Evolving perspectives on science and history: A chronicle of modern India's scientific enchantment and disenchantment (1850–1980)

This paper chronicles the cycles of scientism and romanticism that structure the discourse on science and technology in India since 1850. However, it does not promise a detailed review of this enormous archive. On the contrary, it aspires to identify the principle concerns, the important interlocutors, the prevalent frameworks and contextualizes them socio‐politically, in both their local and global embodiments. In historical time, as has been suggested elsewhere, the scientism‐romanticism dialectic acquires diversified formulations. This review suggests that in post‐colonial India there has been an attempt to situate science within culture across this essential dichotomy.