Science and Technology in Colonial India

176 Pages·2022·2.244 MB·English

by  Kamlesh Mohan

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

IN

COLONIAL INDIA

This book is a significant contribution to the socio-political

history of science and technology in India, combining a wholistic

perspective with a strong regional flavour. It revolves around

two basic issues. First is the role of science and technology in

empire-building in Asia, specifically in India, and financing its

maintenance through maximum exploitation of its human,

natural, agricultural and other resources by launching and

executing a number of exploratory projects, termed as ‘field

sciences’. Such an imperial focus was undergirded by a crucial

objective; the acquisition of hegemony through social control

based on intimate knowledge of horizontal and vertical divisions

in lndian society around the axes of religion and caste.

Formalised as colonial ethnography by the administrators, it

was institutionalised as a discipline in the British universities.

Second concerns the decoding of the complex response of the

Indian intelligentsia including the English-educated as well as

the experts and advocates of classical and regional languages

which were the key to indigenous knowledge in indigenous

sciences, arts and literature.
The book also discusses innovatJWF use of print technology

by Arya Samaj in recasting Hindu consciousness and its

alternative of seeking historical guidelines in the past.
Dr. Kamlesh Mohan, Professor and ex-Chairperson in the

Department of History, Panjab University, Chandigarh, is well-
known historian on Modern India. Besides her several research

articles published in national and international journals, her major

publications include Militant Nationalism in the Punjab (1985),

Towards Gender History: Images, Identities and Roles of North Indian

Women (2006), Punbjab de Hathiarband Sangharshdi Rashtri

Sutantarta Andolan Duan Dain (2008), and Rameshwari Nehru

(2013).

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

IN

COLONIAL INDIA

Kamlesh Mohan
First published 2023
by Routledge
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© 2023 Kamlesh Mohan and Aakar Books
The right of Kamlesh Mohan to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal,
Bangladesh, Pakistan or Bhutan)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-032-36479-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-36480-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-33220-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003332206
Typeset in Palatino
by Sakshi Computers, Delhi
Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. ­The Colonial Ethnography: Imperial Pursuit of
Knowledge for Hegemony in British India
(Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century) 29
2. ­The Development of Modern Sciences in the Panjab
University under Colonial Rule, 1882-1947 68
3. ­Technology and Religion: Recasting Hindu
Consciousness Through Print in India with Special
Reference to the Punjab During the Nineteenth
Century 105
4. ­Ruchi Ram Sahni and the Pursuit of Science in a

Colonial Society

133
Index 155

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank editors of books and journals wherein the
following articles had been published:
1. ‘Colonial Ethnography: Imperial Pursuit of Knowledge
for Hegemony in British India’ was presented at the 19th
International Union of History of Philosophy and
Science Congress, Zaragoza (Spain), August 22-29, 1993.
2. ‘The Development of Modern Sciences in Punjab
University under Colonial Rule 1882-1947’ in Uma Das
Gupta ed. Science and Modern India: An Institutional
History 1784-1947, PHISPC, Vol XVI (Delhi: Pearson,
2010-11).
3. ‘Ruchi Ram Sahni: Pursuit of Science in the Colonial
Society’, in Narender K. Sehgal, Satpal Sangwan and
Subodh Mahanti eds., Uncharted Terrains (Delhi: Vigyan
Prasar, Ministry of Science and Technology, 2000).
4. ‘Technology and Religion: Recasting Hindu
Consciousness Through Print in India with Special
Reference to the Punjab During the Nineteenth
Century’, in Archives International Histoire Des Sciences,
Estrto Dal n. 147, Vol. 51, 2001.
It was originally presented at the International Congress
on History of Philosophy and Science in Liege
(Belgium), August 1999.
Kamlesh Mohan

Preface

Writing this book was both an exciting venture and a learning
experience. The study of the process of transfer of European
scientific knowledge (originally born out of human concerns
and needs) and its product technology from Britain, its diffusion
and manipulation for social and political control as well as
maximum resource-extraction yielded a few insights. One is
that scientific method undergoes change with the development
of new branches of science. Secondly, Indian perception of
science and technology was based not on what the British did
in Britain but what the British did to India. However, a
comparative perspective of their utilisation for socio-economic
development in the mother country was always instructive.
Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya’s evidence before the Indian
Industrial Commission 1916-18 is an incisive commentary on
the skewed institutionalisation of science in India and its
harmful and long-term implications for the Indian economy as
well as for its political and moral debility. The imperial
engagement with instruction of the Indian people in science
and execution of technological projects (e.g. railways, irrigation
and uniform postal system) wittingly or unwittingly struck at
the core values of the Indian epistemological tradition and
seared its multicultural fabric to a great extent.
As a student of the social history of science, I realised that
there is a close relationship between politics and knowledge in
any of the disciplines, e.g. science, literature and arts. It’s
conceptualisation and exposition became fairly sophisticated