4 - A New Dawn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2023
Summary
… despite the inherent submission to the foreign yoke—we have inherited a mind not inferior in its endowments to the mind of any nation on earth … Science may be pursued for its own sake in the abstract, and for the mental pleasure it affords, and such pursuit is most laudable.
—Mahendralal Sircar… merely to revile the sciences by which the westerners have gained their victory in the modern world will not tend to relieve our sufferings, but rather will add to the burden of our sins … Do not imagine that the day of the old village community was the Golden Age or that such a community was a paradise on earth … instead of going back we should go forward, and using these tools of the modern world—the modern chaos if you like— rebuild therewith the old community life of the villages on a surer, a firmer and a sounder basis.
—Rabindranath TagoreThe last quarter of the 19th century was simply remarkable. The seeds that had been sown earlier were beginning to sprout. A new middle class was finding its feet. New aspirations were in the air. The middle class was making new demands, even though India was now being controlled directly and more firmly by the Government in Britain. There were new schools, colleges, the telegraph, more railway lines, printing and publications, and so on, no doubt. Yet the flip side was heavier, for example, the economic drain, famines, severe pestilence, epidemics, and so on. It was during these difficult times that nationalism began to take root, and gradually flowered into a full-fledged national movement, not only for independence but reconstruction. It was also during this period that those who were to play a great role in different fields of life in the next century were maturing. The quest for identity had sharpened.
In terms of scientific knowledge, this quest had found early expression in the establishment of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS) by an eminent doctor, Mahendralal Sircar (1833–1904).
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- Science and Society in Modern India , pp. 72 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023