Negotiating Secular School Textbooks in Colonial Madras Presidency

The common sense assumption would inform that the textbooks produced and distributed during the colonial period ‘ought to be’, if not directly, at the least alluding to the religion of the masters. Further, post colonial studies of education often focus on the colonial purpose of the spread of education and bring to light the ideology ingrained in the content, pedagogy and structure of the school education. While it would be naïve to think of the spread of education during the British Raj as a benevolent act, albeit unintended, it would also be wrong to assume that the natives who were being governed had no say or hand in shaping it. The modern education was the contour by which social mobility was attained and it was an important instrument that engendered the nationalist movement. In recent times, Nehruvian vision is often derided in particular for its economic ideology — ‘licence-quota raj’1 — along with it even concerns such as liberalism, secularism and scientific temper are questioned. Secularism is chided as ‘gift of Christianity’ having no roots or applicability in the Indian cultural milieu. This paper looks at the emergence of ‘secular’ textbooks during the turn of the nineteenth century in colonial Madras, and shows the active agency of the ‘natives’ in shaping the same

Star Wars in colonial Tamil region: contours of a discourse between European missionary and a ‘native’ pañcāngkam computer on ‘modern’ astronomy

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

Negotiating Secular School Textbooks in Colonial Madras Presidency

143-197The common sense assumption would inform that the textbooks produced and distributed during the colonial period ‘ought to be’, if not directly, at the least alluding to the religion of the masters. Further, post colonial studies of education often focus on the colonial purpose of the spread of education and bring to light the ideology ingrained in the content, pedagogy and structure of the school education. While it would be naïve to think of the spread of education during the British Raj as a benevolent act, albeit unintended, it would also be wrong to assume that the natives who were being governed had no say or hand in shaping it. The modern education was the contour by which social mobility was attained and it was an important instrument that engendered the nationalist movement. In recent times, Nehruvian vision is often derided in particular for its economic ideology — ‘licence-quota raj’1 — along with it even concerns such as liberalism, secularism and scientific temper are questioned. Secularism is chided as ‘gift of Christianity’ having no roots or applicability in the Indian cultural milieu. This paper looks at the emergence of ‘secular’ textbooks during the turn of the nineteenth century in colonial Madras, and shows the active agency of the ‘natives’ in shaping the same

PMA-Linked Fluorescence for Rapid Detection of Viable Bacterial Endospores

The most common approach for assessing the abundance of viable bacterial endospores is the culture-based plating method. However, culture-based approaches are heavily biased and oftentimes incompatible with upstream sample processing strategies, which make viable cells/spores uncultivable. This shortcoming highlights the need for rapid molecular diagnostic tools to assess more accurately the abundance of viable spacecraft-associated microbiota, perhaps most importantly bacterial endospores. Propidium monoazide (PMA) has received a great deal of attention due to its ability to differentiate live, viable bacterial cells from dead ones. PMA gains access to the DNA of dead cells through compromised membranes. Once inside the cell, it intercalates and eventually covalently bonds with the double-helix structures upon photoactivation with visible light. The covalently bound DNA is significantly altered, and unavailable to downstream molecular-based manipulations and analyses. Microbiological samples can be treated with appropriate concentrations of PMA and exposed to visible light prior to undergoing total genomic DNA extraction, resulting in an extract comprised solely of DNA arising from viable cells. This ability to extract DNA selectively from living cells is extremely powerful, and bears great relevance to many microbiological arenas

Scramjet: ISRO's futuristic technology to reduce costs of space travel

What are Scramjet engines? How are they different from conventional one time use-and-throw rocket launch vehicles? This article introduces readers to this new technology, exploring its use in providing low cost space launch in low earth orbits

J. B. S. Haldane: a "great rascal of science"

What made J.B.S. Haldane one of the most respected scientists of the 20th century? At the same time, why was he called a ‘great rascal of science’? What are his contributions to science and what kind of a person was he? This article takes us through the remarkable life of one of the most interesting and accomplished scientists of the 20th century

Transforming resilience-building today for sustainable futures tomorrow

Addressing increasingly profound vulnerabilities and risks requires a step change away from piecemeal fixes often focused around preparedness and post-disaster recovery towards transformational interventions and measures that focus on creating systemic shifts that challenge underlying vulnerabilities and governance gaps from the design phase itself. IIASA and ISET in the project “Transformation and Resilience” conducted with the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance and other initiatives respond to the evident need to reform climate and disaster risk management towards transformational approaches. In this working paper, we reviewed efforts to respond to this evident need, drawing on key findings from the forthcoming book “Transformation and Disaster Resilience” (Springer, forthcoming) to provide a practical stock-take of what transformational risk management (adaptation) is, deep dive into examples of transformational interventions and uncover barriers and enablers for getting transformational resilience-building underway in diverse contexts. We found that while there are diverse entry points for transformational resilience-building, they share a combination of (some of) the following interlinked pathways: i) Operationalizing innovative approaches and solutions; ii) Delivering integrated intervention packages; iii) Establishing participatory governance models; and iv) Scaling successful pilots, along with a strong commitment to delivering on achieving transformation by setting it as their goal from the start, consequently designing their resilience-building measures and interventions with transformation as their guiding star. We also found that whether interventions and measures designed for transformational change will deliver on their objective strongly hinges on creating appropriate enabling environments, which include i) learning and knowledge platforms and experiential niche learning and continuous feedback loops; ii) aligning transformational change objectives with strategic government priorities to harness and foster political will and moment; as well as iii) unlocking the transformational potential of bottom-up governance grounded in local contexts; together with iv) establishing the necessary framework conditions for phased, long-term programs; and v) committing sufficient financial outlays to initiatives designed with transformational change in mind

Identification of Bacteria and Determination of Biological Indicators

The ultimate goal of planetary protection research is to develop superior strategies for inactivating resistance bearing micro-organisms like Rummeli - bacillus stabekisii. By first identifying the particular physiologic pathway and/or structural component of the cell/spore that affords it such elevated tolerance, eradication regimes can then be designed to target these resistance-conferring moieties without jeopardizing the structural integrity of spacecraft hardware. Furthermore, hospitals and government agencies frequently use biological indicators to ensure the efficacy of a wide range of sterilization processes. The spores of Rummelibacillus stabekisii, which are far more resistant to many of such perturbations, could likely serve as a more significant biological indicator for potential survival than those being used currently

Ultraviolet-Resistant Bacterial Spores

A document summarizes a study in which it was found that spores of the SAFR-032 strain of Bacillus pumilus can survive doses of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, radiation, and hydrogen peroxide in proportions much greater than those of other bacteria. The study was part of a continuing effort to understand the survivability of bacteria under harsh conditions and develop means of sterilizing spacecraft to prevent biocontamination of Mars that could interfere with the search for life there