Engineering Science Education and the Indian Institutes of Technology: Reframing the Context of the ‘Cold War and Science’ (1950–1970)

TitleEngineering Science Education and the Indian Institutes of Technology: Reframing the Context of the ‘Cold War and Science’ (1950–1970)
Publication TypeJournal Article
AuthorsRaina, Dhruv
JournalContemporary Education Dialogue
Volume14
Issue1
Pagination49-70
ISSN0973-1849
AbstractThe last two decades have witnessed a revival of research interest in the Cold War, and on science during the Cold War, from a revised social theoretic perspective.1 Part of this reframing is evident in explorations of the relationship underpinning the Cold War discourse and modernisation theory. Drawing on this new turn, this article switches the register to the first decades of decolonisation, and revisits the establishment of elite institutes of engineering and engineering science, such as the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai, in order to understand the consequences of the entanglement of the Cold War discourse with decolonisation on higher technological education in India in the 1950s. The article argues that within the realm of technological or engineering science education, across the Cold War divide, the globalisation of higher technological education or the ‘Americanization of higher education’ as Krige calls it, is evident, as much at the elite IITs in India as elsewhere.
URLhttps://doi.org/10.1177/0973184916678698
DOI10.1177/0973184916678698
Short TitleEngineering Science Education and the Indian Institutes of Technology
Collection: