Science, War and Imperialism: India in the Second World War (review)

Jagdish Sinha’s Science, War and Imperialism traces the vicissitudes of British imperial policies in the management and planning of scientific and industrial research in India leading up to, and through, World War II. While the sociopolitical dimensions of British rule in India and the Indian independence struggle have been thoroughly discussed for many years, there was comparatively little attention paid to the history of science and technology in India during the colonial period until the last couple of decades. Sinha’s multiple contributions to this field of research have undoubtedly provided the impetus for this book.

Having identified the pivotal role played by science and technology in the prosecution of World War II, Sinha questions the effect of the war on three related issues—the transition in science policy and planning prior to and during the war years, its relation to social and economic progress in India, and indigenous responses to colonial policies. He offers the broad thesis that “[b]efore the war, the colonial attitude towards science [in India] was one of ad hocism” geared toward meeting the short-term needs of the British Empire. However, the “Second World War brought about a significant change in this position as it catalysed a process of transition from colonialism to nationalism and freedom, inaugurating a period of national reconstruction on modern lines” (p. 190).

Sinha begins with a study of the interwar years. He correctly attributes the failure of numerous colonial policy initiatives to bolster and coordinate scientific research in India to the confluence of multiple factors. Chief among them is the Government of India Act of 1919, which, ostensibly aimed at pacifying nationalist demands for autonomy, created a dual form of government between the center and the provinces. Areas such as agriculture, industry, and health, but not revenue, were transferred to provincial control, resulting in fragmented, underfunded, and bureaucratically controlled scientific research. These measures coincided with Gandhi’s leadership of the Indian National Congress in the 1920s. Gandhi’s excoriating critique of Western science and modern industry resulted in the muting of nationalist demands for the proper application of science and technology to meet indigenous needs. Postwar economic crises and the Depression further weakened struggling scientific institutes, research organizations, and technical education in India. Although the late 1930s witnessed some significant gains, India entered World War II lacking coordinated science and industrial policies.

Concerns about meeting the military and strategic demands of the empire in the early years of World War II provided a boost to industrial production and scientific research in India. The author contrasts those areas that received significant colonial support—agriculture, medical science and public health, and transport, to name a few—with those, such as energy, natural resource management, and basic sciences, that received “cold, unsteady and ambivalent” attention (p. 113). Sinha argues that the “immediate concern of the government was to maintain and augment the supply” (pp. 167–68) of essential wartime commodities. However, he does not adequately explain why areas such as energy and electricity were neglected, or if their neglect was directly tied to the war.

These meticulously researched early chapters read, unfortunately, like a compendium of failed colonial commissions, missions, and committees. The narrative is loosely threaded together by broad, nonrevelatory claims that the failures could be attributed to a colonial emphasis on meeting “the economic and strategic requirements of the Empire” or the “immediate exigencies of the war” (p. 59). Sinha misses the opportunity to infuse the subject with the conflicts and controversies that illuminate the contradictions between colonial policies and indigenous responses. We get a tantalizing example in Sinha’s description of the controversy surrounding the removal of C. V. Raman as director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Science in 1938. The incident points to the influence of multiple social and political fractures, along racial, ethnic, caste, religious, and national lines, that clearly affected the nature and organization of scientific research in British India. More such examples would have...