Abstract
When a civilisation with its own traditional systems of science and philosophy encounters modern knowledge emanating from Europe, a complex change in the former must result. In India, the situation was complicated by the fact that the flagbearers of modern science had also become the masters of the country, and their interests as rulers did not necessarily accord with the pursuit of a full-scale modernising project. The article traces the development of Indian response to the European impact, and how Indian intellectuals began to imbibe modern values, adjusting (not abandoning) their own cultural heritage.
Our spirit rules the world. Our wisdom enters into the composition of the every-day life of half the globe. Our physical as well as intellectual presence is manifest in every climate under the sun. Our sailing ships and steam-vessels cover the seas and rivers. Wherever, we conquer, we civilize and refine. 1
When the above was written in 1848, it was an expression of the common, proud and perhaps partly justified boast of a nation that had helped produce the scientific and industrial revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and had almost simultaneously embarked upon the project of colonising large parts of the world. What did it mean to a centuries-old civilisation that could not stand up to this onslaught? How to ‘straddle the spatial and epistemological divide’ between metropolis and colony? 2 Was this a simple one-way transfer?
Numerous such questions have engaged the attention of scholars for a long time and several plausible explanations have been offered. The coloniser and the colonised cannot be seen only in terms of binaries. Historical facts, dug honestly from different sites, do not seem to support deterministic or essentialising understandings. The very nature of historical construction invites one to look at cross-currents and fluidity. Scientific knowledge, like colonialism itself, is no monolith; both needed and aided each other. Many scholars speak of ‘trans-cultural cooperation and empire-building’. Cooperation, even collaboration, was definitely present. Such a massive and stable empire could not have been built and sustained without the support, silent or explicit, from a large section of the colonised. This held true, perhaps, till the onset of the First World War. 3 This study would try to address some of these questions with the help of some relevant examples of techno-scientific education in Victorian India. Education as a whole has been researched well, but its techno-scientific part remains relatively less explored.
Colonisation was never a linear or a smooth process; it had its own hazards. It involved collection of information about the local terrain, its inhabitants and their knowledge systems. The colonisers could condemn local knowledge and its practices but could never ignore them. In fact, in some cases, local knowledge of the indigenes gradually became universal knowledge, and in many cases, the universal was internalised by the locals with open heart. Similarly, rejections also took place. Much may have been lost in the process of translation and delivery, but the different societies developed their own strategies and mechanisms to deal with this process. 4 Numerous individual and thematic instances can be cited which bear witness to this process of loss and gain. Scholars have also spoken of ‘another reason’: after all the colonised societies had rationality and a world-view of their own. 5 The colonial discourse, it is true, is neither entirely dictated nor possessed by the colonisers. Within it, the postcolonial theorists find ample instances of ‘ambivalence’, ‘hybridisation’ and ‘mimicry’. 6 It is these subtle yet inherent notions, which made the coloniser think of the colonised as an unknowable ‘other’ and also knowable at the same time. Similarly, it is this ambivalence which explains the predicament of a ‘native’ intellectual whether to own or discard his own traditional notions or text, and how. Though produced as the ‘other’, he is also a ‘producer’ because his actions would invariably provoke reactions from different quarters. No one denies the existence and significance of cooperation. But the question remains, cooperation on whose terms and under what conditions? Numerous explanations have been given and scholars have tried several new apertures. John Darwin, for example, has given an exciting explanation in terms of ‘multiple bridge-heads’. 7
The Indo-Islamic Inheritance
True, India has not been a xenophobic society, and the significance of knowledge was always recognised. At least in three areas, medicine, astronomy and mathematics, it made valid contributions to the corpus of knowledge. The Hindus divided knowledge into para and apara (holy and profane). So, was the case with the Islamic civilisation. Knowledge in the Islamic framework was divided between ‘ilm-al-Adyān (spiritual knowledge) and ‘ilm-i Dunyā (material knowledge). Unlike the West, pre-modern India did not witness any intense debate on issues of reason, and science. Indians remained obsessed with spiritual and social issues. So, instead of scientific thinkers or innovative technologists, India produced social reformers in large numbers. They in turn produced an unprecedented stream of bhakti (devotion). Numerous varieties of sufis and sants (devotional preachers and saints) contributed to philosophy, literature, and above all, social peace. The ruling class, on the other hand, was busy building forts, palaces, mausoleums and tombs. In terms of ideas, age-old concepts and practices were repeated with very little variation. The theological considerations retained their predominance and grip over society.
Similarly, tools had remained simple and stagnant for centuries, though craftsmanship was superb. The remarkable feats of structural engineering can be seen from the Brihadeshwara temple (tenth century) to the celebrated Taj Mahal (seventeenth century). The rust-free iron pillar in Delhi (sixth century) remains an unusual example of metallurgical skills. Indians excelled in making use of stones, marble and iron. They also knew how to make glass. Bangles were made for a millennium. But unfortunately, their skill could not move beyond bangles! Renaissance Europe was grinding glasses, which led to the development of such powerful tools as telescope and microscope. The Indo-Islamic society remained obsessed with marbles and tiles and ignored glass. In a sunny country, the need was to keep light out by the use of stones and marbles while the colder Europe needed to tap sunlight through glass. The result was that India’s cultural garbhgriha (sanctum-sanctotum), metaphorically speaking, remained dark. This was probably also because the people who worked with hands and tools (such as potters, carpenters, blacksmiths and other artisans) were denied entry there. A society that continued to play with mere stones and marbles had to pay a price in terms of cutting-edge knowledge, material development and even sovereignty.
During the post-Renaissance epoch (that of Descartes and Newton) Europe began to outdistance all other culture areas. In the eighteenth century, this distance became virtually unbridgeable. For India, this century proved unique in the sense that it saw the decline of pre-colonial systems as well as the inauguration of systematic colonisation. During this period, the rise of modern science itself coincided with the rise of merchant capitalism and colonial expansion. Probably they grew in tandem, feeding each other. The result was that not only Mughal India, but the Safavids in Iran, the Manchus in China and the Ottomans in the Middle East had also begun to show signs of decay. Some resurgent nations, now ruling the waves, came in and through their trading companies chalked out large areas for their operations. Their sails, their guns and their training were substantially different. They had ‘new’ knowledge behind them.
A Wave of Change
Pre-modern knowledge looked at the relationship between the humans and their universe very differently. It was holistic. There was no sharp distinction between the knower and the known. The ‘new’ knowledge developed through a considered critique of the scholastic and other aspects of medieval knowledge. The so-called modern–Western knowledge itself was highly differentiated: it evolved out of numerous different, often contradictory, lines of thought. But there did appear certain foundational or core assumptions, which it was thought, could be universally applied. The colonisers brought their specific knowledge to their colonies. This was no doubt a ‘gift’ of colonialism but the colonised also developed a taste for it and demanded it. 8
Fundamental changes in both knowledge production and generation came riding the wave of colonisation. Here it is important to note that under the East India Company, perhaps for the first time in Indian history, the state had emerged as the producer of knowledge and the sole arbiter of what was to be delivered and to whom. The recipients had limited options and limited access. Moreover, they had their own prejudices and requirements, which were not always congruent with those of the rulers. It was in the realm of education that the cultural encounter took place most directly. In order to establish their complete supremacy, British colonisers had first to dethrone and delegitimise several pre-colonial symbols and totems, both political and cultural, and then present their ideological and material wares in a form that would appear attractive, if not always superior, to at least a section of the indigenous population. This was how the so-called Bengal Renaissance emerged in the early nineteenth century. This was marked by new inquisitiveness, the rise of a new middle-class and some social reform. Yet, this ‘Renaissance’ was a colonial renaissance and could not be understood without reference to colonial parameters and structures. The two were simultaneous, and not unconnected, experiences. 9
New exposure made weaknesses and faults of the Indian intelligentsia even more glaring. The colonial state naturally took every possible advantage. In the face of an unprecedented cultural onslaught, the new local pioneers were dazed, if not bewildered. They experienced a dual alienation both from the traditional and from the colonial life and system. They could, to some extent, anticipate the distortions the colonial medium was likely to produce. But the realisation was slow and diffident. Perhaps this explains why Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833, social reformer and philosopher) looked to both Vedanta and the West; Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–1891, social reformer and educationist) an admirer of Western knowledge, wanted Indian students to study their own ‘false system’ also; Balshastri Jambhekar (1802–1846, a Bombay mathematics teacher), commenced his science popularisation activities in both Marathi and English; and Master Ramchandra (1821–1880, mathematics teacher, Delhi) began his mathematical treatise from a twelfth-century Indian text, Bhaskara’s Bij-Ganita. The soil was being prepared for cross-fertilisation, and the seed was a crossbreed.
One aspect appears very striking in any account of the Victorian period. It was an age of translations. The numerous School-Book societies and the scientific societies (in Calcutta, Bombay, Aligarh and Muzaffarpur, for example) were basically translation societies. Translations, no doubt, were very important and must have helped popularise certain scientific notions. But a major lacuna was that they were not accompanied, except in one or two cases, by any research. They remained mere translations, secondary, superficial and of limited value. In earlier transfers of knowledge, for example, from Greek to Arabic, research ‘preceded’ or at least accompanied translations. This was not so with ‘colonial transfers’, at least in the case of India. It was at best a ‘trial’ transfer and in this sense, one could speak of the disintegration, not of the integration, of knowledge. 10 Yet the penchant for translations must have done some good. Following Ballantyne’s efforts, Rajendralal Mitra (the most active Indian member of the Asiatic Society), prepared ‘a scheme for rendering European scientific terms in the vernacular’. In the vernaculars of India ‘untrammelled by any existing scientific literature’, he could see the possibility ‘to secure something thoroughly national and perfect’. 11 With limited and defective means, his intentions, however, sound, were to remain utopian.
Along with translations, new explorations (in terms of botanical, geological and other surveys), and new curriculums in school and college, naturally created strong cultural and social ripples. 12 From this point of view, the period from 1830 to 1900 is perhaps uniquely significant and eventful. It begins with the so-called Anglicist–Orientalist controversy in which the participants were the British themselves. Behind the facade of divergence, there existed a remarkable unity in views about the ‘nature of the natives’ and the purpose of British rule. An emerging Indian middle class was quick to perceive the benefits of Western knowledge and techniques. Ram Mohan Roy was one of the earliest to realise the importance of Western rationality. He did not refer explicitly to technology. (His reference to Western science and knowledge perhaps included technology.) But for the colonial administrator, technical assistance from the Indians was more important than expertise. Proper science education did not fit into the exigencies of Company Raj. But the Company did require a number of subordinates, assistant surgeons, overseers, surveyors, etc., to help the British army and public works establishments. Importing them from Europe proved uneconomical beyond a limit. So, some sort of technical education for Indians came on the agenda. Local support for the imperial edifice was vital not only for administrative purposes but also for the so-called development work.
Notwithstanding requirement of training subordinate staff, the value of this new education was promptly realised by the rising middle class. S. G. Chuckerbutty who was the first Indian to join the prestigious Indian Medical Service, spoke thus in the wake of the Revolt of 1857:
Education may be generally defined to be the cultivation of the mind in relation to the laws of external nature and of our own consciousness. Instruction is one of its branches, but not the whole object. The drawing out and disciplining of the faculties of the mind for the methodical pursuit of knowledge may be said to constitute the great aim of education …. The countries of Manu, Confucius, Zoroaster and Mahomet cannot be said to be mere imitators. Philosophy, literature, and the sciences and art are not unknown to them. The difference between them and the nations of modern Europe is a difference of degree and number.
13
No wonder, the local intelligentsia did not support the Revolt of 1857, an uprising, which many decades later came to be hailed as the First War of Independence! The great poet Mirza Ghalib who lived in Delhi, the epicenter of the Revolt, did not support the mutineers. After a visit to Calcutta, he sang hosannas in praise of the power of steam, the new tools and the new knowledge the British had brought. In 1855, when Syed Ahmed, a Muslim educationist and reformer, requested Ghalib to write a foreword for his edition of the Ain-i-Akbari, the poet admonished him in verse:
14
For such a task, of which this book is the basis, Only a hypocrite can offer praise … Look at the Sahibs of England. Look at the style and practice of these, See what Laws and Rules they have made for all to see. What none ever saw, they have produced … What spell have they struck on water. That vapour drives the boat in water! Sometimes the vapour takes the boat down the sea. Sometimes the vapour brings down the sky to the plains. Vapour makes the sky-wheel go round and round. Vapour is now like bullocks, or horses. Vapour makes the ship speed, Making wind and wave redundant. Their instruments make music without the bow. They make words fly high like birds: Oh, don’t you see that these wise people Get news from thousands of miles in a couple of breaths?
Thirty years later, the same Syed Ahmed opposed the establishment of an Oriental Faculty at the newly established University of Allahabad, saying: ‘we believe that an oriental faculty can do no good to the public. It will only waste the time of those who may unfortunately fall into its snare; it may further be of use in helping to fasten the hood of ignorance tighter round our eyes or to precipitate our fall … ’ 15
This, however, does not mean that the Indian intellectuals berated everything that their traditions contained. The most important characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century Indian thinking was an unprecedented emphasis on cultural synthesis. Akshay Kumar Dutt, a contemporary crusader, worked for ‘Indianising Western science’. Numerous journals of the period (like Samvad Prabhakara, Tatva Bodhini and Vividharta Samgraha) claimed the same objective. The idea of a cultural synthesis gave them in their view the best of both the worlds. First, it enabled them to absorb culture shock and also promised a possible opportunity to transcend the barriers imposed by colonialism. Moreover, it also fitted well with the dominant Hindu doctrine of epistemological pluralism. 16 So the clamour for cultural synthesis grew. Bacon and Comte impressed the Indian mind. But then how to integrate their experimental method and rationality into the Hindu ‘science of spirit’? On this, the local thinkers were not clear. They pursued a great variety of strategies—imitation, translation, assimilation, ‘distanced’ appreciation and even retreat to isolation—but without much success. A Muslim publicist wrote, in case ‘there exists any contradiction between the modern scientific truths and our scripture, we should consult our sacred writings for our moral instruction and guidance towards salvation, not for scientific investigation’. 17
Education as a Tool
The British educational experiments in India have been severely criticised, in the Victorian as well as in subsequent years. Education was no doubt an important segment of the whole colonial enterprise and was definitely intended to strengthen it. Viswanathan calls it a ‘mask of conquest’
18
and Goonatilake considers it a tool for ‘cultural blanketing’.
19
S. Ambirajan raises an important question, viz., whether the system was planned and erected for just this aim or whether there were other forces, which brought about the same results. He believes that chance more than foresight determined how the future was to be. ‘There is a bureaucratic momentum’, he argues, ‘which propels institutions along a path, though not necessarily the one charted by the initiators’.
20
‘Chance’ and ‘bureaucratic momentum’ are valid arguments so far, as we do not lose sight of the fact that it was a colonial bureaucracy. This bureaucracy ensured the primacy of colonial requirements. Engineering colleges existed for the Public Works Department and were called ‘civil’ engineering colleges.
21
The nature and pattern of engineering education in India differed from that of Britain. Whereas in England it evolved from below and gradually became a part of the university curriculum. In India, it was organised from above. Though it was organised from above in France also, the motive and situation differed greatly in Europe where engineering education was developed in order to facilitate the process of industrialisation. In India, there was no such imperative. In 1863, a despatch from London cited the French example:
Besides furnishing engineers, the Civil Engineering College in Paris has sent forth an army of devotees, to economic science, who have directed their energies with all the ardour of missionaries to the destruction of bourgeois and bureaucratic prejudices, in matters connected with commerce, consequently to the opening of trade, and therefore to the removal of the fetters on French industry and enterprises. Thus, the newborn class of civil engineers in France, by the nature of their duties and avocations, was brought into immediate communication with all the smaller capitalists in the bourgeois class… We may then fairly hope that as in France, the large moral and intellectual result (in India), will follow …
22
The last sentence is interesting. The hopes were pinned not on ‘material’ but on ‘moral’ upliftment. In fact, the whole aim of colonial education was ‘moral development’ and ‘character formation’. The ‘native’ character was considered defective, immoral and superstitious. The ‘new’ education armed with Western rationality was supposed to correct it. But the PWD-oriented education could not have done this. Examining the relevance of professional education in British India, Ambirajan poses some pertinent questions, viz. whether the institutions created avenues for self-generating additional knowledge, did the knowledge in anyway enrich the country and generate development; and, finally, if India had to be properly exploited, did the organs of colonial rule have a clear notion of how to go about it. 23
Clear-cut answers are difficult to attempt, for colonialism was no monolith, and it left several facts and questions open which can be interpreted either way. The same is probably true for post-colonial India! But these differences were not of a very basic nature. They differed in matters of detail and execution. That is why the implementation part appears ad hoc and half-hearted; but when one looks at the policy pronouncement, particularly at the higher levels, one is struck by its generosity and utilitarianism. Full trust or emphasis on them, however, could be misleading, for they tend to hide the ‘real’ requirements and intentions of a colonial power.
The latter half of the nineteenth century was a period of consolidation and institution-building. These institutions not only ‘imported’ knowledge, they imparted and, to some extent, generated knowledge. But did they diffuse new knowledge and to what extent? Telegraph and railways were the high-technology areas of those days. Telegraph remained a purely governmental exercise while the railways, raised on guaranteed profits, depended on wholesale import from Britain. Even its great repair-cum-manufacturing establishments like the Jamalpur workshop proved to be mere enclaves. No technological spin-off could emerge, much less galvanise, the neighbourhood of a railway colony. Mechanical engineering came late and remained a poor-distant cousin of public works engineering. Irrigation and later hydraulic engineering definitely benefited, thanks to the large irrigation works. The Roorkee Engineering College was closely linked to Cautley’s Ganges canal. Whether the generation or refinement of irrigation technology at Roorkee or Guindy reduced or increased the dependency of India upon Britain is arguable. These enterprises were basically technology projects with specific aims, and not conveyors of technology systems with wider canvases. A geographical relocation of technology (as in the case of railways) was possible and was achieved, but a cultural diffusion of technology is so different and much more complex. Moreover, the professional colleges were so controlled that they could not induce changes at a perceptible or faster pace. The medium of instruction was also a factor. The Japanese had insisted on their own language. The result was that modern knowledge and scientific sprit through the popular medium could percolate down to the masses. In India, colonial education widened the gulf and accentuated the age-old divide. Even in government institutions, growth was kept under a self-regulatory check.
New Vision and its Pioneers
The turn of the twentieth century saw intense debates on what the Indians had received at the end of a century and half of the British rule. A cursory look at the periodicals, pamphlets and publications of the time would show the high level of discontent with the contemporary situation. 24 The Governor General agreed that a huge stratum of the society retained ‘the primordial elements far away from the reach of progress’. 25 At the turn of the century, amelioration was sought through the slogans of swadeshi (self-reliance) and swaraj (self-rule). These were more than political slogans; rather they symbolised an intense yearning for change. 26 The ‘new vision’ of India that came to be debated so intensely in the years to follow, had its beginnings in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The quest for ‘techno-scientific knowledge’ preceded and facilitated the emergence of this ‘vision’.
A large number of Indian interlocutors, belonging to different disciplines and walks of life, contributed to the new quest for techno-scientific knowledge. Among those who were the first to take scientific research and teaching as their occupation were Pramatha Nath Bose (geologist, 1855–1934), Ramendra Sundar Trivedi (physicist, 1864–1919), Jagadish Chandra Bose (physicist, 1858–1937) and Prafulla Chandra Ray (chemist, 1861–1944). P. N. Bose specialised in geology at the University of London and later joined the Geological Survey of India. In 1886, he wrote a pamphlet on ‘Technical and Scientific Education in Bengal’ and a decade later published three volumes on ‘A History of Hindu Civilization’. A fierce nationalism had transformed a geologist into a historian. From physical mapping, he shifted to cultural contours. He held the Brahmanical system responsible for neglecting physical science ‘to a most serious extent’. ‘The Hindu civilization carried the germs of its decay within it’, he argued. He wanted science subjects to be taught with an eye to their application to industry. But at the same time he warned against the dark sides of industrialism in Europe which was feeding there a growing spirit of militarism and imperialism. 27 Trivedi criticised the content and quality of education in the tols and chatuspatis (indigenous schools), but thought that these had at least some genuine respect for knowledge. Modern educational institutions as they followed mechanised routine, failed to inculcate this genuine respect. They became what P. C. Ray later called ‘golam-khanas’ (slave-factories) churning out munsifs, clerks, assistant surgeons and overseers as per the requirements of the colonial job market. Trivedi realised that this ‘mechanisation’ could not altogether be avoided. He kept grappling with the two different texts. He would accept modernity but not Westernisation, modern university system of education but not its commercialisation. Several Indian thinkers and reformers of his age like Swami Vivekanand and Rabindranath Tagore held similar views.
The works of J. C. Bose provided the first authentic rebuttal of the colonial view that Indians were incapable of original scientific investigations. But his was not an ivory tower projection of education and research. He was convinced of the utilitarian value of science and wanted its widespread diffusion through proper science education. Not only had it to be for the sake of scientific knowledge but also to harness the economic resources of the country and to show how to discriminate between industries which can and which cannot be profitably carried on under the climatic and other conditions prevailing in India. 28 Like his compatriots, Bose excelled in diagnosis, but his solutions were limited and heavily dependent on government. All through he remained a devoted researcher, not an activist. P.C. Ray, on the other hand, showed a higher degree of social commitment. He was an educationist, a scientist, an entrepreneur, a Gandhian activist—all rolled into one. He spoke and wrote extensively on educational matters. Himself a working scientist and deeply conscious of its industrial applications, he saw science in its social context and spoke of its social relevance and accountability. Ray cited from the Famine Commission of 1880 and the Agricultural Conference of 1888, etc., on how beneficial primary education would be for the peasants. 29 Millions perished in epidemics, and the ignorant masses stepped in superstition, looked over to a goddess to escape from small pox, Sitala. It was useless to ‘din Pasteur’s researches into their ear’, Ray would argue, ‘an ignorant people and a costly machinery of scientific experts go ill together’. He shared the belief that ‘it is education and nothing but education that can remove social evils, sanitary troubles and economic distress from the country and can awaken political consciousness and create social solidarity in the people. Self-government without literacy would be nothing but a farce and might possibly be a tragedy’. 30
In any discussion on education, Rabindranath Tagore (1863–1941) deserves special mention. Tagore was not a professional educationist. He came to education through his poetry and his experiences in life. So, any academic approach to his educational ideals may be misleading. His statements on education scattered throughout his work indeed read like poetry. 31 See, for example, Tota Kahini (The Parrot’s Tale) a poignant cute little parable which parodies the educational system then (and also now) in vogue. ‘A golden cage was built with gorgeous decorations’ to provide an ‘ignorant’ bird with a ‘sound schooling’. 32 Those who planned and constructed this exquisite cage (like our education commissions and education departments) glowed with pride in their achievement and craftsmanship, but they could not save the bird which died of ‘over-stuffing’. Here the parrot represents the average student, the cage education and those who planned and constructed, the educators. As the parrot was fed lots of paper, today students are expected to gulp tonnes of information coming through books, gadgets, etc. But where is the time or strength for digestion? The parrot died while our students suffer diarrhoea of information. Tagore craved an ideal of harmony where all the contradictory elements that constitute a human personality could be resolved. This is what he wanted to ensure through education. To him education ‘is not like a lantern that can be lighted and trimmed from outside, but is like the light that the glow-worm possesses by the exercise of its life process’. 33
Reflections
There were four major educational questions, which the colonial rulers had to contend with: why to teach, what to teach, how to teach and whom to teach? These questions still retain their relevance and to some extent are yet to be resolved. ‘Why to teach’ was addressed with the ‘moral development’ and ‘character formation’ argument. Their hopes were pinned not on ‘material’ but on ‘moral’ upliftment. The ‘native’ character was considered defective, immoral and superstitious. The ‘new’ education armed with Western rationality was supposed to correct it. ‘What to teach’ was met with a heavy dose of literary curriculum. This is what the Oxbridge tradition demanded. How could a colony get something different? So, a page of Shakespeare was considered worth hundred pages of Euclid. This literary bias helped produce numerous writers and lawyers. Scientific and technical education took a back seat. Still, surprisingly enough, colonial India gradually produced more scientific pioneers than post-colonial India. ‘How to teach’ proved to be the hardest nut. What should be the medium of instruction, English or Indian languages? At what stage and how one becomes bi-lingual or multi-lingual? A colonial state naturally foisted its own language and the Indian middle class took advantage of it. As for ‘whom to teach’, education was clearly meant for the dominant castes who could then be groomed easily as collaborators in the colonial project. Though the colonial officials spoke of mass education, they had no real intention of educating the masses. They were here to rule, not to undertake philanthropy or social reform. 34
‘Soiling the hand’ or practical knowledge may not have excited the interest of the Indian middle class, but they knew what benefit such knowledge had bestowed upon the people in Europe and elsewhere. There were few, who wanted to imbue their countrymen with the spirit of science. In 1876, Mahendra Lal Sircar, a doctor by profession, established an Indian Association for Cultivation of Science in Calcutta to foster scientific research without any governmental help. Two years later an unidentified Indian visitor in Paris wrote:
We should do all we can to cultivate and master the physical sciences and make the most of these opportunities of acquiring them which have now been placed at our disposal. In the first place direct all our energies to be a ‘scientific’ nation under the guidance of the master minds of Europe and then we should have everything else we want.
35
Exposure to the ‘new’ knowledge, however, could not keep Indian society away from the pull of tradition. In a subtle way the colonisers themselves promoted this obsession with tradition by heaping occasional praises on ‘the spirit of the East’ and ‘the Hindu Technology of Contemplation’, etc. The Indians were shown as a superior civilisation in spiritual matters. This was some, though poor, compensation for the loss of political sovereignty. Indians themselves seemed to enjoy this distinction; and it seems that Max Muller was discussed more than Charles Darwin. The positivists and the Brahmos emphasised the importance of reason and observation, though their reason was not without God and was mixed with a heavy dose of moral and spiritual teaching. In any case, modern science was not seen as an alien import. Darwinism, for instance, was imported readily and the theological issues at its heart did not cause a ripple in India. The new paradigms in science were quickly accepted and numerous popular articles traced the seeds of modern advances in ancient texts. How to characterise such arguments? Were they exercises in revivalism or revitalisation, cultural self-defence or self-assertion? It was perhaps a combination of both—a delicate balancing act, which promised a semblance of identity in an age of intellectual torpor and crisis.