Science and Social Inequality: Caste and Gender in Modern Physics in India

Far too often postcolonial histories, especially of modern science, use colonialism and nationalism as the only salient analytical categories, imposing overly simple binary oppositions, and erasing from colonizer and colonized alike their internally differentiated power structures. In the case of India, for instance, caste, gender and class find little expression in histories of science as these are subsumed under the generic bifurcation of the Indian society into western educated elite and the subaltern. There are few, if any, scholarly works on the impact of social inequality on science in India. The need for more inclusive histories of modern physics, “histories from below” if you will, is therefore urgent for a more accurate understanding of science. I will draw upon micro-histories of modern physics in India to argue for an analytical framework that recognizes the complexity, differentiation, and stratification in scientific relations as well as acknowledges the possibility of scientific truth.