Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T23:54:23.041Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The ‘culture’ of science and colonial culture, India 1820–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Deepak Kumar
Affiliation:
National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, Dr K. S. Krishnan Road, Pusa, New Delhi-110012, India.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The culture of science is deeply influenced and conditioned by the socio-political realities of both time and locale. Pre-colonial India, for example, was no tabula rasa. It had a vigorous tradition in at least the realms of mathematics, astronomy and medicine. But gradual colonization made a big dent. It brought forth a massive cultural collision which influenced profoundly the cognitive and material existence of both the colonizer and the colonized.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1996

References

1 Nandy, Ashis, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Delhi, 1983Google Scholar; Adas, Michael, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, 1989Google Scholar; Chakravarty, Suhash, The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions, New Delhi, 1991Google Scholar; Metcalf, T. R., Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, 1994Google Scholar; Kumar, Deepak, Science and the Raj 1857–1905, Delhi, 1995.Google Scholar

2 Sarkar, B. K., India in Exact Science: Old and New, Calcutta, 1937, 89.Google Scholar

3 Shigraf Nama-i-Wilayat, MSS preserved at the National Archive of India, New Delhi.

4 Mirza Abu Talib's Safarnama was translated and published by Stewart, C. as Travels in Asia, Africa and Europe, London, 1810.Google Scholar

5 Nowrojee, Jahangir and Merwanjee, Hirjeebhoy, Journal of a Residence of Two Years and a Half in Great Britain, London, 1841, 111–43.Google Scholar

6 Tirmizi, S. A. I. (ed.), Autobiography of Lutfullah: An Indian's Perceptions of the West, New Delhi, 1989, pp. ixv.Google Scholar

7 Strachey, Edward, Bijaganita, London, 1813, 110.Google Scholar

8 Quoted in Adas, , op. cit. (1), 106–7.Google Scholar

9 Seeley, John, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, 244.Google Scholar

10 Michelet's concept of ‘Renaissance’ should not be applied to nineteenth-century Bengal. The colonial context precludes such comparison. The Banians and Babus of Calcutta were hardly a match to the Renaissance men of Italy. See Tripathi, Amalesh, ‘Bengali culture: the nineteenth century Renaissance’, Sunday Statesman Miscellany, 7 01 1990, 13.Google Scholar

11 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, ‘The colonial context of the Bengal Renaissance’, Indian Economic and Social History Review (1974), 1, 92111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Masselos, Jim, ‘Perceptions of science and technology in Western India in the nineteenth century’Google Scholar (mimeograph).

13 Panikkar, K. N., ‘The intellectual history of colonial India: some historiographical and conceptual questions’, in Situating Indian History (ed. Bhattacharya, S. and Thapar, R.), Delhi, 1986, 402–32.Google Scholar

14 Joshi, V. C. (ed.), Rammohun Roy and the Process of Modernisation in India, Delhi, 1975.Google Scholar

15 Sen, Ashok, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar and His Elusive Milestones, Occasional Paper No. 1, CSSS, Calcutta, 1975.Google Scholar

16 Jambhekar, G. G. (ed.), Memoirs and Writings of Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, 3 vols., Poona, 1950.Google Scholar

17 Raina, Dhruv, ‘Mathematical foundations of a cultural project or Ramchandra's treatise “Through the unsentimentalised light of mathematics”’, Historia Mathematica (1992), 19, 371–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Raina, Dhruv and Habib, S. Irfan, ‘Ramchandra's treatise through “The Haze of the Golden Sunset”: an aborted pedagogy’, Social Studies of Science (1990), 20, 455–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 ‘What can be more flattering to the vanity of the Hindu nation, than to see their own great and revered masters quoted by us with respect, to prove and illustrate the truths we propound’. Wilkinson, L., ‘On the use of the Siddhantas in the work of native education’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1834), 3, 504–19.Google Scholar

20 Raina, , op. cit. (17).Google Scholar

21 Kidwai, S. R., Master Ramchandra, Delhi, 1963, 57.Google Scholar

22 Bombay Durpan, 13 07 1832.Google Scholar

23 Bombay Durpan, 24 08 1832.Google Scholar

24 Bombay Durpan, 24 08 1832 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

25 Habib, S. Irfan and Raina, Dhruv, ‘The introduction of scientific rationality into India: a study of Master Ramchandra’, Annals of Science (1989), 46, 597610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Home, Education, 2, 5 11 1862Google Scholar, National Archives of India (emphasis added).

27 Writing in an Egyptian journal, al Hilal, on the Indian uprising of 1857, Jurji Zaydan wrote that the Indian revolt against colonialism had failed because India had not yet reached the historical state in its development that made possible an independent political life. The Indian people had not acquired a knowledge of science and administration. Quoted from Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt, Cambridge, 1988, 169.Google Scholar

28 Chuckerbutty, S. C. G., ‘Lecture on defence of native education (8th July 1858)’, Popular Lectures on Subjects of Indian Interest, Calcutta, 1870, 81–2.Google Scholar

29 Chuckerbutty, S. C. G., ‘Lecture on the necessity of forming a Medical Association in Bengal (05 27, 1863)’Google Scholar, in Chuckerbutty, , op. cit. (28), 135 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

30 Parekh, Bhikhu, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform, New Delhi, 1989, 61.Google Scholar

31 Bhattacharya, B., Banga Sahitya Vijnan, Calcutta, 1960 (in Bengali), 351.Google Scholar Bhartendu Harishchandra, a very influential Hindi laureate, was also impressed by the developments in machinery and he associated them with a certain kind of attitude and behaviour. Kumar, Krishna, Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas, New Delhi, 1991, 151.Google Scholar

32 Guha, Ranajit, A Construction of Humanism in Colonial India, The Wertheim Lecture, Centre for Asian Studies, Amsterdam, CASA Monographs, Amsterdam, 1993.Google Scholar

33 Ubaidullah, Maulvi, Essay on the Possible Influence of European Learning on the Mahomedan Mind in India, Calcutta, 1877, 47Google Scholar (emphasis added).

34 Raychaudury, Tapan, Europe Reconsidered, Delhi, 1988, 10.Google Scholar

35 Rashed, Roshdi, ‘Problems of integration’, in Science and Empires (ed. Petitjean, P. et al. ), Dordrecht, 1992, 76–7.Google Scholar

36 Ballantyne, J. R., A Discourse on Translation, Mirzapur, 1855.Google Scholar

37 Mitra, Rajendralal, A Scheme for Rendering of European Scientific Terms in the Vernaculars of India, Calcutta, 1877, 12.Google Scholar

38 Kaviraj, Sudipta, ‘On the construction of colonial power’, in Contesting Colonial Hegemony (ed. Engels, D. and Marks, S.), London, 1994, 1953.Google Scholar

39 Quoted in A Century: Indian Association for the Cultivation in Science, Calcutta, 1976, 5, plate 6 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

40 Bhattacharya, , op. cit. (31), 144–5 n31.Google Scholar

41 Maharashtra State Archive, Education, vol. 26, 1891, file 270.

42 Bose, J. C., Response in the Living and Non-living, London, 1902, 189–90.Google Scholar

43 Modern Review, 12 1915, 694.Google Scholar

44 Bose, J. C. to Geddes, P., 15 01 1924Google Scholar, Geddes papers, MSS 10576, fols. 132–3, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (hereafter Geddes Papers). Punctuation and spelling are as in the original.

45 Bose, J. C. to Geddes, , 6 03 1918Google Scholar, Geddes Papers, fol. 40.

46 Native Newspaper Report, Madras, 1897, 14.Google Scholar

47 Note by Westland, J., 7 09 1897Google Scholar, on Home, Education, Nos. 25–28, 11 1897Google Scholar, A. National Archives of India.

48 Home, Education, Nos. 49–50, 10 1903Google Scholar, A. National Archives of India.

49 Bose, J. C. to Geddes, , 14 03 1921Google Scholar, Geddes Papers, fols. 68–9.

50 Bose, J. C. to Geddes, , 24 01 1917Google Scholar, Geddes Papers, fol. 2.

51 Bose, J. C. to Geddes, , 20 10 1917Google Scholar, Geddes Papers, fol. 14.

52 Bose, J. C. to Geddes, , 11 02 1918Google Scholar, Geddes Papers, fol. 31.

53 Some time ago, Ashis Nandy made a comparative study of J. C. Bose and Ramanujan (a ‘native-intuitive’ mathematician). See Nandy, Ashis, Alternative Science, New Delhi, 1980.Google Scholar He felt that Bose (unlike Ramanujan) with ‘his subtle intellectual antennae could at least manipulate his way through’. But in a later publication Nandy revised his opinion and stated that Bose was equally vulnerable. ‘As he negotiated his way through the ruthless world of modern science, he had to cope with the hostility which the liminal man always arouses as opposed to the proper alien’. Nandy, , op. cit. (1), 103.Google Scholar

54 Bose, Abala to Geddes, , 8 01 1920, Geddes Papers, fols. 60–1.Google Scholar

55 While at Edinburgh, P. C. Ray published two tracts: India Before and After the Mutiny, 1885, and Essay on India, 1886.

56 Bose, P. N., Essays and Lectures on the Industrial Development of India, Calcutta, 1906, 141.Google Scholar

57 Ray, P. C., History of Hindu Chemistry, 2 vols., Calcutta, 1909, ii, 195.Google Scholar

58 Dasgupta, R. K., ‘Acharya Ray as a man of letters’, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray Birth Centenary Volume, Calcutta, 1962, 140–7.Google Scholar

59 For a superbly crafted study of the littérateur's perception of tradition, modernity and colonialism issues, see Chandra, Sudhir, The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India, Delhi, 1992.Google Scholar

60 Letter to the Editor, Statesman, 26 08 1885.Google Scholar

61 ‘The Vrittanta Chintamani’, 20 07 1904Google Scholar, in Native Newspaper Report, Madras, 1904, 260.Google Scholar

62 ‘The Vijayadhwaja’, 3 08 1887Google Scholar, in Native Newspaper Report, Madras, 1887, 141.Google Scholar Another Kannada weekly, the Mysore Vrittanta Bodhini (28 05 1887)Google Scholar cited the example of the Maharaja of Darbhanga who ‘subscribed Rs. 50,000 to the Imperial Institute Fund and Rs. 5000 to the Prince of Wales Testimonial Fund’, and asked, ‘how could our native princes obtain such titles as C.I.E., K.C.S.I., etc. if not by wasting large sums on such objects?’ ibid., 97. The Imperial Institute, established in London in 1885 to carry out scientific investigations for India and other colonies, was not popular with British scientists either. William Thiselton-Dyer (Director, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) called this Institute ‘a second rate local club with rather Bohemian proclivities’. Dyer, to Birdwood, G. C. M., 25 12 1893Google Scholar, Birdwood Papers, India Office Records MSS. Eur. F216/49.

63 Sarkar, B. K., Creative India, Lahore, 1937, 625.Google Scholar

64 Sarkar, B. K., Hindu Achievements in Exact Sciences, New York, 1918.Google Scholar

65 Zaidi, A. M. (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of the India National Congress, 6 vols., New Delhi, 1978, ii, 163, 406Google Scholar; iv, 100, 144–6, 251.

66 Thistlethwayte, L. E. L., ‘The role of science in the Hindu-Christian encounter’, Indo-British Review, 19, 7382.Google Scholar

67 Tagore, Rabindra Nath, Nationalism, London, 1921, 1117.Google Scholar

68 Sarkar, B. K., Education for Industrialisation, Calcutta, 1946, 3.Google Scholar

69 Patel, R. D., The Claims of Science in National Life, Surat, 1921, p. ix.Google Scholar

70 Habib, S. Irfan, ‘Science, technical education and industrialisation: contours of a Bhadralok debate, 1890–1915’, in Technology and the Raj (ed. MacLeod, Roy and Kumar, Deepak), Delhi, 1995, 235–49.Google Scholar

71 Chandra, , op. cit. (59), 64.Google Scholar

72 Ray, P. C., Convocation Address at Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh, 1923, 3448.Google Scholar It is significant that this address ended with Bande Mataram (an invocation to the motherland with a supposedly Hindu bias).