Papers by Charu Singh
History of Science, 2022
In the early twentieth century, the vernacular science periodical emerged as a key medium for bui... more In the early twentieth century, the vernacular science periodical emerged as a key medium for building science-literate publics in colonial South Asia. This article argues that the Hindi science monthly Vigyan became a discursive laboratory for experiments with language, literary genres, narrative plots and settings to create culturally-grounded science lessons for Hindi readers in the mid-1910s. I focus on the writings of Prem Vallabh Joshi, a pandit, science graduate and small town teacher, who experimented with distinct literary genres to create a sensibility for science-an experimental temper-amongst Vigyan's readers. Through his strategic use of scientific experiments in the "history of" a particular branch of knowledge, detective mysteries and the genre of the fictionalised dialogue, Joshi inducted colonial readers into experimental culture and global scientific modernity. As a reflexive participant in the ongoing confrontation between 'western' science and Hindu śāstra in colonial society, Joshi staged a fictional encounter between the experimental demonstration of the iconic air-pump and the textual authority of śāstra. This article examines the encounter between sastric commitments and scientific sensibilities and their conjoined mobilisation in Vigyan in the era of linguistic nationalism. In this colonial vernacular publishing culture, the serial possibilities of the periodical and the history of science itself became critical resources in the ontological confrontations between experimental science and traditional authority.
Article available open access at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0073275320987421
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South Asian History and Culture , 2022
Vernacular languages have served as media of science education in colonial and postcolonial South... more Vernacular languages have served as media of science education in colonial and postcolonial South Asia, but how was modern scientific knowledge translated into these languages and made available for non-English reading publics? This article draws attention to the overlooked genre of the glossary of technical terminology, conceived as the source list of the very words needed for vernacular scientific discourse. Focusing on the Nagari Pracharini Sabha's Hindi Scientific Glossary (1906), I analyse the linguistic, epistemic and political strategies by which technical terms and chemical nomenclature were rendered meaningful and authoritative for the Hindi science learner. The making of the HSG exemplifies the tensions of crafting authoritative equivalences faced by Indian language activists in a colonial episteme. Situating the glossary in its colonial genealogy and within a multilingual imaginary of science translation and language activism, this article demonstrates the inter-regional, inter-vernacular resonance in Indian projects of terminology.
You can also listen to a conversation between Lalita du Perron and I on these themes hosted by the Center for South Asia at Stanford University: https://southasia.stanford.edu/news/charu-singh-science-vernacular-conversation-translation-and-terminology
This podcast was also reblogged on the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) web publication, Backchannels by Shashank Deora: https://www.4sonline.org/science-in-the-vernacular-a-conversation-on-translation-and-terminology/
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Andrew Goss (ed)., Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire (2021)
This essay surveys the changing relationship between imperial science and colonial society in Bri... more This essay surveys the changing relationship between imperial science and colonial society in British India framed through the analytic of publics. It highlights a shift in the scholarship, from investigations of the imperial sciences to the study of colonised subjects as practitioners and participants in global scientific modernity. South Asians' encounter with European sciences altered precolonial epistemologies and social hierarchies, defined the image of authoritative knowledge in colonial society and came to shape desirable collective futures and individual aspirations. By the early twentieth century, science emerged as a distinctly Indian vocation. This essay studies these historical transformations through emblematic figures: the pandit, the daktar and the engineer, and the everyday reader and consumer of science. Social groups in colonial society had starkly different access to specialist education and expertise, and this differential access structured their recruitment and participation in scientific publics. This essay extends the critique of science as colonial power to reveal how science reshaped public authority, cultural archetypes, social aspirations and professional vocations, and became a technology of caste and nationalist power in colonial and postcolonial India.
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The Mantis Shrimp. A Simon Schaffer Festschrift, 2022
A short essay on three fictional dialogues in Latin, English, and Hindi about scientific experime... more A short essay on three fictional dialogues in Latin, English, and Hindi about scientific experiments –– Thomas Hobbes' Dialogus physicus de natura aegis (1661), Robert Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist (1661), and Prem Vallabh Joshi's "The Five-Tattva" (1917) –– in which I think with the foundational literary technologies of Hobbes and Boyle to consider the colonial career of experimental culture and how the global publics of science have become conscripted to the experimental paradigm.
This essay also draws attention to the translational labours of Simon Schaffer. A translation of Hobbes' Dialogus physicus was published in Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Schaffer translated the text, which had never before been translated from Latin. This English translation appeared as an appendix to the book's 1985 and 1989 editions, and has since disappeared from subsequent editions.
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Talks by Charu Singh
A paper discussed at "History of Science in Early South Asia", a working group hosted by the Cons... more A paper discussed at "History of Science in Early South Asia", a working group hosted by the Consortium on Science, Technology and Medicine, Philadelphia, on 17 October 2022
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A paper presented in the "Science and Technology in Asia" Seminar Series (Spring 2022), Harvard U... more A paper presented in the "Science and Technology in Asia" Seminar Series (Spring 2022), Harvard University Asia Center, May 17 2022
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A paper presented at the annual 4S Meeting 2021, as part of a panel on "Caste as/of Technoscience... more A paper presented at the annual 4S Meeting 2021, as part of a panel on "Caste as/of Technoscience" on 8 October 2021.
Earlier versions presented at the Modern and Contemporary History seminar, University of Birmingham (March 2021) and the Centre of South Asian Studies Seminar, University of Cambridge (January 2021).
Here's a podcast of the CSAS (Cambridge) seminar, where Projit Mukharji and I discussed "The Scientific Life in South Asia": https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-scientific-life-in-south-asia-with-charu-singh/id1509719303?i=1000505968069
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Collaborations by Charu Singh
Organised panel at the Annual History of Science Society Meeting, Portland, Nov 2023.
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From November 2019 to June 2020, Mary Brazelton, Elise Burton, Shireen Hamza and I co-convened an... more From November 2019 to June 2020, Mary Brazelton, Elise Burton, Shireen Hamza and I co-convened an online working group hosted by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Philadelphia. The group aimed to bring together historians of science working on Asia, broadly conceived to include not only East and South Asia but also West Asia (i.e. the Middle East), Central Asia and Siberia, and to discuss research in progress as well as pressing issues of methodology and pedagogy in our discipline. Our thematic focus this year was how our field can contribute to calls for decolonization in scholarship and teaching.
Our seven sessions included discussions on decolonization as method with respect to specific regions; decolonial methods in precolonial history of science; neotraditional sciences/medicines; religious scientisms; issues of scientific collaboration and power; and Asian histories of 'indigenous knowledge.' Each session includes a detailed reading list. The group webpage can be found at https://www.chstm.org/content/science-across-regions-asia
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This panel explores the production of scientific knowledge and changing understandings of science... more This panel explores the production of scientific knowledge and changing understandings of science in South Asian languages, by focusing on the individuals and institutions that translated "western" sciences in modern South Asia. Within the history of science in South Asia, such indigenous intellectual projects have been conceptualized either as instances of "popularization" of western disciplinary knowledges, or of their "vernacularization"-that is, the translation and creative adaptation of established bodies of knowledge and their practices in a colonial context. This panel engages with existing historiography to raise new questions concerning the global circulations of scientific knowledge from the perspective of South Asia and the regional embeddedness of the processes by which knowledge travels: Specifically, what did it mean to be a popularizer of science in colonial India, when the language order of the subcontinent, its educational structures, and epistemic communities were being transformed? In turn, how did allegedly universal concepts and bodies of knowledge
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An informal day-long workshop for early career scholars and graduate students held in Delhi in Ma... more An informal day-long workshop for early career scholars and graduate students held in Delhi in March 2019. The workshop aimed to generate more conversation between historians of science, technology and medicine in South Asia. It also discussed the possibility of creating a regular annual workshop/conference/meeting to support collaborative research and discuss works in progress. The workshop emphasised the need to connect science studies scholars based in South Asia with each other.
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Book Reviews by Charu Singh
Chapati Mystery, 2020
Reflecting on Durba Mitra's recent book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of M... more Reflecting on Durba Mitra's recent book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton 2020), I ask: What is the colonial episteme, and what is the place of the sciences within it? What are the genealogies through which concepts like the ‘prostitute’ emerge in this episteme and what methods can be used to track them? And finally, what is the authority of science, and “scientism” in this book? Please read the other contributions to the roundtable and Mitra's response at https://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/Indian_Sex_Life.html
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Papers by Charu Singh
Article available open access at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0073275320987421
You can also listen to a conversation between Lalita du Perron and I on these themes hosted by the Center for South Asia at Stanford University: https://southasia.stanford.edu/news/charu-singh-science-vernacular-conversation-translation-and-terminology
This podcast was also reblogged on the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) web publication, Backchannels by Shashank Deora: https://www.4sonline.org/science-in-the-vernacular-a-conversation-on-translation-and-terminology/
This essay also draws attention to the translational labours of Simon Schaffer. A translation of Hobbes' Dialogus physicus was published in Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Schaffer translated the text, which had never before been translated from Latin. This English translation appeared as an appendix to the book's 1985 and 1989 editions, and has since disappeared from subsequent editions.
Talks by Charu Singh
Earlier versions presented at the Modern and Contemporary History seminar, University of Birmingham (March 2021) and the Centre of South Asian Studies Seminar, University of Cambridge (January 2021).
Here's a podcast of the CSAS (Cambridge) seminar, where Projit Mukharji and I discussed "The Scientific Life in South Asia": https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-scientific-life-in-south-asia-with-charu-singh/id1509719303?i=1000505968069
Collaborations by Charu Singh
Our seven sessions included discussions on decolonization as method with respect to specific regions; decolonial methods in precolonial history of science; neotraditional sciences/medicines; religious scientisms; issues of scientific collaboration and power; and Asian histories of 'indigenous knowledge.' Each session includes a detailed reading list. The group webpage can be found at https://www.chstm.org/content/science-across-regions-asia
Book Reviews by Charu Singh
Article available open access at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0073275320987421
You can also listen to a conversation between Lalita du Perron and I on these themes hosted by the Center for South Asia at Stanford University: https://southasia.stanford.edu/news/charu-singh-science-vernacular-conversation-translation-and-terminology
This podcast was also reblogged on the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) web publication, Backchannels by Shashank Deora: https://www.4sonline.org/science-in-the-vernacular-a-conversation-on-translation-and-terminology/
This essay also draws attention to the translational labours of Simon Schaffer. A translation of Hobbes' Dialogus physicus was published in Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Schaffer translated the text, which had never before been translated from Latin. This English translation appeared as an appendix to the book's 1985 and 1989 editions, and has since disappeared from subsequent editions.
Earlier versions presented at the Modern and Contemporary History seminar, University of Birmingham (March 2021) and the Centre of South Asian Studies Seminar, University of Cambridge (January 2021).
Here's a podcast of the CSAS (Cambridge) seminar, where Projit Mukharji and I discussed "The Scientific Life in South Asia": https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/the-scientific-life-in-south-asia-with-charu-singh/id1509719303?i=1000505968069
Our seven sessions included discussions on decolonization as method with respect to specific regions; decolonial methods in precolonial history of science; neotraditional sciences/medicines; religious scientisms; issues of scientific collaboration and power; and Asian histories of 'indigenous knowledge.' Each session includes a detailed reading list. The group webpage can be found at https://www.chstm.org/content/science-across-regions-asia