The Contradictory Spaces of Postcolonial Techno-Science

Author(s): Itty Abraham

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Jan. 21-27, 2006), pp. 210-217
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4417699
Accessed: 28-08-2017 11:55 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Economic and Political Weekly

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 The Contradictory Spaces
of Postcolonial Techno-Science
Postcolonial techno-science as a field of enquiry that crosses geopolitical boundaries as it
tracks flows, circuits of scientists, knowledges, machines, and techniques is a critical way of
thinking about science and technology and their study that we can endorse with much
enthusiasm. But when the postcolonial as a mode of analysis is linked to a fixed site of
irreducible knowledge claims, it articulates an ontology that ties knowledge to location as a
singular and essential quality of place. Location matters: by refusing to isolate the South from
the West in the study of science, one leaves open the possibility of seeing multi-directional
influences and channels simultaneously. Postcolonial science studies need a proliferation of
historical and sociological accounts of science as practice in order to set a standard against
which we can more easily identify "Indian Science" as a discourse that shapes a political
struggle that has little to do with science studies, even if it has much to do with India.

ITTY ABRAHAM

techno-science approach may also offer, he notes, policy

insights into the relationship of contemporary technology and
n the special issue of Social Studies of Science on "postcolonial
processes of capitalist globalisation, not to mention the possible
techno-science", Warwick Anderson argues that a postcolonial "disfigurement" of science studies itself.
approach "offers us a chance of disconcerting conventional Is it possible that postcolonial techno-science can be an alter-
accounts of so-called 'global' techno-science, revealing and
native mode of analysis at the same time as the postcolonial
complicating the durable dichotomies, produced under colonial
indexes a locational site for alternative, i e, non-western,
regimes, which underpin many of its practices and hegemonicknowledges? One line of thinking appears to do away with the
claims" (2002: 644). Anderson's appeal is embedded in nation-scale,an while the other seeks to reinforce it. Postcolonial
understanding of globalisation that seeks to understand both techno-science
the as a field of enquiry that crosses geopolitical
situatedness of local knowledge practices, and, their movement boundaries as it tracks flows, transmissions, travels and circuits
through space, allowing us to see "local cultures and emergent of scientists, knowledges, machines, and techniques (see Prasad's
political economies on the same scale" (645). Particularly valu- article in this review for an example) is a critical way of thinking
able (and familiar) for those working in the field of science studies
about science and technology and their study that we can endorse
and the developing world is this appreciation that the hermetic with much enthusiasm. But when the postcolonial as a mode of
separation of science studies in the developing and developed analysis is linked to a fixed site of irreducible knowledge claims,
world, a separation that easily maps onto "less developed" andit articulates an ontology that ties knowledge to location as a
"more developed" science respectively, is not just empiricallysingular and essential quality of place. Suturing together these
ill-informed, it is analytically misleading. quite different thematics is only possible when postcolonial
However, Anderson also sees in postcolonial analysis the becomes an index of and reference to the third world - both third
possibility of coming to grips with the alleged universalityworld
of as the prime site of weakness and underdevelopment, but
Reason. In other words, he identifies the postcolonial as alsoalsoa third world as a place filled with cultural histories of
site for understanding the clash of knowledges and the formation
alternative knowledge organised on a national scale. India be-
of alternative modernities. Reason is the gloss for knowledge comes the home of Indian 'gyan'/'vigyan', or, place becomes
that is western, a fixed knowable and dominant entity that is
a metonym for a unique way of thinking tied to geo-cultural
counterposed to other, possibly alternative and un-moder know-assumptions that can have little - other than ideological - meaning
ledge formations characteristic of subaltern or marginal sitesinina hybrid, reflexive and historical social universe.
a global political economy. The need for this analytic turn, While I agree that Anderson's re-scaling of the field of science
Anderson muses, is related to "rising concern about corporate studies resonates well with scholars working on science studies
globalisation, increased commodification of science, and further
which take the non-west as their starting point, I also want to
alienation and circulation of intellectual property" (644): in other
propose that his other proposal raises serious analytic concerns
words, the international political economy of unequal exchange. which have bedevilled the study of science in the third world
To the extent that postcolonial techno-science may identify for and some time. By treating local knowledge primarily in terms
address "local" and incommensurable knowledges built around of political economy, and to a lesser extent in terms of ethics,
non-western ontologies, this formulation evokes the invisible Anderson fails to see the power of modem science in political
knowledge work of subalterns being subsumed into capitalist terms, as ideology, particularly as a form of social legitimacy
property relations that will eventually lead to exploitation, ex-
and political support for the modern nation state. The proximity
propriation and even extermination. Hence, a postcolonial of modem nationalism and its ideological reliance on "local

210 Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
knowledge" is too direct to ignore. But exploration of this scientists) came back to the metropole, when science would get
possibility is crucial for his initial claim (of a critical transnational over-written in a nationalist idiom, and also for science in the
science studies) to be viable, for in the current conjuncture, the postcolony, where science was harnessed by the state and would
ideological work of alternative knowledge ends up reproducing fluctuate between a developmentalist form and a strategic mode,
and reinforcing the national scale over all others, since these are while never fully losing its authoritarian-colonial address. The
not debates over science, but always about something else. ambivalence of "postcolonial" science comes from the condition
In other words, "postcolonial techno-science" as a way of doing that while science was to be a prime mode of state legitimation,
science studies may not be commensurable with "postcolonial it would simultaneously also always need to legitimate itself, as
techno-science" as a way of thinking about alternative and local it was being deployed in a setting where its authority and claims
knowledges. One way of seeing this clearly is to focus on the to knowledge were not without contest. This ambivalence is
spaces within which "science" is represented and acts. In what produced from but exceeds what we might call, following Connolly,
follows, I juxtapose contests over western scientific knowledge the identity/difference problem - the gap between the geo-
within contexts of colonial and postcolonial nationalism against political origins of science and the need to interalise and
accounts of postcolonial scientists "doing" science in relation institutionalise postcolonial science as an indigenous object
to their geophysical location, in order to demonstrate that they [Abraham 2000; Connolly 1994].
operate on entirely different spatial scales. Studying the practice The starting point for these complex intersections is the colonial
of science is a far more productive approach to take if we are project and its counter-reactions, efforts that seek as a starting
to come to grips with modern science in the developing world: point to produce the nation as a sovereign and authentic zone
to open this nascent field up to questions of ontology is to engage [Chatterjee 1995]. In this frame, science as an intellectual practice
in a completely different, and manifestly political, project, which, was aligned within a political environment seeking to recuperate
by definition, can have only a political resolution. the epistemologies, artifacts, and biographies of a bygone time
that could be coded or represented as scientific. Recuperation
Science and Nation was a priority especially under colonialism, where the apparatus
of rule combined physical coercion with an authoritative discourse
Science and technology is, in a material and cultural
that sense,
justified this rule in terms of an essential lack. The lack was
central to postcolonial visions of third world statescivilisation
and anti-itself, or, more exactly, civilisational knowledge, of
colonial movements because of its role in reinforcing colonial
which science represented the European mastery of nature.
and neo-colonial dominance, because the practical realisation of nationalist reaction could be expressed in a variety
Anti-colonial
modernity came about foremost through technological oftransfor-
modes, including the performative, and, more importantly,
mation, and because it appears unambiguously to ontological
mark thecritique. The link between the process of recuperation
(missing) modern, an assumed absence that was at the andheart of
the making of nation - and in the process. the transformation
the colonial project [Adas 1989; Prakash 1999]. Hence,
of what theis called science - is exemplified in the life and work
struggle for political independence was always closely tied to and biologist Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858-1937).
of physicist
the recognition that the contemporary present marked As
a form of documented in numerous studies and essays [Nandy
has been
modernity, even if not always articulated as such. As1980; Dasgupta 1999; Chakrabarti 2004], J C Bose did remark-
Meghnad
Saha wrote in the opening editorial of the first issue of the
able Calcutta
work on short wave radio transmissions and, especially, their
magazine Science and Culture in 1935: "The call that bringsbefore pioneering the study of what would come to
detectors,
'Science and Culture' into existence is truly the call ofbe
the times.
called bio-physics through his studies of plant physiology.
For it is obvious to every thinking man that India is now passing
The performance of nationalism is clearly on display in his well-
through a critical stage in her history, when over the cultural
attended lecture to the prestigious Royal Institution in May 1901.
foundations of her ancient and variegated civilisation. Bose
structures
saw this encounter with a western distinguished audience,
of a modern design are being built. It is necessary that at such
including Prince Kropotkin and Lord Rayleigh, in terms that far
exceeded the
a juncture the possible effects of the increasing application of content of his lecture. As he wrote to his friend,
discoveries in science to our national and social life should Rabindranath Tagore, before the lecture: "Only a week is left
receive very careful attention; for if the present is the before
child ofmy.ordeal; on that occasion I will face the test of whether
the past, it may with equal emphasis be said that the future
I can will
raise your banner in the western world" [Mukerji 1983:36].
be the child of the present." (1) Science thus became a key site
Bose's anxiety over his forthcoming "ordeal" explicitly recognised
his politically representative character in this context, as an out-
for the articulation of colonial modernity, ranging from mediating
religious discourse, engaging with dominant knowledge of-place
forma- scientist in the western world, and had little doubt that
tions. or in endorsing claims of the antiquity and validity of
hisIndian
performance would reflect directly on the legitimacy of the
knowledge systems [Prakash 1999; Raina 2003]. Modernity, nationalist call for freedom. Bose would stand in for India: in
nation, and later, state all pass through and are interpellated in
other words, India was on display and up for measure before
the institutions and cultures of moder western science. this distinguished audience.
However, colonial and later postcolonial science was always
But the controversial content of his lecture took the significance
a contradictory formation. Though science presents itself as "banner" much further. Bose would question the obvious
of the
universal knowledge. it is never able to do so unambiguously
in a location distant from its putative origins in western Europe.
Science's conjoint history with colonial and imperial power
We are grateful to Itty Abraham and Paula Chakravartty
for putting together this edition of the Review of
implies a constant representation of its condition in order to pass
as universal knowledge in the colony. These representations Science Studies. -Ed
would have important implications when colonial science (and

Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006 211

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
boundaries of natural science, calling on a cultural understanding apparent incongruity of physics and psychical research juxta-
of knowledge that saw no obvious distinctions between seem- posed is a good illustration of what Lawrence Cohen has called
ingly distinct entities. Margaret Noble also wrote to Tagore the "archaeology of subjugated knowledges within European
following the meeting: "He demolished easily, so to say, the science" [quoted in Subramaniam 2000].
walls that divided chemistry, physics, and other disciplines from At least J C Bose can be made sense of within a colonial setting
one another. Then the scientific distinctions that characterised where science's authority was both fragile and powerful and
the distinctions between the living and the non-living were where the struggle to establish the nation on its own ground was
brushed aside by him, as though these were cobweb (sic)... I fail the overriding concern for all colonial intellectuals. What is far
to express what a thrill I felt, when the traditional Indian message more puzzling is to see the intellectual archaeology outlined by
of a grand cosmic unity was restated today in the language ofhim reproduced nearly a century later, 50 years after political
moder times...His individual self seemed to disappear and hisindependence. The highlights of his London speech are captured
nation emerged before our eyes... .We realised that at long last in the following quotation, delivered in 2000, by Murali Manohar
India established the excellence of her wisdom before an assem- Joshi, a former physics professor, and former cabinet minister
bly of western scientists and emerged as the preceptor and not for human resources development, a leading ideologue of Hindutva.
as a disciple, not even as an equal" [Mukherji 1983:38-39]. "A significant aspect of Indian epistemology which distin-
Among the greatest puzzles for Bose's biographers are guishes
to it from the dominant western discourse is the inseparable
link between epistemology and ontology and of both with
understand his scientific development, which began brilliantly
on terms that were universally accepted, to eventually seekethics.
to [...] The second distinguishing characteristic is the
absence of binary approaches to the attainment of knowledge,
break down the distinction between organic/living and inorganic/
whereby no dichotomy is seen between the empirical, rational,
non-living matter, a concern that is only sensible in national-
cultural terms. For Bose, the intent of these experiments wasand
to analytical modes of knowing and the mystical and intuitive
show nothing less that "All is One!" or, less obliquely, "it modes"
is [Joshi 2000].
difficult to draw a line and say 'here the physical phenomenon"[Western] Science has proceeded on the assumption that
ends and physiological begins' or 'that is a phenomenon of dead
pursuit of science and of technology is a value in itself and cannot
be subjected to the social and ethical codes applicable to the rest
matter and this a vital phenomenon peculiar to the living'; such
lines of demarcation do not exist" [Dasgupta 1999:165]. Explain-
of humankind. Thus in the name of scientific progress, it justifies
development of weapons of mass destruction, rapacious con-
ing the genealogy of his thought, Bose would write, "it was when
I came upon the mute witness of these self made records [in- sumption of energy and materials oblivious to the consequential
organic matter] and perceived in them one phase of a pervading devastation of the environment, appropriation of traditional
unity that bears within it all things - it was then I understood community owned knowledge to achieve intellectual property
rights by individuals and firms [Joshi 2000].
for the first time a little of the message proclaimed by my ancestors
on the banks of the Ganges thirty centuries ago. 'They who seeThe colonial voice of J C Bose, joined by postcolonial coun-
but one in all the changing manifoldness of this universe, unto terparts, including Nandy, Goonatilleke, Sardar and others are
them belongs Eternal Truth - unto no one else, unto no one else"' directly echoed in this speech by Murali Manohar Joshi. Like
[cited in Mukherji 1983:32, 41]. There is little question that nationalist intellectuals during the colonial period, the Hindutva
Bose understood and explained his assault on accepted bound-
political project seeks legitimacy by calling on "local knowl-
aries-between disciplines, between living and non-living, between edge", the geo-appropriate, universally ethically situated knowl-
physics and metaphysics, (and for Noble) between self and nation edge held by its putative ancestors. Like J C Bose and some of
- as an index of the uniqueness, and hence, legitimate standing, his colonial contemporaries, the votaries of Hindutva evoke a
of Indian scientific thinking. Drawing a direct line of descent stylised, Great-Tradition Hindu past to meet the political demands
between the Upanishads and modem science was for Bose a way of the present. Hindutva's project parallels the anti-colonial
movement in that at stake in both is/was a bitter struggle over
of legitimising his cultural and intellectual roots, offering counter-
evidence to the alleged civilisational "lack" proposed by the
the right to define the Indian nation, but the similarities end there.
colonial regime, and offering an eastern parallel to accounts of True independence, for Joshi as much as for the postcolonial
science critics, requires (unlike Bose and the colonial scientists),
western science that claimed their origins in ancient Greek science.
At the same time, such work also offered a substantial critique a rejection of western methods and epistemologies. Such thinking
of the limits of moder western science. A metaphysical principle was the hallmark of the early postcolonial Indian state, the secular
was being inscribed as the hallmark of an authentic Indian way "Nehruvian" state, against whom this struggle is being waged
of thinking, in sharp contrast to a western ontology that divided
in the first instance. It is striking to note that it is around questions
the world into bounded spheres leading to the independent study of science - in this case, making claims to scientifically validated
of the living and non-living, indeed, of physics and metaphysics.
indigenous knowledge - is the site on which to establish the bona
However, it should be noted that such a position would not have fides of a more authentic Indian nation. Through Hindu science
been considered as far-fetched in western scientific circles as
and knowledge, long suppressed, the Indian nation will finally
it might appear today. Dasgputa reminds us that Rayleigh, be allowed to come into its own, replacing the false gods and
then
Cavendish Professor at Cambridge, Oliver Lodge, William Crookes
cultural betrayals of the Nehruvian interregnum.
and William Barnett, all distinguished scientists of the day, were
Notwithstanding claims to a higher ethical and epistemological
also active members of the Society of Psychical Research mission, the political forces of Hindutva that Joshi represents
(1999:115). Bose was also speaking to an audience where these and leads have alienated religious minorities to a greater extent
thap at any time in India's history. The pogrom in Gujarat in
"obvious" distinctions were far less settled than they might appear
today, making it possible for them to hear him out without 2002 where at least 2,000 Muslims were slaughtered is only the
dismissing him out of hand. In passing, we may note that the recent example of the effects of officially sanctioned hate
most

212 Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
combined with the power to hurt, maim and kill those who fall of the universe." Falun Gong appears to appeal most to the young
outside the nation's new boundaries. The Hindutva effort to and highly educated Chinese living in the US and Canadian
reclaim "Vedic" knowledge traditions for current politics, includ-diaspora because it offers a contemporary means to return to "age
old values". The threat posed by Falun Gong, in other words,
ing major revisions of university and school curricula, and their
related rejection of modem western science as inappropriate tois the assault on the state's alliance of modernity and science
Indian mores and conditions has come under strong attack from casting into doubt a central tenet of the legitimacy of the Chinese
a variety of political and intellectual sources. state. For the state, this movement is particularly dangerous,
One particular strand of criticism comes from pro-modern beyond the hundreds of thousands who seem to be members of
science critics of patriarchy and customary social practices.one or the other qigong sect, because it appears to take away the
Following a once-dominant strand of postcolonial thinking about state's ability to define, unambiguously, what it means to be
scientific and, even more dangerous, what it means to be Chinese.
science, avidly promoted by India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, these critics see in modem science and technology a Again we see the relationship of science and nation expressed
primary means and instrument of positive change in the contem-in stark terms, although all the terms have their valences reversed.
porary third world, via its ability to question and supercede taken-Although Nanda would presumably be on the side of the Chinese
for-granted forms of illegitimate authority. Particularly objection-state in this struggle given her views of relativist and anti-realist
able to feminist critic Meera Nanda is the tacit alliance between
social movements in science, would she also justify their crack-
Hindutva and the "anti-realist" and "relativist" epistemologies
down on its proponents? Falun Gong practitioners have repeat-
edly faced force, coercion and torture in China for their mix of
of the "postmodern/postcolonial" turn; the latter in her telling
includes everyone from postcolonial science scholars mentionedideological elements drawn from science as well as spirituality,
a dangerous cocktail that argues for other ways of being Chinese
above to such respected figures in science studies as Bruno Latour
and Donna Haraway [Nanda 2004]. Her defence of science takes than that allowed by the state. The state has little choice, as it
on all the votaries of "a world without ontological fences", sees it, but to seek to eliminate this movement by force for there
is no rational ground on which to argue for the superiority of
(2004:142) arguing that what is at stake here is not only the nature
one or the other position. Indeed, to engage in a debate at all
of knowledge claims, but the political consequences of that stance
- according to her, the decline of secular forms of political would be, for the Chinese state, to lose the battle.
authority in countries like India can be linked, among other causes,For postcolonial science studies, China and India are important
to the cumulative effect of postmoder and postcolonial criticism.cases, first to set a sharply defined racial contrast to the west,
Apart from Nanda's archaic defence of the "facticity of facts" and also because they are old enough and "civilisational" enough
[Fleck 1935, 1979] and other positivist foundations, her faith to claim to offer alternative ways of being and knowing. Yet,
in the progressive equation of science-secular-modem leads look to at these differences. In the case of China, we have a state
an uncritical representation of the European Enlightenment, that an claims to be scientific, undermined by the growing attraction
ahistoric and narrow understanding of secularism. [Bhargava of a cult that claims scienticity for itself, resorting to violence
1998], and implicitly to the conclusion that the modem state in the effort to eradicate this threat. In the case of India we have
represents the pinnacle of modernity and rationality. If not for a political party that seeks to reclaim what it considers its lost
heritage swallowed under the power of modem western science.
these anti-realists and relativists, she seems to suggest, a modem
state ordered on scientific principles would be able to develop Their main ideologue offers a critique of that object - science
unhindered and a secular, modern society would come in to being. - closely aligned to the visions of "postcolonial critics" of
science, and colonial nationalists of a century before. This
But her lack of acknowledgement of either the inter-twined histories
of the Enlightenment and colonial societies and the unstable domestication of science is a necessary step in the remaking of
relationship between forms of political authority and science the Indian nation as an exclusionary political project, a project
embedded in that relation renders this hope merely wishful. There which in turn leads to a new scale of violence against in the
is no singular relationship between the modem state, science and nation's "others". In the uncritical labelling of China and India,
social liberation as the following example suggests. they are both "postcolonial", though as we have seen, neither
David Ownby (2001), a historian of China, tries to explain why
could be accused of manifesting a politics of emancipation. These
the Chinese state finds the Falun Gong movement so dangerous. inherent contradictions cast grave doubt on the possibility of
imagining another Enlightenment through faith in the
He notes that in China (as in India), since the 19th century, the
central - modernist - dilemma has been how to "remain Chinese
"postcolonial" intersection of place, history, and knowledge.
while becoming moder". In both cases, India and China, science Returning to Anderson's original formulation, it becomes clear
was seen as the answer to national weakness and underdeve- that a postcolonial techno-science that focuses on the "contact
lopment. What was really meant by science was technology, andof clashing knowledges is dangerously incomplete unless
zones"
the common idea was that modern technology would provide firmly situated in political and institutional context. Due to the
the means to modernity - or better, moderisation, which incomplex
turn intersection of science, colonialism, and modernity,
postcolonial
boiled down to military strength and industrial power. In the case techno-science can never be only about science.
of China (unlike India), the state was by definition wedded to helped bring the nation under colonialism into being;
Science
and monopolised the meaning of moder western science through
,now, it is central to the forging of the postcolonial state. As a
its official Marxist-Leninist ideology. result, science exists simultaneously as history, as myth, as
Ownby explains that Falun Gong, unlike some of the politicalother slogan, as social category, as technology, as military
'qigong' movements, has identified itself as a scientific institution,
move- as moder western knowledge, and, as instrument of
ment as much as a spiritual one. To quote him, "quarks and This excess of postcolonial science stands as a constant
change.
neutrinos figure...as frequently as Buddhas and bodhisattvas...
reminder that this process is still underway and incomplete. This
truth, benevolence and.tolerance are [seen as] the physical qualities
excess defines postcolonial techno-science and refuses to let it

Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006 213

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
settle into a stable ideological position, making it eminently
available, but never complete, as a political instrument. By
extension, the manner in which this science is represented and
contested is always subordinate to the field on which those
political battles are fought - the national scale. The surplus of
meaning entailed by science is the source of the continuing
political effort by scholars and political figures alike to contain
it, to employ science as a source of geo-cultural certainty and
stability. This spatial politics of desire is in sharp contrast to the
representations of nation that emerge from studies of the actual
practice of science, to which I now turn.
II
Doing Third World Science: Inequality
I want to begin by offering an account of a familiar kind of
narrative presented to researchers of the practice of science in
India. The scientist I spoke to is male, mid-career and successful by
local standards. Let's call him Roy.2 He had received his scientific
training completely within India, though he was quite familiar
with science being done in the west through not infrequent visits,
once or twice for extended periods of time. He liked his present
institution a lot because of its physical beauty, and often found
himself wandering in the surrounding woodlands as he tried to
work out knotty problems. Our discussion ranged over a number
of themes, but became particularly vibrant when we talked about
the problems of publishing papers in western journals and about
third world scientists getting credit for pioneering work that they
had published in "obscure" journals in their own countries. He
described one of his own experiences in this regard.
Roy began by saying that, some years ago, he had had con-
siderable difficulty in getting a paper published in one of the
journals of the American Physical Society because he was drawing
on the results of an Indian scientist whose work was quite obscure.
The background is as follows. In 1984 a Jones published a paper
which developed a common mathematical theme to describe a
complex of physical ideas as different as nuclear magnetic
resonance to quantum field theory. These "holonomic" theorems
came as a surprise to the physics community because of their
elegance and because "such a simple and fundamental aspect"
had been overlooked for so long. Two Indian scientists noticed
this paper and realised that their former colleague, L M Singh,
had noticed the problem and developed an answer to it three
decades before. They got in touch with Jones and told him about
Singh's work. Jones then published another piece acknowledging
Singh's precedence and translating his earlier insights into "more
readable" quantum mechanical language.
Roy, along with a colleague, sought to extend Jones's work
to an even more general level by going back to Singh's work.
They sent their paper to an American journal and were told,
following a referee's report, that the paper was rejected because
it "contains nothing which is essentially new". Roy and his
colleague wrote a response to the first referee rebutting his
comments. In the meantime, they received the second referee's
report which found the work exciting and recommended it be
published at once following minor changes. The editors however
decided to go with the first referee's report and repeated their
decision not to publish. The first referee then wrote a long
response to their rebuttal. Roy found that the referee had changed
his position considerably, going from describing Singh's work
214 Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006
This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
as "lacking physical significance" to a "canonical way of com-
paring spaces". They wrote back again defending their paper and
finally the editors agreed to publish their paper. Along the way,
my discussion with Roy shifted from the difficulties of getting
the paper published and the shifting standards that were being
applied to this work to two other issues. The first was the problem
of publishing in this journal and other venues like it because
of the financial burden it imposed on them. The moment the paper
was published, for example, the journal asked them for $300
"toward the cost of disseminating the paper" - an amount equal
to a month's salary and which they could not afford. The other
was the response of his colleagues when they heard that the
American journal was being difficult. Instead of being support-
ive, they were all hostile to him and his work, because according.
to Roy, they felt that foreign referees were more likely to be
objective and correct. Later, when a long term review of their
institution and its work was conducted, it was found that this
article was among the most widely cited articles of any published
in the history of the institution. At that point, Roy said he felt
doubly vindicated. Not only that he had stuck to his guns against
the American editors, but also his colleagues would finally have
to realise that their slavish response had been shown to be quite
unfounded. Indeed, it appeared to me hearing this story many
years later, that Roy's response at exposing his colleagues slavish
behaviour was possibly in excess of the pleasure he received from
getting his article published. "None of them" he noted, however,
came in to apologise for having doubted him in the first place.
This example opens up a number of different trajectories to
examine what it means to be a practising scientist in India. First
is the ever-present question of embedded economic and profes-
sional inequalities within the transnational circuits of "universal
western" science. Some scientists in the Global South might
command relatively good salaries, well endowed laboratories and
plenty of technical support, but may not be able to afford to pay
the fees associated with publishing their work abroad. Work being
transmitted on an Indian institution's letterhead is often perceived
as being of inferior quality, and sometimes leads to Indian
scientists waiting until they are abroad on a visit before publishing
research conducted and completed in India. This situation is not
unchanging of course; some institutions and many scientists are
respected internationally, but this general condition remains the
norm for most scientific work coming out of India and similar
countries. Second, is the difficulty of establishing the priority
and credibility of research conducted by non-western scientists,
even when it is demonstrably important and scientifically rig-
orous. As the (western) editors.of a book published a few years
later which collected the key articles in this field, including
Singh's, put it, Jones's work was made possible by "a decade
of increasing interest in geometric and topological ideas", the
rise of "geometric gauge theories", and the development of
moder lasers and magnetic resonance. They then went on to
note that Singh's work, done three decades before, was "remark-
able" given his "relative isolation" from the "western scientific
community". They end by noting that they have included Singh's
original paper for its "historical value, although the reader will
probably find Jones's account of it far more readable". The
editors' tepid acknowledgement that Singh was able to identify
the problem and find a solution to it, despite "relative isolation"
and lack of all the other supporting conditions that made Jones's
own work possible, marks most clearly the provincialism pre-
vailing among western scientific gatekeepers, their sense of the
limits of the "normal" scientific community, and their fixed recognition of his work. Tilak argued that had he been based
expectations of those who lie beyond it. in the west he would never have had the luxury of spending long
The other side of this unequal relationship is to be found in hours on work that only a few people took seriously, and would
the responses of Roy's colleagues to his struggle with western have been forced to shift to a more socially acceptable research
editors and journals. The relative weight of international opinion area. The risk he took was in determining the broad research area
versus solidarity with local colleagues points to the ongoing - had this turned out to be an unproductive area, it would have
power of western opinion in the postcolonial world. The alleged meant the waste of a lifetime of research. Not everyone is willing
objectivity of western editors reflects both the poor state of to take such a risk, he noted, but the conditions in India are such
scientific journals published in India and their weak norms of that if "you have the confidence in yourself to do this, you can
professional evaluation, reinforcing a continued tendency to get away with it". He also added that this view was more typical
respect far more work that is published abroad, not the least for of someone like him, a senior scientist who came of age during
the "recognition" that it brings. In this respect, India is no different the 1960s and who had received a broad and ecumenical kind
from, say, post-Soviet Russia, and the natural sciences hardly of training. Pointing to younger colleagues sitting nearby, he
different from the social sciences. Postcolonial scholars are well noted, "they wouldn't think like this".
aware of their unequal location on the totem pole of scientific Tilak's career was, like Roy's, centrally defined by his location
respectability - a product of resources, history and relative power; within the uneven circuits of world science, but turned on its
what is more troubling is the authority still accorded to the views head. The ability to take an enormous risk in the definition of
of western scientists in the resolution of local differences. Race his area of expertise cannot be separated from the security Tilak
rears its head all through this account, though never named as such. received from knowing that his job and position would never
be taken away. Undoubtedly, his self-confidence played no small
role in allowing him the luxury of ignoring the passage of time
Doing Third World Science: Superiority
and scholarly fashion, but his institutional location is as much a
Throughout my discussions with Roy, he stuck to one theme source of strength as his internal resources. For Tilak, the differ-
consistently. In spite of all these travails and difficulties, he saw ence between west and the rest was not couched in terms of the
himself as an Indian scientist, and was unwilling to ever give absence of resources, but in the absence of competition and pres-
up this position and move abroad permanently. As someone who sures to conform to social trends. In fact, being in India and work-
had travelled abroad, he was well aware of the superior material ing in Indian institutions allowed Tilak to imply that his science
conditions under which science is conducted in the west, but it was not far from Merton's stylised vision of the Elizabethan
made no difference to his views. Among other reasons, Roy origins of science: science as an aristocratic search for Truth.
argued that the quality of his scientific work would not improve India's distance, real and otherwise, from the heart of science,
substantially if he were abroad. This view, of the preference for became a resource for him as a scientist. Going abroad would have
living in India in order to fulfil scientific ambitions while achiev- meant becoming another kind of scientist - the ones who must
ing professional success, was most vividly demonstrated by an obsess about grants, students, and professional competition
interview I conducted with another scientist, let's call him Tilak. - and thus who have less time as a result to think about science.
One of the few older (over 60) scientists I spoke with, Tilak
described his career as follows. After early training in India, he Doing Third World Science: Controversy, Memory,
had done a PhD and a postdoctoral fellowship at first rank western and Location
universities in the UK and US. Following that experience he had
returned to India where he had spent the rest of his career. "No These two examples point to the imbrication of Indian science
regrets" he said, in response to the obvious (to me) question. and scientists with global circuits of knowledge, on the one hand,
He went to explain he had grown to realise that what was possible but also make clear how contradictory the effects of that imbri-
in working in India, unlike the west, was the complete absence cation might be, on the other. We can complicate the story of the
of the normal pressures of scientific competition. Whether it was spatial frame of science still further by reference to another interview,
tenure, publishing, grantsmanship or attracting the best where location and memory becomes central to the resolution of
postdoctoral students, familiar markers of success in the west, a story of scientific controversy in a way that combines elements
Tilak, as a permanent employee of a state scientific institution of both the preceding stories but which is also quite different.
had never had to accommodate his scientific interests to external The third example involves a younger scientist who retuned
social or political pressures. He agreed that there were coststo India after being trained in an American university. Let's call
him Javed. Javed is a biologist who had worked with leading
associated with this standpoint, especially as the rapidly shifting
winds of scientific fashion brought with them commensurate scientists while in the US. He is respected and well connected,
rewards, but this didn't worry him. and travels often to present his work at international conferences.
Tilak argued that what was possible in India was to define He a was offered a tenure track job in the US following his last
broad area of research and work through problems in that areapostdoctoral position, but chose to go back to India where he
over a long period of time, developing a singular expertise, whichwas offered the opportunity to set up his own lab with lots of
was a reward in itself. If the work was good, he felt, it wouldfunding. I first interviewed him some years ago, before he left
be noticed eventually and be rewarded in suitable fashion. Not the US, and followed up with interviews after his return to India.
everyone could do this, he agreed, because it took a special During his postdoctoral years, Javed found himself in the
dedication and a careful appreciation for the importance of long- middle of a heated intellectual debate with a senior scholar in
term immersion in certain research fields, but it described what his field. Javed's work had led him to offer a radically new
he had successfully achieved. He had seen, in the course of his interpretation of some findings dealing with the movement of
career, the shifting tides of fashion lead to fulsome internationalmolecules and proteins across cell walls. It is worth noting that

Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006 215

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
the experimental medium of his results relied heavily on computer
imaging. In other words, the skill of the scientist lay not only
in the quality of the experimental material being prepared for
observation, and the detail of the results being displayed, but
especially in the interpretation of these new visual images. Javed's a way of talking about their respective positions with less dif-
understanding of the significance and meanings of these images
were hotly contested by a senior scientist whose own theories
bore the brunt of his revisionism. When we first discussed this
controversy in New York, Javed showed all the signs of being
quite beleaguered. He wouldn't quite come out and say that there
were non-scientific reasons for the lack of resolution to the
debate, but noted that he had been advised by other senior scholars
to drop the debate as the senior scholar could harm his chances
of being advancing in the profession. His opponent had allegedly
used his institutional power to prevent Javed's papers from being
published, and had prevented Javed from being invited to a major
conference where the differences in their views could be explored
publicly. Javed had, by his own description, taken to adopting
"guerrilla" tactics in order to get his voice heard. He would get
at conferences and confront his opponent, explaining his evidence
for all to hear, and demand to be listened to. Still, he didn't for seemscientific collaboration and he had been able to take advantage
to be getting very far and his frustration was fairly visible of
After he accepted his new position in India, I didn't get a chancecollaborations. He was feeling extremely validated professionally
to talk with Javed for a while and only caught up with him
the summer of 2000 to have an extended discussion about his
work. After some preliminary comments, I asked him how the
controversy was going. His reply took me quite by surprise.
Instead of describing the last battle in the ongoing conflictall,
expected, Javed now told a very different story. He described
a situation where the senior scientist and he were working
complementary fashion on the same problem. Javed did acknow-
ledge some initial differences of opinion, but noted that he
realised that the position of the senior scholar was not as incorrect
as he had thought, and also that he had something to learn from
him. He added that his own findings may have been somewhat
overstated. The two had been in correspondence and had found
ference and greater stress on the elements of their research they
had in common. The senior scholar in turn now appreciated the
new interpretations of Javed and agreed that there was a lot in
that viewpoint that usefully questioned his original position. Both
had clearly changed their original positions, and had also con-
ducted new, corroboratory experiments in the interim.
Javed was surprised when I mentioned my recollection of the
discussions we had had, noting that he didn't remember feeling
like that, and that he thought what was going on while he was
in the US was somewhat different. I didn't dwell on the disjunc-
tion between our respective memories but began to ask what else
he had been working on. It turned out that after arriving in India
a wholly new set of international connections had opened up for
him,up especially in Europe, but also in Japan and Latin America.
All OECD countries had signed bilateral arrangements with India
these opportunities to widen his set of scientific contacts and
to see.
in also stressed out from being over-extended, dealing with
though
students, and managing the everyday rigours of life in India.
Looking back on this encounter, what had changed in the time
between my meetings with Javed in the US and India, was. above
I had
his own location in the circuits of scientific power. The sense
of being a junior researcher in an extremely competitive envi-
in
ronment had given way to the sense of confidence that came from
running his own laboratory and students, and, access to generous
funding.
had The amount of research he had been able to conduct

CALL FOR PAPERS

FEMINIST ECONOMICS

"^i,^^~ ~A SPECIAL ISSUE ON

AIDS, SEXUALITY, AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Guest Editors
Cecilia Conrad and Cheryl R. Doss
Feminist Economics invites submissions of papers and short discussions for a special issue
"AIDS, Sexuality, and Economic Development." We encourage scholars in all disciplines as well
those involved in NGO and governmental work to submit abstracts by March 1, 2006. Late submission
may be considered at the discretion of the editors. If the abstract is accepted, the completed
manuscript will be due on October 15, 2006, and should be submitted through the submission
website (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rfec).

Please direct queries and abstracts to Guest Editors Cecilia Conrad (cconrad@pomona.edu)
Cheryl Doss (cheryl.doss@yale.edu). Questions about application procedures may be sent
feministeconomics @ rice.edu, +1.713.348.4083 (phone), or +1.713.348.5495 (fax).
www.feministeconomics.org

216 Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
on this problem had greatly increased thanks to the ready. avail- Deliberately juxtaposing debates over "Indian Science" and its
ability of scientific labour and additional resources. Some of these postcolonial excess and accounts of scientific practice by sci-
new results had led him to modify his position and expand its entists living in India exposes an immense gulf between the two
scope. The new international collaborative possibilities that had most popular staging grounds of Indian science studies. Concepts
opened up for him due to his location in India had additionally like postcolonial techno-science cannot help us bridge them:
given him new allies. The senior American researcher had also indeed if this article has shown anything, it is the need to keep
changed, once Javed went from being a mere postdoctoral them as far apart as possible. "Postcolonial" science studies need
student, to becoming the head of a laboratory. Not only did Javed a proliferation of historical and sociological accounts of science
have a new prestige, but he was also now part of an international as practice in order to set a standard against which we can more
circuit of scholars that brought them together through new easily identify "Indian Science" as a discourse that shapes a
intermediaries and in new contexts. Javed was no longer a risk political struggle that has little to do with science studies, even
to the senior scholar's position within the American system of if it has much to do with India. 1I
funding for science, which had been threatened by Javed's
oppositional and contradictory point of view. One may go further Email: abraham@ssrc.org
and argue, pace Bruno Latour, that these relocations had even
Notes
made it possible for the scientific problem to take new shape,
changing the nature of the disagreement altogether. The lapses [Thanks to Vijay Prashad and Paul Smith for comments on earlier versions
in Javed's memory are. in my view, indicative of this new of this article and also to the participants in the MIT symposium on Indian
Science, Cambridge, November 2004.1
geography of interaction. Both have less to be anxious about,
1 A genuflection to the work of scholars self-consciously offering a third
hence they can communicate with each other on. new terms, world perspective on western science, including (albeit in different ways),
altering the nature of the scientific contest. It would seem that Ashis Nandy, Vandana Shiva, Claude Alvares, Ziauddin Sardar, Susantha
Goonatileke and Sandra Harding.
the precipitating event that allowed for these transformations was
2 All names - individuals, institutions and journals have been changed in
Javed's move to a periphery of world science, India. order to protect the anonymity of respondents. No interviews were con-
Location matters. That much we can gauge from these stories. ducted with women. Interviews were conducted in New York, Bangalore
and Madras, 2000, 2001, 2003. There is little doubt that women's experi-
How it matters varies consequentially, as these stories also show.
ences in Indian science radically differ from the accounts portrayed above.
By refusing to isolate the South from the West in the study of For detailed and useful insights into those experiences, see Sur 2001.
science, one leaves open the possibility of seeing multi-directional
influences and channels simultaneously. As Homi K Bhabha says References
in another context: "If [individualism, liberalism or secularism] Abraham, Itty (2000): 'Landscape and Postcolonial Science', Contributions
are immediately, and accurately, recognisable as belonging to to Indian Sociology, (ns), 34, 2.
Adas, Michael (1989): Machines as the Measure ofMan: Science, Technology
the European Enlightenment, we must also consider them in relation
and Ideologies of Western Dominance, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
to the colonial and imperial enterprise which was an integral part Anderson, Warwick (2002): 'Postcolonial Technoscience', Social Studies
of that same Enlightenment" [Bhabha 1996:208-09]. If the of Science, Vol 32:643-58.
Bhabha, Homi (1996): 'Unpacking My Library...Again' in lain Chambers
postcolonial project has one great insight to offer, it is the argument
and Lidia Curti (eds), The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies,
for the embeddedness of diverse places in the making of global Divided Horizons, Routledge. London.
political and economic structures. Mutuality does not imply equality Bhargava, Rajeev (ed) (1998): Secularism and Its Critics, Oxford University
Press, Delhi.
of course, nonetheless it is important to be reminded of the multiple
Connolly, William (1994): Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of
effects of the uneven flow of ideas and people between north Political Paradox, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
and south and their concerted impact on the modern making of Chakrabarti, Pratik (2004): Western Science in Modern India: Metropolitan
Methods, Colonial Practices, Permanent Black, Delhi.
the developed parts of the world. Shifting the physical boundaries Chatterjee, Partha (1995): The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and
of science and setting the model into motion allows us to see Postcolonial Histories, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
the complexity of factors that went into the making of so-called Dasgupta, Subrata (1999): Jagdis Chandra Bose and the Indian Response
to Western Science, Oxford University Press, Princeton.
"western science". Studies of practice practically undo reified Fleck, Ludwig (1935, 1979): Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact.
notions of the west and western science, offering an empirical University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
response to the critics of western science far more effective than Joshi, Murali Manohar (2000): 'Inaugural Address on the Occasion of
Inauguration of Debate on National Policy for Research in Social Sciences
either endless discussions of the authenticity and origins of and Related Issues', mimeo, Chandigarh, February 11.
western and eastern ontologies and epistemologies or assertions Kumar, Deepak (1995): Science and the Raj, 1857-1905, Oxford University
Press, Delhi.
of the inherently liberatory potential of a "scientific temper".
Mukherji, V (1983): Jagadis Chandra Bose, Builders of Modern India
The three stories of science show how scientists from the same
Series, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, New Delhi.
place occupy very different spaces of professional identity. Nanda, Meera (2004): Prophets Facing Backwards: Postmodernism, Science
Postcolonial locations thus include relations of weakness and and Hindu Nationalism, Permanent Black, Delhi.
Nandy, Ashis (1980): Alternative Sciences: Creativity and Authenticity in
possibility, valences that cannot be known in advance but that Two Indian Scientists, Allied, New Delhi.
Ownby, David (2001): 'China's War against Itself', New York Times,
are products of historically situated intersections of the political
February 15.
economy of place and unequal location within transnational
Prakash, Gyan (1999): Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of
circuits of knowledge flow. These stories leave the cartographicModern India, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Raina, Dhruv (2003): Images and Contexts: The Historiography of Science
map unsettled as the presumed stable geopolitical entity called
and Modernity in India, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
"India" is called into account in different ways. When "India"
Sardar, Ziauddin (1998): Postmodernism and the Other: The New mperialism
is set against the uneven circuits of global science, and our
of Western Culture, Pluto Press, London.
Subramaniam,
attention focuses on everyday scientific practices, it leads to an Banu (2000): 'Archaic Modernities: Science, Secularism and
Religion in Modern India', Social Text, 18, 3:67-86.
uneven and unsettled place where location no longer offer a Sur,
one-Abha (2001): 'Dispersed Radiance: Women Scientists in C V Raman's
dimensional and stable reference to knowledge. Lab', Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 1, 2:95-127.

Economic and Political Weekly January 21, 2006 217

This content downloaded from 125.22.105.51 on Mon, 28 Aug 2017 11:55:12 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms