Science and Society in India 1750-2000

Approaches to the study of history of science underwent critical changes in the last two centuries before they could more definitely tilt towards the social dimensions of the making of science. The development of history of science during the last fifty years has been marked by a proliferation of methods and perspectives rather than by the emergence of a consensus. Given this general background of the intellectual tradition of writing history of science, an effort is made here to assemble a group of scholars from different parts of India to write about 250 years of development of science in the Indian context, covering late pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. The present volume is a selected and revised version of the original presentation made in a national Seminar at the University of Calcutta. The contributors revolve around a few thematic contexts: the east-west encounter, the diffusion theory, the colonial impact, the nationalist, and the post-colonial response and globalization. Contributors include Deepak Kumar, Pratik Chakrabarti, Arabinda Samanta, Madhumita Majumdar, Mridula Ramanna, S Irfan Habib, Arun Bandopadhyay, Sujata Mukherjee; Rohan DSouza, Raj Sekhar Basu, Santanu Chacraverti, Dhruv Raina and Dinesh Abrol.