Needham's Indian Network: The Search for a Home for the History of Science in India (1950–1970) by Dhruv Raina (review)

In Needham's Indian Network: The Search for a Home for the History of Science in India (1950–1970), Dhruv Raina traces the long-range networks that institutionalized the disciplinary history of science in India soon after its independence in 1947. Using primarily archival materials deposited at the Needham Research Institute, Raina shows that Joseph Needham (1900–95)—the famous Cambridge biochemist, Sinologist, and inaugurator of the ongoing Science and Civilisation in China series—was a constant source of inspiration and a frequent interlocutor for a generation of Indian historians and philosophers. These included Damodar Dharmanada (D. D.) Kosambi (1907–66), Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918–93), Abdur Rahman (1923–2009), and Irfan Habib (1931–), among others. They sought Needham's advice on building academic communities and infrastructure for the history of science in India, conversed at length with Needham in person or through decades-long correspondence on comparative issues, and produced voluminous scholarship that critically engaged with Needham's methodologies. This slim and elegant volume is essential reading for researchers interested in cross-cultural histories of science and historiography of South Asia.

According to Raina, this group of Indian historians had three concerns in mind: "(1) understanding the place of science in society in India; (2) reflecting upon how this understanding informed the current crisis in Indian society; and (3) challenging the Eurocentric conception of history" (75). On the one hand, doing the history of science in India was about the anti-Eurocentric "struggle for cognitive justice" (120). Ancient India had an immense scientific heritage to be discovered, and Greek civilization was shown not to be the sole cradle of science. This narrative served to "legitimat[e] the state's investment in science … in the programme of nation-building" (120) by casting science not as a foreign threat, but something that had always already existed in India. On the other hand, these historians were also looking for "explanations for the non-emergence of modern science or the non-occurrence of the industrial revolution" (75). They did this to promote values of modernity, democracy, and egalitarianism through science, and to criticize the weaknesses and failures of Indian society past and present. At the same time, this project was also animated by a vision to internationalism that came from both Nehruvian politics—"Science is something that is bigger than countries. There ought to be no such thing as Indian science" (Nehru, quoted on p. 7)—and from Needham's historiographical outlook—"Needham did not see his history of science in China in nationalist terms, just as he envisioned a history of science for the Indian culture area and not just the nation" (45). In other words, history of science was a means of "breaking down the barriers of narrow nationalism and cultural bias" and "enhancing international cooperation and understanding" (10). Ultimately, however, a kind of nationalist, triumphant scientism would prevail within the Indian scientific community (110).

In chapter 1, Raina introduces the intersections between the politics of decolonization in India and the network of Western intellectuals and scientists who were closely involved with institution building in the country, such as J. D. Bernal (1901–71) and of course Joseph Needham. Needham served as the head of the Natural Sciences Section of UNESCO from 1946 to 1948; during that time Needham, Julian Huxley, and the Annales historian Lucien Febvre conceived the Scientific and Cultural History of Mankind project. The project was based on the ethos that "all cultures had participated in the creation of modern civilization, thereby rejecting any kind of Euro-exceptionalism" (12). This prefigured both Needham's Science and Civilisation in China and post-1950s attempts toward "'salvaging' the antiquity of India's scientific tradition" (14). Chapter 2 expands on the role of UNESCO and transnational networks in the formation of the history of science in India as an academic discipline. For Indian...