Technology and Culture

This volume celebrates the immense intellectual contribution of Deepak Kumar to the development and growth of the history of science, technology, environment, and medicine (HISTEM) in India. The foreword by Prakash Kumar sets the tone of the volume by providing a succinct overview of Deepak Kumar's scholarship, especially the latter's influence in shaping the field over three decades. The volume brings together a cross section of research papers from established and emerging scholars. Edited by Suvobrata Sarkar—an excellent social historian of technology and a former of student of Deepak Kumar—these essays offer an illustration of the "variety of ways, sites, and confluences through which the concept of HISTEM has evolved" (p. 4). More relevantly perhaps, the volume demonstrates that the history of modern HISTEM is characterized by multiplicity—of actors, sites, and sources. Adding to our expanding understanding of the decentering of Western science and scientific knowledge production, this volume of essays underlines the diverse ways in which colonized Indians participated in and shaped a primarily colonial enterprise.

There are fifteen essays (excluding the introduction) in the volume, divided into four sections. The introduction offers a handy outline of the essays, while also setting out the historiographical landscape. The first section focuses on the expansion of scientific knowledge and knowledge production by examining biographies of Indians who participated in the processes. Analyzing the lives of individuals such as Soorjoo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty and Balaji Prabhakar Modak, the essays in this section highlight the layered and complex involvement of Indians in colonial scientific institutions and endeavors.

The second section moves beyond institutions and examines technology's social usages through the illustrative examples of a range of themes, from the expansion of electricity in colonial Madras to the history of oil (petroleum) production in colonial and postcolonial India. The essays in the third section address environmental issues. Here too, the themes covered are varied—from the evolution of scientific mining and grazing and cultivation of fodder to the relationship between deforestation, ecological deterioration, and scientific forestry in eastern India. The concluding section has four chapters on the history of medicine—a rather well-traversed field in HISTEM. However, the papers in this volume throw revealing light on not-so-discussed themes, such as homeopathy hospitals, the entanglements of Indian indigenous medicinal traditions and Western practices in the context of tuberculosis in the Madras presidency, and the role of female medical missionaries in late colonial India. [End Page 409]

Coloniality is an important caveat in this volume that runs as an analytical undercurrent through all the essays. This is perhaps not surprising. As befitting a volume in honor of Deepak Kumar, these essays touch upon two distinct and recurring themes of his research career: vernacularizing and decentering HISTEM in India, though without abjuring the rigors of archival research. As such, the essays of this volume demonstrate that this interaction between "colonial science" and the colonized had multiple layers or registers of interactions—ranging from adaptation or contestation to uneasy cohabitation.

Overall, this volume is an important and timely contribution to the wider field of the social history of technology. It is as much a testimony to the intellectual guidance provided by Deepak Kumar as it is a showcase of recent scholarship on HISTEM and its dynamism as an expanding field of historical inquiry. Though focused on colonial South Asia, the volume will be a significant source of analysis for a global audience interested in the history of the transmission of science and technology and scientific knowledge in colonial contexts.