topics: |  history | science | british-india

The dominant "colonialist" perspective was articulated by Grant, Mill, and
Macaulay... conceived the pre-British India as a veritable tabula rasa onto
which modern science and technology had to be inscribed as part of the
colonial civilizing mission.  James Mill explicitly drew upon the Lockean
concepttion of the mind as tabula rasa to understand India... In his
magesterial The History of British India, JM devoted a considerable
amount of energy in discussing various aspects of Indian sc & t to
demonstrate what he perceived to be a serious lack of creativity and
technological ingenuity.

[James Mill, father of James Stuart Mill, was the chief examiner at the East
India Co in London; wrote The History of British India 1807-1818.
The work begins with a preface in which Mill makes virtues of having never
visited India and of knowing none of its native languages.[5] To him, these
are guarantees of his objectivity, and he says –
    A duly qualified man can obtain more knowledge of India in one year in
    his closet in England than he could obtain during the course of the
    longest life, by the use of his eyes and ears in India.[4]
]

Mill's evaluation was widely shared by TB Macaulay.

Charles Grant, writing during the early phase of colonial rule, went even
further in asserting that

	Except for a few brahmins, who consider concealment of their learning
	as part of their religion, the people are totally misled as to the
	system and phenomena of Nature : and their errors in this branch of
	science, upon which divers important conclusions rest, may be more
	easily demonstrated to them, than the absurdity and falsehood of
	their mythological legends.  From the demonstration of the true cause
	of eclipses, the story of Eagoo and Ketoo, the dragons, who when the
	sun and the moon are obscured, are supposed to be assaulting them, a
	story which has hitherto been an article of religious faith,
	productive of religious services among the Hindoos, would fall to the
	ground ; the removal of one pillar, would weaken the fabrick of
	falsehood ; the discovery of one palpable error, would open the mind
	to farther conviction ; and the progessive discovery of truths
	hitherto unknown, would dissipate as many super- stitious chimeras,
	the parents of false fears, and false hopes. Every branch of natural
	philosophy might in time be introduced and diffused among the
	Hindoos. Their understandings would thence be strengthened, as well
	as their minds informed, and error be dispelled in proportion. ...
	Invention seems wholly torpid among them ; in a few things, they have
	improved by their intercourse with Europeans, of whose immense
	superiority they are at length convinced  ...
	The communication of our light and knowledge to them, would prove the
	best remedy for their disorders ; and this remedy is proposed, from a
	full conviction, that if judiciously and patiently applied, it would
	have great and happy effects upon them : effects honourable and
	advantageous for us.

[ Grant was a Director and later the Chairman of the East India Company; and
also MP from Inverness, Scotland.
w: In 1792, Grant wrote the tract "Observations on the State of Society among
   the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain."[3] This famous essay pled for
   education and Christian mission to be tolerated in India alongside the
   East India Company's traditional commercial activity. It argued that India
   could be advanced socially and morally by compelling the Company to permit
   Christian missionaries into India, a view diametrically opposed to the
   long-held position of the East India Company that Christian missionary
   work in India conflicted with its commercial interests and should be
   prohibited. In 1797, Grant presented his essay to the Company's directors,
   and then later in 1813, along with the reformer William Wilberforce,
   successfully to the House of Commons. The Commons ordered its re-printing
   during the important debates on the renewal of the company's charter.

see fulltext in http://www.wmcarey.edu/carey/grant/grant.htm
also quoted in Syed Mahmood, English education in India (1781-1893.)
http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofenglish00mahmuoft/historyofenglish00mahmuoft_djvu.txt
]

From Mill's History of India:

The Surya Sidhanta is the great repository of the astronomical knowledge of
the Hindus. ... this book is itself the most satisfactory of all proofs of
the low state of the science among the Hindus, and the rudeness of the people
from whom it proceeds ; that its fantastic absurdity is truly Hindu; that all
we can learn from it are a few facts, the result of observations which
required no skill; that its vague allegories and fanciful reflections prove
nothing, or everything ; that a resolute admirer may build upon them all the
astronomical science of modern times; but a man who should divest his mind of
the recollection of European discoveries, and ask what a people unacquainted
with the science could learn from the Surya Sidhanta, would find it next to
nothing. p.71  ...

   The Brahmen, seating himself on the ground, and arranging his shells
   before him, repeats the enigmatical verses that are to guide his
   calculation, and from his little tablets and palm-leaves, takes out the
   numbers that are to be employed in it. He obtains his result with
   wonderful certainty and expedition; but having little knowledge of the
   principles on which his rules are founded, and no anxiety to be better
   informed, he is perfectly satisfied, if, as it usually happens, the
   commencement and duration of the eclipse answer, within a few minutes, to
   his prediction. Beyond this, his astronomical inquiries never extend ; and
   his observations, when he makes any, go no further than to determine the
   meridian line, or the length of the day at the place where he observes."
   [Playfair, on the Astronomy of the Brahmens. Trans. Roy. Soc. Edill
   ii. 138, 139.]
Scarcely can there be drawn a stronger picture than this of the rude and
infant state of astronomy. The Brahmen, making his calculation by shells, is
an exact resemblance of the rude American performing the same operation by
knots on a string; and both of them exhibit a practice which then only
prevails; either when the more ingenious and commodious method of ciphering,
or accounting by written signs, is unknown; or when the human mind is too
rude and too weak to break through the force of an inveterate custom. p.73

Exactly in proportion as Utility is the object of every pursuit, may we
regard a nation as civilized. Exactly in proportion as its ingenuity is
wasted on contemptible and mischievous objects, though it may be, in itself,
an ingenuity of no ordinary kind, the nation may safely be denominated
barbarous. p.105
 - James Mill, The history of British India‎

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