Indian Science – The Colonial Legacy

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For more than 200 years Britain ruled India, bringing many aspects of British culture to India - including European science developed during the enlightenment. However centuries earlier India had already pioneered work in astronomy, mathematics and engineering.

How was India’s scientific progress affected by colonialism? Did British rule hold the country back, or did it drive it forward? Presented by Angela Saini.

Picture: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) communication satellite GSAT-19, carried onboard the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-mark III ), launches at Sriharikota on June 5, 2017, Credit: ARUN SANKAR/AFP/Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds.
0:30.9	The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer.
0:38.0	It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.
0:47.0	The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye.
0:57.0	That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.
1:07.0	Exactly 70 years ago this year, India won independence from the British. It was a freedom earned from long
1:16.5	difficult struggle, one that hoped to rewrite the way the world thought about
1:21.7	India and its people.
1:24.8	The Science Museum in London, founded under Empire in 1857, has a new exhibition on India. It's a fitting time. Today it has a space program, nuclear power
1:37.6	stations and an IT industry poised to take on Silicon Valley.
1:45.0	I'm science journalist Angela Saini, the author of a book on science in India.
1:52.0	My family roots Lai in India. My family roots Lyon Punjab, my father was an Indian
1:55.4	engineer, but when I studied science and engineering at Oxford having grown up
2:00.4	here in London, India's scientific legacy was something I was never taught.
2:05.9	I rarely even heard about it.
	...

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