Astronomy in India, 1784–1876 by Joydeep Sen (review)

In Astronomy in India, 1784–1876, Joydeep Sen analyzes the shifting modes of engagement between Europeans and Indians in the era of modern astronomy in colonial India. He extends a number of studies in the history and sociology of science, but intervenes primarily in two bodies of scholarship. First, he considers the work that followed George Basalla’s introduction of the diffusion model in 1967, which posited that Western science was exported by the metropole to be absorbed by the colony. In this, Sen adds to the efforts of Lewis Pysenson, Roy MacLeod, Paolo Palladino and Michael Worboys, and Kapil Raj, among others, in reexamining the trajectory of so-called colonial sciences. Second, Sen writes against the literature of orientalist studies, an expansive yet apparently uniform field focused on philosophy and science as practiced by scholars associated with the Asiatick Society in Calcutta (most famously William Jones, but also John Playfair, Samuel Davis, and Reuben Burrow, among others). Sen argues that our conception of the orientalist school, lumping together as it does the disparate work of several men, lacks nuance. To unearth the full workings of science in India— that is, to reveal the “cognitive interface” between Europeans and Indians in the colonial era—he focuses on moments of difference and change, both in the endeavor of modern (European) astronomy and in attitudes toward local (Indian) practices and traditions (11). Sen’s book is foremost about the European engagement with astronomy in India and the various ways that the practice and teaching of science in Indian urban centers reflected a shifting colonial agenda. But Sen is also careful to reveal those moments when a “collective construction of knowledge” was possible, when Indian agency—as much as European— shaped astronomy (111).

Sen’s demonstration of the changing attitudes toward astronomy unfolds over five chapters, arranged chronologically to emphasize the passage of time. Chapter 1, “Researching the Past, 1784-c. 1830,” takes as its starting point the founding date of the Asiatick Society, the first European institution in India for publishing scientific proceedings and papers. Initially, Society members explored the value of Indian astronomical traditions, asking “whether modern Europeans could still learn from Indian astronomers” (14). This should be a familiar story to historians of science: colonial interest in local traditions was tied to their perceived benefits for Europeans. Sen notes parallel attitudes in astronomy and medicine, but he could also have referenced botany, geology, and other sciences that relied on the accumulation of colonial knowledge for imperial success. Eventually orientalist enthusiasm for Indian astronomy waned, partly because of negative perceptions regarding the conjoined history of Indian astronomy and astrology. If Indian astronomy (the science) could not be separated from astrology (the superstition), how valuable could it be for modern Europeans? This rhetorical move—the emptying of Indian knowledge of value—is “part and parcel of the discursive strategies of colonialism,” argues Sen (22). Having vacated Indian astronomy of worth, Europeans were free to dismiss not just the science, but the people who practiced it as well.

In chapter 2, “Astronomy in the Observatories, c. 1800-c. 1860,” Sen argues that European disenchantment with Indian astronomy was nearly complete by the opening of the nineteenth century; it was replaced by “an increasing sense that modern astronomy belonged to Europeans, and thrived only in their social spaces” (37). Such a sense could and should have led to the success of astronomical observatories, but surprisingly, the European center appeared uninterested in astronomy. Europeans at Colaba Observatory in Bombay and the Chowringhee Observatory in Calcutta struggled with their work, finding it difficult “to develop scientific knowledge, with colonial officialdom unconvinced of the economic worth of astronomy and reluctant to confer patronage for it” (73). Astronomy, when it succeeded in India, did so because of connections to local institutions like the Bombay Literary Society and Elphinstone College, rather than the Royal Society in London.

In chapter 3, “Constructing Knowledge, c. 1830–c. 1860,” Sen completely rejects...