STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF INDIAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - ITS ROLE IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE PRESENT - DAY FOREIGN DOMINATION OF OUR S AND T.
Our S and T community to-day is by and large silent collaborator in the complete foreign domination of our S and T activities. A minority of them at the top level is, no doubt, doing this because it seems to further their own narrow personal interests. However, a large number of our S and T workers who are honest and sincere and who believe in the nobility of scientific and technological pursuits as well as in contributing to the welfare of our country and our people, also end up serving the role of collaborators because of a prevailing state of total mental slavery. They have been made to believe in a certain set of axioms and notions regarding the modern Western S and T. and it is this set of axioms and notions that help in rationalizing, legitimizing and furthering the foreign domination of our S and T - it provides a firm ideological foundation for this to continue unchecked. If the foreign domination has to be combated effectively and successfully, then it is essential to expose, attack, and destroy this ideological foundation. In other words, all those axioms and notions should be ruthlessly questioned and their falsehood exposed, so that the very large number of our S and T workers who are honest, sincere and patriotic may refuse to continue as collaborators in the present total foreign domination of our S and T. It is our belief that study of the history of our own S and T (as well as those of other non-Western societies) will provide us with a most potent weapon in this struggle. This belief is based on whatever little acquaintance that we have been able to develop with some aspects of the history of our S and T. We have attempted to summarise below our reasons for believing that a thorough understanding of the history of our S and T is essential in combating the foreign hold on our S and T.
1. One of the sacredly held axioms of to-day is that the present day Western Science is the only possible and legitimate science, and that the values, objectives and directions it incorporates are the only ones consistent with science. It is not realised that the Western Science has values and views that are the products of Western society and hence there is nothing universal and value-free about it, and that other societies can and must (and will if allowed to) do sciences in ways and manners chosen by themselves and suitable to themselves. This notion regarding the status and history of the Western Science forms the basis for the belief that to-day's Western Science is the international and universe science, and hence anyone pursuing science has to do so in the Western manner and with the western values.
Study of the history of our S and T (or of the S and T of any other non-western society) shows that different societies had actually developed different manners of doing science and had incorporated different values and views and directions for this pursuit. For example, study of our ancient astronomy or medicine would show how these sciences were being pursued in conceptual frames that were different from those used by other societies pursuing the same sciences. This indicates how different ways and thus give rise to different scientific systems - each rooted in its own social realities and imbibing its own values. This will show that there is nothing uniquely international about the modern western science (excepting, of course, to the extent that the west has been able to impose it upon the rest of the world) and that it is merely the way in which the western society has chosen to do its sciences under the given historical conditions. Every society can and will evolve its own sciences in ways and manners that it decides are best for it.
2. There exists a notion that modern science and technology developed only in the west because the western society has been inherently [Not Visible] scientific in its outlook and thinking, and no S and T developed in India because there is something inherently unscientific about Indian culture and mind. From this, it unfollows that science can be done here only by abandoning all Indian thinking (that is, all thinking that is rooted in our society and related to it) and by embracing western thinking and values look, stock and barrel - since the western outlook is the only scientific outlook. Total cultural domination by the west and a state of total mental slavery results from this notion of our being somehow unsuited for scientific work.
Study of our S and T will show that it was possible to be totally Indian in thinking and still do as much science as than one also - or even more. It could then be seen that sciences were being pursued with values that were generated from within our own society and that these values were very much conducive to the progress of S and T - that there has been nothing inherently unscientific about our society. This will force us to look for other explanations as to why S and T is not developing here now.
3. There is a notion that we Indians are a basically superstitious lot and that it is the prevalence of these superstitions that it is inhibiting the growth of S and T here.
Hence it is thought that fighting the superstitious notions amongst the people is the main task for developing our S and T - most of the time, terming all those ideas and practices that the western colonising mind found incomprehensible as superstitious. It will be interesting to see how, till about 200 years ago, these ‘superstitious’ did not constitute such an unsurmountable barrier to the progress of our S and T. A little poop into the history of the west also shows how superstitions have not been a unique feature of our society alone, and how in spite of them, S and T developed in the west. This may help in burying this false diagnosis.
4. There is a notion that the modern S and T evolved, pure and simple, out of the womb of the western society alone and that all other societies it had nothing to contribute to this process. This has led us to a fooling of intellectual inferiority to the western mind and hence to an unquestioned acceptance of whatever the western society terms as scientific or otherwise. Studying the history of our S and T (as well as of those of other non-western societies) brings to light the importance of the purely scientific and technological contributions that the non-western societies had made towards the growth of the modern S and T - that the west did not think it up all by itself, and that it had borrowed heavily from others. This could help in breaking the chains of our present-day mental slavery to the western society and science.
5. A certain ‘charitable’ view that exists to-day about the history of our S and T runs as follows. Yow may be quite correct that we did have a glorious past in S and T in ancient times, but that was long ago - thousands of years ago. Since then everything here was stagnant or decaying. We had entered some kind of a dark period. Whatever also we may have against the westerners, this much that be granted that but for their coming here, and breaking our stagnation and giving us their education and science, we would still have been a primitive people. It is not perhaps very sup surprising that such a picture of the period immediately preceding our colonisation has been meticulously imprinted in our minds by the western educationists (and their local adherents) because it clearly provides a legitimatisation and justification for our enslavement.
An honest and thorough study of the history of our S and T during the centuries immediately preceding the colonisation tells us a very different story. It shows that there was nothing like a dark period and that scientific and technological activities were being continuously pursued in our society at the time the westerners arrived here. The study of this period of our history is extremely important in correcting many notions as to the course of development of our S and T.
6. Continuing the above trend of notions, there is no clear understanding to-day as to how our S and T activities came slowly to an end. It is felt that somehow the whole thing decayed and disappeared. A study of the 17th - 18th centuries shows that our S and T did not die on its own, but was consciously and systematically destroyed by the im - imperialist onslaught. In fact, how some of our sciences and technologies managed to survive (in whatever distorted forms) such a fierce onslaught on them, will itself show that these were not in a state of decay and death by themselves at the time of colonialisation. A study of this period would also show the real objectives and intentions with which the western a S and T was transplanted into our country. An understanding of this process of destruction of our S and T by the western colonislism is extremely important to-day because it is precisely a similar (no doubt, much more subtle) process that is continuing to inhibit the growth of S and T in our country.
7. The S and T activity in our country is to-day organised and pursued in such away that it has little to do with the lives of our people and it has lost all organic links with the social realities of to-day. This feature has become so well established to-day that many S and T workers to-day take it to be the most natural one, they cannot even visualise a possibility that things could be otherwise. A study of how our ancient S and T practices were related to the social conditions of that time would be an eye opener in this regard. It will at least show that our S and T institutions and practices could be organised along certain lines and directions that are derived from the internal dynamics of our own society, and that its center of gravity could very well be situated within our own society. It will be instructive to know that were the specific features of this organisation that made it a viable and thriving enterprise in our social context; some of these lessons could very well be valid to-day also.
8. There is a certain notion existing to-day that there is no foreign domination of our S and T taking place, but it is merely a case of close contact and exchange between our S and T and the S and T of the west. It will be interesting to see how such contact and exchange used to take place in earlier days when our S and T was standing on a sound domestic foundation. The difference we see is that earlier, our S and T benefited and enriched itself from such contacts and exchanges, but to-day's contacts and exchanges are inhibiting the very development of our own S and T -in other words, what is taking place to-day is not contacts, and exchanges, but total domination of all our S and T.
9. Study of the concrete practices of sciences and technologies in ancient times, as well as investigating as to how much of it survives to-day (in whatever distorted forms) and could possibly be revived; will help in concretising our concept of what a patriotic and people-oriented S and T could be. Detailed studies of specific sciences and technologies - their organisation as well as practices - would be valuable in this regard.
10. Lastly, an awareness of the true history of our S and T will show what amount of organised brain washing has been (and is being) carried on by the modern educational system introduced here by the colonalists continued even after independence, and how this has resulted in the present mental slavery which is making our S and T workers such silent collaborators in the foreign domination of all our S and T activities.
We would like to emphasise that much greater amount of study and discussion is required for clearly establishing or repudiating the ideas stated here. What we have attempted here is merely to sum up the impressions that even a very limited study of this topic has given us. We will be very glad if this would serve as a starting point for a serious debate on this question through the pages of this Bulletin.
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