History of Science

English education was introduced by the British with the twin purpose of impressing upon the natives the value of western thought and of preparing them for taking up jobs to assist in the administration of the country. The first protégés were Hindus and there developed a Hindu middle class which began to demand concessions from the government without offering subservience in return. The British then began to encourage the Muslims to adopt English education in order to develop a counterpoise to Hindu middle class assertiveness. But among both communities English education was strictly an upper class affair in which the lower castes had no role.

The production and growth of modern science in India was encouraged by the British with a view to furthering colonial interests. British-sponsored science, by its very nature was field science and its agenda was decided on grounds of political and commercial gain. In the pursuit of this state-sponsored science, Indians provided cheap labour. It was only much later, with the westernisation of the Indian middle classes, that Indians began to pursue science on their own initiative but this was as an extension of the nationalist movement and science increasingly began to be seen purely as an intellectual exercise rather than as a means of producing wealth.

Rahu and Ketu were deployed as planetary deities in the sixth century CE immediately after the mathematical theory of eclipses was propounded by Aryabhata. Their literary credentials however go back to early Vedic times. Here our aim is to examine, in a joint mythological and astronomical-astrological (“astronomological”) context, how the textual meanings of Rahu and Ketu have evolved with time. There are clear stages in their evolutionary histories, which must be borne in mind while interpreting early references.

The legend of Rahu shows signs of internal development. Successor to the Rgvedic Svarbhanu, Rahu as eclipse-causing demon was reduced to a body-less head so that the swallowed sun or moon had an escape route. Rahu's identification with the lunar ascending node represents an attempt to connect new scientific developments with traditional beliefs. Ketu, in contrast, was a dictionary word used to denote a variety of  related phenomenon especially comets. The promotion of the head-less body as a demon represents expansion of mythology in the light of new scientific developments. Ketu was now given an additional entirely new role, creating avoidable confusion. Significantly, Ketu's iconography represents efforts at reconciling its two disparate roles.

India was the first country outside the Western World to take to modern science. The initiative came in the later half of the 19th century from Calcutta-based M.D. turned homeopath, Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar, and resulted in the establishment of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science in 1876. We place this initiative in the broader context of the transfer of Hindu community leadership from the landed class to the professional, and critically examine how the colonial government responded to it. We also discuss the achievements and the failures of the science movement in the 19th century. Given the class composition of the native leadership, science speculation was preferred to science application. While the Science Association succeeded in creating a general awareness about science and getting it incorporated into the university system, it failed to initiate basic research under its own auspices. It would be UK-trained government college professors who would place India on the world science map. We briefly touch upon how India’s attitude towards modern science has been fashioned by the colonial experience.

Discusses the question whether the pioneering Indian physicist Jagadis Chunder Bose was wronged in any manner by the international science establishment of the day. The paper also examines the Indian view of modern science fashioned by the colonial experience.

Ever since human beings learnt to walk upright they have looked at the sky and wondered. The sky has remained the same but human perception of it has changed. First a divinity to be feared and appeased: then a phenomenon to be observed and utilized: and finally a physics laboratory: the outer space over the millennia has acquired a depth, in keeping with tI1e changing patterns of humankind's relationship with its cosmic environment.