How to write about China and India

The first BJHS Themes, a new, fully open access, peer-reviewed journal from the British Society for the History of Science, was published this month. The issue is entitled Science of Giants: China and India in the twentieth century. In this article, one of the volume’s editors, Jahnavi Phalkey, gives her observations on the opportunities and challenges on writing about China and India

The Aakash tablet and technological imaginaries of mass education in contemporary India

In a new paper published this month Jahnavi Phalkey and Sumandro Chattapadhyay explore public initiatives in technological solutions for educating the poor and the disadvantaged in independent India. Here, the authors offer an edited excerpt, tracing the recent history of technological solutions for mass education and unpacking the narrative of ‘failure’ that is associated with the Aakash experiment

Big-science, state-formation and development: the organisation of nuclear research in India, 1938-1959

This thesis is a history of the beginnings of nuclear research and education in India, between 1938 and 1959, through the trajectories of particle accelerator building activities at three institutions: the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the Palit Laboratory of Physics, University Science College, Calcutta, later (Saha) Institute of Nuclear Physics, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay. The two main arguments in this thesis are: First, the beginnings of nuclear research in India were rooted in the "modernist imperative" of the research field. However, post-war organisation of nuclear research came to be inextricably imbricated in processes of state-formation in independent India in a manner such that failure to actively engage with the bureaucratic state implied death of a laboratory project or constraints upon legitimately possible research. Second, state-formation, like the pursuit of nuclear research in India for the period of my study, became about India's participation and claim upon the universal. State-formation was equally a modernist imperative. Powerful sections of the nationalist bourgeoisie in India understood "Science" and the "State" as universals in World History, and India, they were convinced, had to confirm its place in history as an equal among equals. These two arguments combined explain how nuclear research came to be established, transformed, and extended through the gradual assembly of material infrastructure to realistically enable the new country take a capable decision on the nuclear question.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Krige, John; Committee Member: Abraham, Itty; Committee Member: Bullard, Alice; Committee Member: Lu, Hanchao; Committee Member: Usselman, Steven W

Planning for Science in China and India

AbstractPlanning for science and technology was a global phenomenon in the mid-twentieth century. A few countries drew up comprehensive five-year plans adapting from the Soviet model: China and India were two new developing countries to do so. In this paper we examine the early efforts at national planning for science and technology as seen in the Chinese twelve-year science and technology plan (1956–1967) and the five-year (1974–1979) science and technology plan of India. These are two historically distinct moments globally and two separate attempts specifically. What tie them together are the goals both sought to accomplish: of science- and technology-led industrialization and development, many times in comparison and sometimes in competition with each other. We show that these two incomplete exercises show us the complex histories of institutions and processes that confirm state-led faith in and engagement with science and technology.</jats:p

Science of Giants:China and India in the Twentieth Century

AbstractHow might one tell the histories of China and India – two countries that have come to be seen as twenty-first-century giants? How might one tell of how they look to the world and to each other? In this issue we juxtapose, connect and compare the two. Ours is an attempt at a historiography of twentieth-century modernity in China and India beyond the encouragement of Euro-American historiography. We seize this opportunity provided by the contemporary engagement and concern with the two countries to reinterpret the narratives of their twentieth-century transformation, which are far from settled at the moment. We bring historical knowledge to speak usefully to the excitement, anxiety and aspiration around science and technology in China and India. We bring the same to speak meaningfully to the cynicism, admonition and expectations that the world has of them. We use China and India as a method of exploring new historiographical questions of science. We are invested in extending the relevance of studying China and India to the world at large through connections, references and juxtaposition, and by raising questions that, on the one hand, expose the limits of the Euro-American experience and, on the other, open up the intellectual and historiographical space for narratives and theoretical frameworks that are not tied to geopolitical significance. This paper sets out these issues and introduces the papers of the collection.</jats:p