colonialism British India modern science

Premising that place of instruction as the primary site of reproduction of world
views are crucial for study of meaning change in the science and that the roles of authorship,
production, distribution and reception of works within particular sciences and particular
periods are important to understand the history of science education, this study examines the
scientific education in three types of modern schools, viz, Missionary, Government and Private
vernacular schools in the Madras Presidency during the nineteenth century. Though
inadequate and elementary, science was not totally absent from the scheme of school education
in the Madras Presidency and the place of science in the vernacular education and the
attended efforts in publications on science in the vernacular languages can be seen in the
context of the socio-political dynamics of the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This
paper locates the place of natural sciences in the school education.

A showdown between an overbearing American missionary wielding Copernican astronomy and a proud 'native' Tamil pañcāngkam computer clinging to absurd purāṇic myths may appear as an obvious fertile field to narrate the story of the spread of western science. Errors in native pañcāngkam were publicly demonstrated during the lunar eclipse on March 20, 1829, shocking the audacious natives to the core. This incident left the complacent native literati were dismayed to see the European missionaries could predict the eclipses without using to native 'secret mnemonics' Vākya. While the missionaries were perplexed at the predictions, even if inexact, made by the Tamil pañcāngkam paying obeisance to kantapurāṇam, which was steeped in flat earth theory, with legendary Mount Meru at the centre surrounded by concentric alternating seven continents and seven seas with luminaries like Sun, Moon and Grahas going around the axle passing through the centre of Meru. In ensuing interactions, conviviality, circulation and cosmopolitanism of ideas, the native literati encountering novel instruments like globe, telescope, clock, orrery, eclipse diagram, and the missionaries gleaning hitherto mysterious Vākya method and the heritage of native astronomy, cannot be fully captured the in the dichotomies of western/non-western (Hindu, Arabic and so on), metropole and periphery, traditional and modern, and secular and religious. The reconfiguration of ideas, both by natives and missionaries, were not by coercion, but by compulsion ofocular evidence and the protagonists behaved as if they were members of one community of rational beings, despite power hierarchies.

This paper looks at the contribution of Maj. Gen. Forbes (1796-1855) to the modernization of the Kolkata Mint and other highlights of an illustrious career in the Bengal Engineers of the East India Company. It also highlights the commemoration of Forbes by the installation of his statue and a plaque in his name installed by Forbes' well-wishers in his memory at the St. Paul’s Cathedral, Kolkata. The Victorian era Gothic styled cathedral was incidentally created by Forbes who served as its architect thus showing his multihued achievements throughout his career in colonial era Bengal.