From 'state' science to 'peoples' science : science movements in post-colonial India (1947-1980)

The Association of Scientific Workers of India (ASWI) was established in 1947, by Indian scientists known to leftist scientists like John D. Bernal and Frédéric Joliot Curie. Rather than being looked upon as a Soviet front, the ASWI was very closely tied to the state in post-colonial India. Members of the ASWI as they became part of the science-policy establishment brought in ideas that were distinctly associated with leftist imaginations of science. However, a change in the landscape of science movements occurred in the 1970s when a crisis of legitimacy of science surfaced in India. This was rooted in questioning the role of science and technology in development and put a big question mark over the approach adopted about science in India. One response to this crisis was the ‘Peoples Science' movement.

This was different from the radical science movements that emerged in the ‘West' in the 1960s. Not all of them shared radical imaginations of science but they differed from the ASWI. While the members of the ASWI were predominantly based in the industrial research laboratories, the scientists associated with the people's science movement came from a variety of disciplines including nuclear physics, engineering sciences, and science education pointing to a widening of the base of science movements in India. In my paper, I will chart out the trajectory of India's science movements from the ASWI to the peoples' science movement. I will argue that the shift in their nature mustbe understood in the changing contexts surrounding the relationship between science and development. I will conclude the paper by arguing that there is a need to rethink some of the historiographic assumptions about science movements to understand their features in the ‘non-West.' [Publisher's text]