the hundred Indian men who came to Boston to study at MIT for the singular purpose of rebuilding India postcolonization. They were, for the most part, from elite families; some were followers of Gandhi; and they influenced the technological future of independent India.
