First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Diary of an educator from West Bengal.

This book gives a flavour of the Indian response to modern science by analysing the lives and careers of four scientifically influential personalities in Bengal. His analysis of the careers of two scientists, J. C. Bose and P. C. Ray, and two institution builders, Mahendralal Sircar and Asutosh Mookerjee, brings to light the issues related to science at a time of colonialism and nationalism. Scientists often had to depend on British institutions for legitimation and funding, while also supporting the nationalist cause for greater autonomy. One of the central claims of this book is that the protagonists aimed to contribute to a modern world science, one based on a strong sense of universalism. They did not aim to construct any alternative sciences, though they did express and apply their work by drawing on their cultural heritage. This makes Science and National Consciousness a work of particular relevance today, when a homogenous, instrumentalist and totally Western conception of science is being globally accepted.

Science and Modern India: An Institutional History, c.1784-1947: Project of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, Volume XV, Part 4 comprises chapters contributed by eminent scholars. It discusses the historical background of the establishment of science institutes that were established in pre-Independence India, and still exist, their functions and their present status. This volume discusses Indian science institutes that specialize in a particular field. It also delves into the area of engineering sciences.

This book provides a comprehensive portrayal of the history of Indian mathematicians and statisticians and uncovers many missing parts of the scientific representation of mathematical and statistical research during the 19th and 20th centuries of Bengal (now West Bengal), India. This book gives a brief historical account about the establishment of the first-two departments in an Indian university, where graduate teaching and research were initiated. This was a unique distinction for the University of Calcutta which was established in 1857. The creation of the world famous Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta (now Kolkata) is also briefly described. The lives and works of the 16 pioneer mathematical scientists who adorned the above mentioned institutions and the first Indian Institute Technology (IIT) of India have been elaborated in lucid language. Some outstanding scholars who were trained at the ISI but left India permanently have also been discussed briefly in a separate chapter. This book fulfils a long-standing gap in the history of modern Indian mathematics, which will make the book very useful to researchers in the history of science and mathematics. Written in very lucid English with little mathematical or statistical jargon makes the book immensely readable even to general readers with interest in scientific history even from non-mathematical, non-statistical background. This book is a clear portrayal of the struggle and success of researchers in mathematical sciences in Bengal (an important part of the colonial India), unveils before the international community of mathematical scientists. The real connoisseurs will appreciate the value of the book, as it will clear up many prevailing misconceptions.

This book is the first systematic study of the genealogy, discursive structures, and political implications of the concept of ‘Greater India’, implying a Hindu colonization of Southeast Asia, and used by extension to argue for a past Indian greatness as a colonial power, reproducible in the present and future. From the 1880s to the 1960s, protagonists of the Greater India theme attempted to make a case for the importance of an expansionist Indian civilisation in civilizing Southeast Asia. The argument was extended to include Central Asia, Africa, North and South America, and other regions where Indian migrants were to be found. The advocates of this Indocentric and Hindu revivalist approach, with Hindu and Indian often taken to be synonymous, were involved in a quintessentially parochial project, despite its apparently international dimensions: to justify an Indian expansionist imagination that viewed India’s past as a colonizer and civilizer of other lands as a model for the restoration of that past greatness in the future. Zabarskaite shows that the crucial ideologues and elements used for the formation of the construct of Greater India can be traced to the svadeśī movement of the turn of the century, and that Greater India moved easily between the domains of the scholarly and the popular as it sought to establish itself as a form of nationalist self-assertion.