Abstract
Deepak Kumar, Science and Society in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2023, 220 pp. (Pb.).
In the traditional university system of our country, it has been virtually impossible for a humanities student to take science courses and vice versa (a situation that almost negates the very concept of a ‘university’). An unfortunate consequence of this rigid compartmentalisation is that interdisciplinary academic subjects lying at the interface between humanities and science—the history of science and the philosophy of science—have not flourished in India. Some of the most widely used textbooks on the history of modern India—such as Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s From Plassey to Partition and Sumit Sarkar’s Modern India—have no discussion on science in India. Now at last, we have a book that is ideally suited for teaching the history of science in modern India and its impact on society—written by none other than Deepak Kumar, who taught at JNU for many years and is regarded as the doyen of the history of science in our country.
Kumar has described the aim and approach of the book in the following words (p. 146): ‘Since this short book is meant for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and also for lay persons, I have tried a judicious mix of both archival and secondary sources.’ Although it is a reasonably short book, with the main text running to less than 150 pages, readers will find an abundance of riches compressed within this small size—the essence distilled from the author’s lifelong scholarly pursuit of this subject. The book is of the nature of a sweeping survey in which Kumar rarely pauses to ponder over any particular topic in detail. But what a breathtaking and mind-boggling survey it is!
The book begins with a chapter summarising science in pre-modern India. Of particular interest to the reader will be the discussion of scientific activities during the late medieval period when much of India was under Muslim rulers—an era that was often considered intellectually barren by earlier scholars; see, for example, Bose, Sen and Subbarayappa’s A Concise History of Science in India, especially p. 593. Although Kumar concedes that there were no spectacular scientific achievements in this era, he nevertheless depicts it as an era of vigorous cross-cultural exchanges.
While discussing the implantation and diffusion of European science in India during the colonial era, Kumar has taken a nuanced and balanced approach. While avoiding the extreme post-colonial viewpoint that it was a forcible, superficial imposition of an alien knowledge system on an unwilling society, Kumar notes that the introduction of European science caused hardships to many sections of society by making certain traditional occupations obsolete. As the British empire started spreading over India, British rulers needed trigonometrical, geological, meteorological and botanical surveys of their empire to fully exploit the newly acquired economic opportunities. Chapter 2 deals with the phase when various surveying bodies were set up and societies like the Asiatic Society were established. The introduction of railways, telegraph and electricity also transformed many aspects of social life. Then, Chapter 3 describes how educated Indians—the products of the introduction of English education—responded to the new situation. This chapter is perhaps the best part of the book. After a brief account of the Orientalists versus Anglicists debate, Kumar describes the rise of a new class of thinkers and reformers in different regions of India who strongly advocated the need of the new knowledge for India and discussed how this new knowledge could be harmonised with the suitably reformed religious traditions (both Hindu and Muslim) pervading Indian society. There is an interesting discussion of how Ayurvedic and Yunani medical traditions were rejuvenated and remained popular alongside European medicine.
Chapter 4 is an account of the ‘New Dawn’ when a few Indians reached the pinnacles of scientific creativity through their own efforts with very little governmental support. No other colony could match what India achieved in basic science in the early decades of the twentieth century. This chapter begins with the call given for the industrialisation of India along with the efforts to establish the first scientific research institutes (Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and the Indian Institute of Science). Apart from discussions of the views of Tagore and Gandhi on science, there are short accounts of the scientific achievements of J.C. Bose, P.C. Ray, C.V. Raman, M.N. Saha and S.N. Bose. Kumar also takes a look at the important issue of women in science. Scientific work of international standard cannot be done in a vacuum. Kumar does not discuss the kinds of support systems that enabled the pioneer scientists to come up and the obstacles they had to overcome. The interested reader has to look elsewhere for a discussion of these themes. Chapter 5 gives a much fuller account of medicine and public health in colonial India. This superbly written chapter begins with an account of four nearly forgotten enigmatic pioneers: Raja Serfoji, Jambhekar, S.C. Chuckerbutty and M.L. Sircar. Until the germ theory of diseases came up in the second half of the nineteenth century, perhaps European medicine was not distinctly ahead of other traditional medical systems. Kumar describes the history of how modern medical education began in India and gives an account of how research started on the deadly tropical diseases causing many deaths at that time, focusing on the works of Robert Koch (who spent some time in India researching cholera), Waldemar Haffkine, Ronald Ross and U.N. Brahmachari.
We now come to the last chapter, which has a rather incomplete discussion of science in independent India. It was already realised during the colonial era that science would play a decisive role in the development of India, and the first Prime Minister, Nehru, continuously spoke of ‘scientific temper’. Describing the era of big organisational efforts dominated by the figures of Bhatnagar, Bhabha and Sarabhai, Kumar touches upon such important topics as the green revolution and India’s foray into nuclear energy and space research. He makes the pertinent remark: ‘In sharp contrast to the early 20th century, when scientists … were eulogized for their fundamental contributions, today nuclear or missile engineers are hailed as scientists’ (p. 140). Unfortunately, while lamenting this state of affairs and trying to construct a more balanced narrative, Kumar himself makes a few errors both of commission and omission. While writing about the physicist D.M. Bose, Kumar makes a startlingly wrong claim: ‘He was the first person to make the Higgs boson particle visible’ (p. 127). In the list of ‘academic’ scientists of independent India that Kumar has provided (pp. 131–32), one finds that, apart from G.N. Ramachandran, all the others are astrophysicists! Is this really the most appropriate list of representative academic scientists from independent India? Perhaps the most glaring lapse of this book is the complete omission of chemistry research (with the exception of P.C. Ray) either in colonial India or after Independence. There is no mention of Subhash Mukhopadhyay’s remarkable feat of giving birth to the world’s second ‘test tube baby’.
A very valuable aspect of this book is the exhaustive bibliography of secondary literature. Although I have some criticisms (I find the treatment of basic science research not quite satisfactory), I am not aware of any other book that is as suitable as this one for teaching the history of science in modern India. This magnificent tour de force by a leading Indian historian of science summarising the findings of recent scholarship is likely to remain unrivalled for years to come.