The 'culture' of science and colonial culture, India 1820-1920

British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 29, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 195-209

  Kumar, Deepak ^a  

^a INDIAN NATIONAL SCIENCE ACADEMY   (India)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; INDIA; POLITICAL SYSTEM; SCIENCE; UNITED KINGDOM;

COLONIALISM; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; INDIA; SCIENCE;

EID: 0030159064     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0007087400034221     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Delhi, 1983; Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, 1989; Suhash Chakravarty, The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions, New Delhi, 1991; T. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, 1994; Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj 1857-1905, Delhi, 1995.
2. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Delhi, 1983; Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, 1989; Suhash Chakravarty, The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions, New Delhi, 1991; T. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, 1994; Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj 1857-1905, Delhi, 1995.
3. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Delhi, 1983; Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, 1989; Suhash Chakravarty, The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions, New Delhi, 1991; T. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, 1994; Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj 1857-1905, Delhi, 1995.
4. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Delhi, 1983; Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, 1989; Suhash Chakravarty, The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions, New Delhi, 1991; T. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, 1994; Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj 1857-1905, Delhi, 1995.
5. Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism, Delhi, 1983; Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca, 1989; Suhash Chakravarty, The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions, New Delhi, 1991; T. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge, 1994; Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj 1857-1905, Delhi, 1995.
6. B. K. Sarkar, India in Exact Science: Old and New, Calcutta, 1937, 8-9.
7. Shigraf Nama-i-Wilayat, MSS preserved at the National Archive of India, New Delhi.
8. Mirza Abu Talib's Safarnama was translated and published by C. Stewart as Travels in Asia, Africa and Europe, London, 1810.
9. Jahangir Nowrojee and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee, Journal of a Residence of Two Years and a Half in Great Britain, London, 1841, 111-43.
10. S. A. I. Tirmizi (ed.), Autobiography of Lutfullah: An Indian's Perceptions of the West, New Delhi, 1989, pp. i-xv.
11. Edward Strachey, Bijaganita, London, 1813, 1-10.
12. Quoted in Adas, op. cit. (1), 106-7.
13. John Seeley, The Expansion of England, London, 1883, 244.
14. 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 Amalesh Tripathi, 'Bengali culture: the nineteenth century Renaissance', Sunday Statesman Miscellany, 7 January 1990, 1-3.
15. Dipesh Chakrabarty, 'The colonial context of the Bengal Renaissance', Indian Economic and Social History Review (1974), 1, 92-111.
16. Jim Masselos, 'Perceptions of science and technology in Western India in the nineteenth century' (mimeograph).
17. K. N. Panikkar, 'The intellectual history of colonial India: some historiographical and conceptual questions', in Situating Indian History (ed. S. Bhattacharya and R. Thapar), Delhi, 1986, 402-32.
18. V. C. Joshi (ed.), Rammohun Roy and the Process of Modernisation in India, Delhi, 1975.
19. Ashok Sen, Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar and His Elusive Milestones, Occasional Paper No. 1, CSSS, Calcutta, 1975.
20. G. G. Jambhekar (ed.), Memoirs and 'Writings of Bal Gangadhar Shastri Jambhekar, 3 vols., Poona, 1950.
21. Dhruv Raina, 'Mathematical foundations of a cultural project or Ramchandra's treatise "Through the unsentimentalised light of mathematics"', Historia Mathematica (1992), 19, 371-84.
22. Dhruv Raina and S. Irfan Habib, 'Ramchandra's treatise through "The Haze of the Golden Sunset": an aborted pedagogy', Social Studies of Science (1990), 20, 455-72.
23. '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'. L. Wilkinson, 'On the use of the Siddhantas in the work of native education', Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1834), 3, 504-19.
24. Raina, op. cit. (17).
25. S. R. Kidwai, Master Ramchandra, Delhi, 1963, 57.
26. Bombay Durpan, 13 July 1832.
27. Bombay Durpan, 24 August 1832.
28. Bombay Durpan, 24 August 1832 (emphasis added).
29. S. Irfan Habib and Dhruv Raina, 'The introduction of scientific rationality into India: a study of Master Ramchandra', Annals of Science (1989), 46, 597-610.
30. Home, Education, 2, 5 November 1862, National Archives of India (emphasis added).
31. 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 Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, Cambridge, 1988, 169.
32. S. C. G. Chuckerbutty, 'Lecture on defence of native education (8th July 1858)', Popular Lectures on Subjects of Indian Interest, Calcutta, 1870, 81-2.
33. S. C. G. Chuckerbutty, 'Lecture on the necessity of forming a Medical Association in Bengal (May 27, 1863)', in Chuckerbutty, op. cit. (28), 135 (emphasis added).
34. Bhikhu Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform, New Delhi, 1989, 61.
35. B. Bhattacharya, Banga Sahitya Vijnan, Calcutta, 1960 (in Bengali), 351. 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. Krishna Kumar, Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas, New Delhi, 1991, 151.
36. B. Bhattacharya, Banga Sahitya Vijnan, Calcutta, 1960 (in Bengali), 351. 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. Krishna Kumar, Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas, New Delhi, 1991, 151.
37. Ranajit Guha, A Construction of Humanism in Colonial India, The Wertheim Lecture, Centre for Asian Studies, Amsterdam, CASA Monographs, Amsterdam, 1993.
38. Maulvi Ubaidullah, Essay on the Possible Influence of European Learning on the Mahomedan Mind in India, Calcutta, 1877, 47 (emphasis added).
39. Tapan Raychaudury, Europe Reconsidered, Delhi, 1988, 10.
40. Roshdi Rashed, 'Problems of integration', in Science and Empires (ed. P. Peritjean et al.), Dordrecht, 1992, 76-7.
41. J. R. Ballantyne, A Discourse on Translation, Mirzapur, 1855.
42. Rajendralal Mitra, A Scheme for Rendering of European Scientific Terms in the Vernaculars of India, Calcutta, 1877, 1-2.
43. Sudipta Kaviraj, 'On the construction of colonial power', in Contesting Colonial Hegemony (ed. D. Engels and S. Marks), London, 1994, 19-53.
44. Quoted in A Century: Indian Association for the Cultivation in Science, Calcutta, 1976, 5, plate 6 (emphasis added).
45. Bhattacharya, op. cit. (31), 144-5 n31.
46. Maharashtra State Archive, Education, vol. 26, 1891, file 270.
47. J. C. Bose, Response in the Living and Non-living, London, 1902, 189-90.
48. Modern Review, December 1915, 694.
49. J. C. Bose to P. Geddes, 15 January 1924, Geddes papers, MSS 10576, fols. 132-3, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh (hereafter Geddes Papers). Punctuation and spelling are as in the original.
50. J. C. Bose to Geddes, 6 March 1918, Geddes Papers, fol. 40.
51. Native Newspaper Report, Madras, 1897, 14.
52. Note by J. Westland, 7 September 1897, on Home, Education, Nos. 25-28, November 1897, A. National Archives of India.
53. Home, Education, Nos. 49-50, October 1903, A. National Archives of India.
54. J. C. Bose to Geddes, 14 March 1921, Geddes Papers, fols. 68-9.
55. J. C. Bose to Geddes, 24 January 1917, Geddes Papers, fol. 2.
56. J. C. Bose to Geddes, 20 October 1917, Geddes Papers, fol. 14.
57. J. C. Bose to Geddes, 11 February 1918, Geddes Papers, fol. 31.
58. Some time ago, Ashis Nandy made a comparative study of J. C. Bose and Ramanujan (a 'native-intuitive' mathematician). See Ashis Nandy, Alternative Science, New Delhi, 1980. 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.
59. Abala Bose to Geddes, 8 January 1920, Geddes Papers, fols. 60-1.
60. While at Edinburgh, P.C. Ray published two tracts: India Before and After the Mutiny, 1885, and Essay on India, 1886.
61. P. N. Bose, Essays and Lectures on the Industrial Development of India, Calcutta, 1906, 141.
62. P. C. Ray, History of Hindu Chemistry, 2 vols., Calcutta, 1909, ii, 195.
63. R. K. Dasgupta, 'Acharya Ray as a man of letters', Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray Birth Centenary Volume, Calcutta, 1962, 140-7.
64. For a superbly crafted study of the littérateur's perception of tradition, modernity and colonialism issues, see Sudhir Chandra, The Oppressive Present: Literature and Social Consciousness in Colonial India, Delhi, 1992.
65. Letter to the Editor, Statesman, 26 August 1885.
66. 'The Vrittanta Chintamani', 20 July 1904, in Native Newspaper Report, Madras, 1904, 260.
67. 'The Vijayadhwaja', 3 August 1887, in Native Newspaper Report, Madras, 1887, 141. Another Kannada weekly, the Mysore Vrittanta Bodhini (28 May 1887) 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 G. C. M. Birdwood, 25 December 1893, Birdwood Papers, India Office Records MSS. Eur. F216/49.
68. B. K. Sarkar, Creative India, Lahore, 1937, 625.
69. B. K. Sarkar, Hindu Achievements in Exact Sciences, New York, 1918.
70. A. M. Zaidi (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of the India National Congress, 6 vols., New Delhi, 1978, ii, 163, 406; iv, 100, 144-6, 251.
71. A. M. Zaidi (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of the India National Congress, 6 vols., New Delhi, 1978, ii, 163, 406; iv, 100, 144-6, 251.
72. L. E. L. Thistlethwayte, 'The role of science in the Hindu - Christian encounter', Indo-British Review, 19, 73-82.
73. Rabindra Nath Tagore, Nationalism, London, 1921, 11-17.
74. B. K. Sarkar, Education for Industrialisation, Calcutta, 1946, 3.
75. R. D. Patel, The Claims of Science in National Life, Surat, 1921, p. ix.
76. S. Irfan Habib, 'Science, technical education and industrialisation: contours of a Bhadralok debate, 1890-1915', in Technology and the Raj (ed. Roy MacLeod and Deepak Kumar), Delhi, 1995, 235-49.
77. Chandra, op. cit. (59), 64.
78. P. C. Ray, Convocation Address at Jamia Millia Islamia, Aligarh, 1923, 34-48. It is significant that this address ended with Bande Mataram (an invocation to the motherland with a supposedly Hindu bias).