Table Of ContentTitle Pages
Science and the Raj: A Study of British India
Deepak Kumar
Print publication date: 2006
Print ISBN-13: 9780195687149
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195687149.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) Science and the Raj
(p.iii) Science and the Raj
‘Looking through the window of history of British colonialism in India, one
would truly admire Kumar for all the variegated sights he brings before
us.’
—Nature
‘Kumar has been one of the pioneers of the social and administrative
history of science in India.’
—British Journal for the History of Science
‘… empirically and conceptually well-grounded … combines in-depth case
studies with a wider analytical perspective … a must for historians of
science and medicine.’
—Social History of Medicine
‘This work is far from a simple panorama of case studies of science in India
during the colonial period; it proposes, on the contrary, a critical synthesis
of the facts through a serious theoretical reflection.’
—Science, Technology and Society (p.ii)
SECOND EDITION
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Title Pages
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Title Pages
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Dedication
Science and the Raj: A Study of British India
Deepak Kumar
Print publication date: 2006
Print ISBN-13: 9780195687149
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195687149.001.0001
Dedication
(p.v) To my teachers
S. N. SAHU, V. N. DATTA,
R. L. SHUKLA AND R. MACLEOD (p.vi)
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Preface to the Second Edition
Science and the Raj: A Study of British India
Deepak Kumar
Print publication date: 2006
Print ISBN-13: 9780195687149
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195687149.001.0001
(p.ix) Preface to the Second Edition
An opportunity to revisit one's work is always welcome. Full revision was not
possible. Earlier the focus was on Victorian India; now I have taken the narrative
up to 1947 in a new chapter. I hope the readers would enjoy at least the
footnotes! For this chapter ‘Reconstructing India new sources were consulted’.
These are from the National Archives of India—Sanitary and Education
Proceedings (1911–19) and Education, Health and Land Proceedings (1932–5).
Information in the Native Newspaper Reports for Madras, Bengal and Bombay
(1893–1923) are truly fascinating and give us a glimpse of local response on
several issues. I have consciously tried to supplement official documents with
private papers which are so well-preserved at the different libraries and archives
of UK. Significant among these are: (a) India Office Collections, British Library,
London—Cornelia Sorabjee Papers, Mss. Eur. D. 1103; H, Butler Papers, Mss.
Eur. f.111,654–55; Recordings of E.J. Beer, Mss. Eur. D551/30; S.K. Brown
Papers, Mss. Eur. F235/46; (b) Wellcome Library for History of Medicine, London
—Family Planning Association Papers; Champneys Papers; Leonard Rogers
Papers, GORM.5511–110; Marie Stopes Papers; (c) Rockefeller Archive Centre
(USA)—International Health Board and International Health Department Papers;
Diaries of J.B. Grant and Dr. Heiser; (d) Centre for South Asian Studies,
Cambridge—E.J. Somerset Papers; G.F. Heany Papers; (e) Churchill College
Archive, Cambridge—A.V. Hill Papers (AVH); (0 Royal Society, London—A.C.
Egerton Papers; A.V. Hill Paper (MDA); (g) Cambridge University Library—J.D.
Bernal Papers.
In addition to this several contemporary publications and journals like Science
and Culture (1935–50), Harijan (1934–46), Young India (1921–7), The Indian
Medical Gazette (1866–1930) were consulted. Since the publication of this
volume a decade ago, several new books have come up. Scholars like Richard
Grove, Dhruv Raina, S. Irfan Habib, Gyan Prakash, Anil Kumar, Mark Harrison,
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Preface to the Second Edition
Mridula Ramanna, Subrata Dasgupta, Pratik Chakrabarti, J. Lourdoswamy,
Benjamin Zachariah, V.V. Krishna, and Manu Goswami have enriched the theme
immensely. I have enjoyed reading them as other readers would have. I wish
these new insights could be reflected adequately in the new edition. But I (p.x)
hope my arguments and citations still remain valid! Few minor corrections have
been made for which I am grateful to Daniel Headrick, Patrick Petitjean,
Santanu Chakravarty, and Dhrub Kumar Singh.
DEEPAK KUMAR
November 2005
New Delhi
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Preface to the Paperback Edition
Science and the Raj: A Study of British India
Deepak Kumar
Print publication date: 2006
Print ISBN-13: 9780195687149
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195687149.001.0001
(p.xi) Preface to the Paperback Edition
It is a nice feeling to see an affordable Paperback Edition. Few minor corrections
have been made for which I am grateful to Daniel Headrick, Patrick Petitjean
and Santanu Chacravarty. Some critical reviews appeared and these are likely to
benefit my future work.
DEEPAK KUMAR
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Preface to the First Edition
Science and the Raj: A Study of British India
Deepak Kumar
Print publication date: 2006
Print ISBN-13: 9780195687149
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2012
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195687149.001.0001
(p.xii) Preface to the First Edition
The present work seeks to explore the development of science in a colonial
situation, its social implications and its economic ramifications. The object is to
reveal the nature and working of the relationship between the techno-scientific
imperatives and colonial requirements. The history of India during the last
century spectacularly illustrates a close link between science and the Raj and I
have endeavoured to explore the contours, course and significance of this link.
The entire gamut of the relationship between science and colonization can be
precisely expressed by the term colonial science. No other word so aptly sums
up the state of science, and its limitations, triumphs and failures in a colony, and
Victorian India furnishes the best example. In some ways, however, colonial
science did represent an advance over pre-colonial science. It was far more
systematic, methodical, penetrative and pervasive. But how did it emerge? A
western historian of science explains: ‘In addition to greed for riches and
domination, the white man became possessed suddenly of a strange spirit of
adventure, of an insatiable intellectual curiosity.’1 Is the phenomenon so simple
as to be explained by ‘curiosity’ and the sudden ‘strange spirit of adventure’ the
scholar has referred to? Or did there exist a pattern, a design and a ‘policy’?
More than two hundred years ago, Robert Kyd, while pleading for a botanical
garden in Calcutta, defined policy as ‘the common sense of government.’2 And
how right he was; the common sense of an alien power could scarcely have
thought of anything other than profit. But can this be the final verdict? The more
one studies the archival and contemporary sources, the more one finds various
shades surfacing at different levels of the official hierarchy as well as at non-
official forums. Several gaps, interruptions, incoherence and inconsistencies
raise doubts as to whether or nor the Raj had a science policy at all. One can
argue (p.xiii) that even the absence of an articulate policy itself often points to
the existence of some sort of negative policy. The government had set certain
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Preface to the First Edition
goals, certain objectives—administrative as well as economic—though its
activities often seem ad hoc, as if they were spontaneous responses to the
sudden requirements of the day, while in reality a cause and effect relationship
did exist between them. Certain implicit strands of their science policy can
therefore be gleaned from the great mass of informative tit-bits that still survive
in contemporary accounts and documents.
Modern science has traditionally been viewed as benevolent, apolitical and
value-neutral. Is this really so? If not, then several questions emerge that
demand an explanation. Can there be an imperialist side to the core of natural
knowledge? Should one talk of colonial medicine or tropical medicine and, in
this context, tropical environment or colonialism, which was the main
determinant? What was the shape that ‘modern’ and ‘universal’ science took in a
colony? What was the colonial posture in science and to what extent were
scientific discourses used to achieve political and cultural goals? No less
important is to glean how the recipient culture sought to appropriate or redefine
the metropolitan ideology of science. How was the indigenous scientific tradition
perceived and how did the latter react to the introduction of the former? Was a
synthesis possible? Finally, could the integration of technological and scientific
traditions have taken place as part of the natural evolution of the Indian society
had colonization not intervened?
Clear cut answers are difficult to attempt, for colonialism was no monolith and it
left several facts and questions open which can be interpreted cither way. The
concept of colonial science has been discussed by several scholars, a review of
which, followed by a brief discussion on pre-colonial science and technology,
appears in Chapter I. These provide a backdrop against which the changes that
were to occur in the nineteenth century are looked into. The subsequent
chapters deal with the early exploratory activities, problems in science
administration, science education, scientific research works and, of course, the
Indian response in these areas. Taken together, ί hope, they make a useful study.
A clarification will be in order here. Terms like ‘science’ and ‘technology’,
‘modern science’ and ‘western science’ have sometimes been used
interchangeably. Moreover, the term ‘science’ in this volume refers more to the
physical and biological sciences which in the good old days went by the name of
‘natural history’! As for the concept of western science, I believe that there
exists a mainstream of scientific activity to (p.xiv) which different countries in
different periods contributed in various way.3 The term science is thus used in a
broad sense and in relation to institutions (both official and non-official), groups,
individuals, application, etc. Similarly, the term ‘native’ has been used to keep
the suggestive flavour of the colonial writings. The present work, though dealing
primarily with the state and its policy, does not have an apex-centred approach.
Hundreds of characters appear who may be taken as subalterns of science.
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Preface to the First Edition
Unfortunately, I could not gather biographical details on them and this remains a
serious lacuna in my work.
No one can deny the importance of concepts, for they infuse life into long-
forgotten and almost dead data; but the latter are equally important because it
is they who impart a distinct shape and weight to the former. So care has been
taken to draw mostly upon the primary sources, particularly archival documents
and private papers. But I must confess my limitations. Marathi, Tamil and Urdu
sources could not be consulted. Only a few Bengali tracts have been seen and, I
am sure, much more still remains untapped. The archival materials are mostly
the Government of India's ‘A’ proceedings and, unless otherwise indicated, are
from the National Archives of India. Some work was also done at the West
Bengal State Archives, Bihar State Archives, Tamilnadu State Archives and the
Maharashtra State Archives. Contemporary tracts, reports and journals were
consulted in Calcutta at the National Library, and the libraries of the Asiatic
Society, Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, J.C. Bose Trust, AHSI, BSI, GSI, ZSI, St.
Xavier's College and the Calcutta Medical College. Important references were
also found at the Haffkine Institute, VJTI, Grant Medical College, BNHS and the
Asiatic Society in Bombay; the Meteorological Department in Poona; the Forest
Research Institute at Dehra Dun; and the Khuda Bux Library and the Sinha
Library in Patna. Some Ph.D. theses and recent works were consulted at the
Smithsonian Institution Library in Washington and at the NMML and the
NISTADS Library in New Delhi. The libraries in UK are stacked with private
papers and the details are given in the bibliography. I thank the staff of all these
institutions for help and co-operation.
(p.xv) I feel a deep debt of gratitude to my teachers. This work is dedicated to
my school-teacher, S.N. Sahu, who made me a student of history, R.L. Shukla,
who nursed my interest in the subject at Patna College, V.N. Datta from whom I
learnt the tools of historical research and to Roy MacLeod, whose papers
introduced me to the theme of this volume.
DEEPAK KUMAR
New Delhi
Notes:
(1) K. Mendelssohn, Science and Western Domination, London, 1976, p. 17.
(2) Kyd Papers, IOL, Mss. Eur. F.95/I. interestingly enough, T.H. Huxley later
found science itself as nothing but ‘trained and organized common sense’, T.H,
Huxley, Science and Education, London, 1893, p. 45.
(3) As Joseph Needham wrote, ‘We speak of the unity of science … there can be
no doubt at all chat the work of Asian people was at least as important in the
history of sciences and technology as that of the Europeans, until the time of the
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