Papers by Oyndrila Sarkar
Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, 2019
The British Empire achieved its greatest cartographical reach during the interwar period. It was ... more The British Empire achieved its greatest cartographical reach during the interwar period. It was therefore forced to deal with unprecedented strains, as its already bulging territories led to an increased need for securing borders. Along with anxieties about the Afghan border on the North-West Frontier of India, there were growing tensions in the virtually unmapped colonies in Africa, Mesopotamia and East Persia. A critical knowledge of the history, aims and the organization of the Survey of India, reduced to the ‘Department’, in the 1920s, are crucial for understanding its complex role. The SOI’s mapping policy changed drastically, moving from the desire to have artistic excellence to correct, minimalistic up-to-date small-scale maps. This paper would like to show how the Empire’s mapping policy laid the foundations of urban and thematic mapping in India, as well as its modern boundaries. Against the backdrop of World War II, it became imperative for the Empire to follow a construc...
This article traces the journeys of and controversies surrounding the Schlagintweit brothers in ‘... more This article traces the journeys of and controversies surrounding the Schlagintweit brothers in ‘India and High Asia’. The brothers were Alpine glaciologists from Germany who were invited by the East India Company in 1854 to complete the Magnetic Survey of the Indian subcontinent on the recommendation of Alexander von Humboldt. This article discusses how the Schlagintweit brothers became the subject of controversy, and how they vanished from the record of the history of surveying as abruptly as they had emerged. Their story calls into question established historiographical narratives about ‘colonial science’ and ‘Western science’ in the subcontinent.
Over decades historians dealing with the colonial period have looked into processes of mapping th... more Over decades historians dealing with the colonial period have looked into processes of mapping the subcontinent of India. This article tries to see why the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, or the GTSI could be seen as building a separate identity which helped the colonial state to confirm and restructure its own territorial hold over the Indian subcontinent.
Conference Presentations by Oyndrila Sarkar
The British Empire achieved its cartographical reach during the interwar period. It was therefore... more The British Empire achieved its cartographical reach during the interwar period. It was therefore forced to deal with unprecedented strains, as its already bulging territories led to an increased need for securing borders. Along with anxieties about the Afghan border on the NorthWestern Frontier of India, there were growing tensions in the virtually unmapped colonies in Africa, Mesopotamia, East Persia and Macedonia. A critical knowledge of the history, aims and the organization of the Survey of India, reduced to 'The Department', in 1920s, is crucial for understanding its complex role in the years both preceding the great war, and during the inter-war years. The SOI was a department under the control of, but not of, the Government of India, and was never under direct control of the War Department. The outbreak of the war in 1914 left the survey department short-handed in officers and its internal survey programmes, most surveyors being sent to non-survey or military duty. The immediate need for comprehensive survey and mapping work was felt. With the depression and retrenchment in full swing, the budgets for making maps and its maintenance were scrapped. Mapping policy changed drastically under such conditions, moving from the desire to have artistic excellence with refined signs, symbols, colour and typography on large-scale maps, to correct, minimalistic up-to-date small scale maps. This enabled reissuing them easily, serving the immediate purpose of knowledge and circulation. The department itself was depleted, rushed and overburdened; most of their survey information could not be published for security reasons. With no routine reports of the SOI's activities as a result of the war, mapping policy directed an increase in the expenditure on reproduction, correction and revision of maps at the cost of new survey, drawing, drafting and fieldwork. With exemplary sources such as the Departmental Papers, and Records of the Survey of India, I would like to show how the Empire's mapping policy laid the foundations of urban and thematic mapping in India, as well as its modern boundaries. Against the war, it became imperative for the Empire to follow a constructive policy of balancing and achieving what was technically desirable, against what was economically viable. Essential geodetic foundations of topographical survey work had been laid in the past Great Trigonometrical Survey, but any future surveys would have to be dealt with differently, keeping in mind the background of these changes in conditions, needs and methods of survey.
A frontier is a site for cartographic collaborations. The northwestern and northeastern Himalayan... more A frontier is a site for cartographic collaborations. The northwestern and northeastern Himalayan frontiers of the Indian subcontinent during the 1800s, had distinctly different geopolitical systems. British surveying departments while trying to harness geographical knowledge for both intelligence and administrative clarity, documented ‘secret and confidential reports’ of native travellers, British and German surveyors, and local residents. With two such exemplary sources, namely the Trans-Himalayan explorations by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India carried out by the Pundit Brothers (1868), and the Results of a Scientific Mission to India and High Asia by the Brothers Herman, Robert and Adolphe Schlagintweit (1861), I would like to show how frontiers were not only active and porous spaces with different traditions of cartographic practices, but how they co-existed, continuously evolving for the final construction of a map.
The Schlagintweit Brothers followed a late 18th century Humboldtian tradition of visually representing nature, life and physical forms, the earliest form of info-graphics, alongside details of trigonometrical and topographical data for cartographic purposes. The Pundit Brothers, who chronologically succeeded them on Indian soil, had a different methodology, which was born more out of necessity than British survey mandates, i.e innovations on the field to record and hide their observed calculations and data, disguised travelling to hide one’s true identity inside extra-territorial lands, and the retrospective plotting of maps by the Great Trigonometrical survey of India once this data returned to the survey offices.
These ‘Western’ and ‘Asian’ cartographic practices were directly representational of how changes involved in transmitting and transferring techno-scientific knowledge into both administrative and academic coda became a reality in the late 1800s. Surveying operations on a micro level during the colonial period, were mutually dependent in grossly asymmetrical and anarchical conditions. The role of scientific institutions in this scheme of a constructive exploration and conquest of knowledge added to the cultural contact(s) we speak of. How these various agencies adapted to, and adopted each other’s methods and practices can only be understood with some clarity, if looked at through the lens of the context of a frontier, in this case, the frontier regions of the northeast and the northwest of India.
The Trigonometrical Surveys in British India were theoretically the first layer to Indian mapmaki... more The Trigonometrical Surveys in British India were theoretically the first layer to Indian mapmaking. The revenue and the topographical survey departments would then fill up spaces with details of physical features and boundaries. These methods were disregarded in terms of the practical mapping of certain difficult spaces, for e.g. frontiers. The objective of this research is to use the case of Assam, in north eastern India, to deconstruct established narratives and histories of surveying, boundary-making and state-formation. Reasons for surveying in the north east were simple. Through memoirs, letters and intelligence branch reports we find the British survey officers lament about Assam being the only part in their vast frontier about which they had neither military nor geographical information. There could be no steps taken to guard themselves and their men incase of any political uprisings, post-1857. They needed to garrison this remote corner as it was the only place where there was more English capital invested than in any of their dominions. Eventually we see Assam on maps as part of The Atlas of India published by the Surveyor General Thullier. It was no longer Upper Assam or Lower Assam, but Assam as a separate region/state like Bengal, or Central Provinces, or Burma. The retrospective ordering and smoothening down of the chaos in the processes of surveying, determining boundaries, and determining the latitudes and longitudes of points and places would cause boundary disputes later in the 19th century, thereby making certain that the north east as such was a disputed disturbed area, declaring it as a Disputed Areas Belt (DAB). States formation would be the outcome of such mayhem and mis-estimation in its historical development. What emerged was a triumphant and cohesive picture of India united east to west, north to south, a subcontinent completely in possession of itself. Map making was integral to British imperialism in India. The surveys transformed the subcontinent from exotic and largely unknown region into a well defined and knowable geographical entity. One certain aspect was guesswork and estimation in calculation, and not following one’s own rules for a standard system of measurement. The British survey department possibly had a noble intention, but they had no idea what they had gotten themselves into. Theoretically whatever was laid out was impossible on field. If they had to show that the objectives matched their outcome, they either had to bluff, or die in the process. Theoretically The Empire might have defined the map’s extent but mapping defined the empire’s nature. There were continuous and deliberate errors of measurement and of accuracy in the Survey department. Surveyors were instructed officially and through correspondence to fudge measurements, recall previous observations from memory if the data was unavailable. Scientific surveying and its technology was sacrificed to illustrate Britain’s dominions on every map presented and circulated globally. Assam had a problematic terrain, and equally problematic boundaries, but falsification and estimation of data from surveying operations which would finally result in The Atlas of India in 1862, was never taken seriously.
The extension of Trigonometrical Surveys in British India under the SurveyorGeneral Lt. George E... more The extension of Trigonometrical Surveys in British India under the SurveyorGeneral Lt. George Everest, created a need to employ both European (mostly) and nonEuropean surveyors. Previous skills, training, qualification, fitness, all being of prime importance, when placed in situations of difficulty and responsibility one could still be at a loss. What was then required was a proper guidebook, which could act as a standard operating system of knowledge. What grew out of this effort was the publication of a specific genre of professional manuals and handbooks, outlining tips, hints, rules and methods for both the romantic explorer and the scientific surveyor. Along with the Professional Papers and Technical Papers of the Survey of India, this is the only section of primary survey literature which deals with the training of European and native surveyors in the Indian surveys. Not only did they provide the survey department with information, they also were indispensable to civilians who came in contact with the survey operations. They were indispensable to army officers, indigo planters, ameens, mofussil residents and engineering students. These finally found their way into the teaching curriculum and evaluation processes in Survey Schools, which were being set up in different Indian cities. It was a formative moment of the making of the discipline of surveying. This paper deals with the different rulebooks and instructions of surveying published in the late 19th century, trying to provide some practical help to surveyors caught in the midst of 'mutiny', 'barbarous races' and 'brown men of science'.
This paper traces the journeys of and controversies surrounding the Schlagintweit brothers in ‘In... more This paper traces the journeys of and controversies surrounding the Schlagintweit brothers in ‘India and High Asia’. The brothers were Alpine glaciologists from Germany who were invited by the East India Company in 1854 to complete the Magnetic Surveys in the Indian subcontinent on the recommendation of Alexander von Humboldt. The brothers’ activities and research were incorporated into the concerns of what was known as the ‘Great Game’, the clandestine Anglo-Russian struggle for a footing in Central Asia. The Schlagintweit brothers, the youngest of whom, Adolphe, was decapitated in Kashgar in 1857 as a suspected spy, were the first to explore the border regions of India, and to connect this research with Tibet and Central Asia, thereby describing routes and spaces that would be important and contentious in the years to come.
The most celebrated figure in Indian surveying remains Lt. Col. George Everest
(Surveyor General... more The most celebrated figure in Indian surveying remains Lt. Col. George Everest
(Surveyor General of India 1830-1843) as no scientific man would ‘have a more
grander monument to his memory than the Great Meridional Arc of India’, while the
memorial to other scientific men who however sat computing heights and distances
remains restricted to a brief line in the concluding sections of every survey report.
This tenacious historical process of surveying was not a monolithic bloc using
‘western science and technology’ in colonial India, and most definitely not a
homogenous process of applying this same technology from the Irish ordnance
surveys or the surveys in the other colonies of England, but in reality a far more
negotiated and complicated practice. In this respect, the larger question in mind is to
trace a network of ideas of the technology of surveying, and how it was carefully put
together between the British surveyors in the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India
and a ‘Non-European’ body of technology and knowledge production. This paper
focuses on a Bengali computer at the Chief Computing Office at Wood Street,
Calcutta, and a watchmaker from Arcot in south India, who repaired astronomical
instruments as Mathematical Instrument Repairer worked closely alongside
engineers and craftsmen in the departments of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of
India. Sikdar and Mohsin were co-producers of scientific knowledge, and were
regarded as such by their British colleagues, even if they might have vanished from
the documents that memorialized the surveys and provided the retrospective
justification for imperialism.
Book Reviews by Oyndrila Sarkar
Contemporary South Asia, Routledge Publications
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Papers by Oyndrila Sarkar
Conference Presentations by Oyndrila Sarkar
The Schlagintweit Brothers followed a late 18th century Humboldtian tradition of visually representing nature, life and physical forms, the earliest form of info-graphics, alongside details of trigonometrical and topographical data for cartographic purposes. The Pundit Brothers, who chronologically succeeded them on Indian soil, had a different methodology, which was born more out of necessity than British survey mandates, i.e innovations on the field to record and hide their observed calculations and data, disguised travelling to hide one’s true identity inside extra-territorial lands, and the retrospective plotting of maps by the Great Trigonometrical survey of India once this data returned to the survey offices.
These ‘Western’ and ‘Asian’ cartographic practices were directly representational of how changes involved in transmitting and transferring techno-scientific knowledge into both administrative and academic coda became a reality in the late 1800s. Surveying operations on a micro level during the colonial period, were mutually dependent in grossly asymmetrical and anarchical conditions. The role of scientific institutions in this scheme of a constructive exploration and conquest of knowledge added to the cultural contact(s) we speak of. How these various agencies adapted to, and adopted each other’s methods and practices can only be understood with some clarity, if looked at through the lens of the context of a frontier, in this case, the frontier regions of the northeast and the northwest of India.
(Surveyor General of India 1830-1843) as no scientific man would ‘have a more
grander monument to his memory than the Great Meridional Arc of India’, while the
memorial to other scientific men who however sat computing heights and distances
remains restricted to a brief line in the concluding sections of every survey report.
This tenacious historical process of surveying was not a monolithic bloc using
‘western science and technology’ in colonial India, and most definitely not a
homogenous process of applying this same technology from the Irish ordnance
surveys or the surveys in the other colonies of England, but in reality a far more
negotiated and complicated practice. In this respect, the larger question in mind is to
trace a network of ideas of the technology of surveying, and how it was carefully put
together between the British surveyors in the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India
and a ‘Non-European’ body of technology and knowledge production. This paper
focuses on a Bengali computer at the Chief Computing Office at Wood Street,
Calcutta, and a watchmaker from Arcot in south India, who repaired astronomical
instruments as Mathematical Instrument Repairer worked closely alongside
engineers and craftsmen in the departments of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of
India. Sikdar and Mohsin were co-producers of scientific knowledge, and were
regarded as such by their British colleagues, even if they might have vanished from
the documents that memorialized the surveys and provided the retrospective
justification for imperialism.
Book Reviews by Oyndrila Sarkar
The Schlagintweit Brothers followed a late 18th century Humboldtian tradition of visually representing nature, life and physical forms, the earliest form of info-graphics, alongside details of trigonometrical and topographical data for cartographic purposes. The Pundit Brothers, who chronologically succeeded them on Indian soil, had a different methodology, which was born more out of necessity than British survey mandates, i.e innovations on the field to record and hide their observed calculations and data, disguised travelling to hide one’s true identity inside extra-territorial lands, and the retrospective plotting of maps by the Great Trigonometrical survey of India once this data returned to the survey offices.
These ‘Western’ and ‘Asian’ cartographic practices were directly representational of how changes involved in transmitting and transferring techno-scientific knowledge into both administrative and academic coda became a reality in the late 1800s. Surveying operations on a micro level during the colonial period, were mutually dependent in grossly asymmetrical and anarchical conditions. The role of scientific institutions in this scheme of a constructive exploration and conquest of knowledge added to the cultural contact(s) we speak of. How these various agencies adapted to, and adopted each other’s methods and practices can only be understood with some clarity, if looked at through the lens of the context of a frontier, in this case, the frontier regions of the northeast and the northwest of India.
(Surveyor General of India 1830-1843) as no scientific man would ‘have a more
grander monument to his memory than the Great Meridional Arc of India’, while the
memorial to other scientific men who however sat computing heights and distances
remains restricted to a brief line in the concluding sections of every survey report.
This tenacious historical process of surveying was not a monolithic bloc using
‘western science and technology’ in colonial India, and most definitely not a
homogenous process of applying this same technology from the Irish ordnance
surveys or the surveys in the other colonies of England, but in reality a far more
negotiated and complicated practice. In this respect, the larger question in mind is to
trace a network of ideas of the technology of surveying, and how it was carefully put
together between the British surveyors in the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India
and a ‘Non-European’ body of technology and knowledge production. This paper
focuses on a Bengali computer at the Chief Computing Office at Wood Street,
Calcutta, and a watchmaker from Arcot in south India, who repaired astronomical
instruments as Mathematical Instrument Repairer worked closely alongside
engineers and craftsmen in the departments of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of
India. Sikdar and Mohsin were co-producers of scientific knowledge, and were
regarded as such by their British colleagues, even if they might have vanished from
the documents that memorialized the surveys and provided the retrospective
justification for imperialism.