Bullock cart or satellite launch vehicle? Controversies over representing science and technology in India at the Science Museum in 1982

Abstract

This article examines the bitter debates between British and Indian interlocutors that erupted around the scarcely remembered ‘Science in India’ exhibition, held at London's Science Museum in 1982 as part of the much better known Festival of India in Britain that year. The Science Museum's curators were drawn into arranging it by both the British and Indian governments, eager for a new phase in Indo-British relations. Though the ‘Science in India’ exhibition was meant to mark a more equal relationship between Britain and India, the disagreements between Science Museum curators and Indian organizers reflected ongoing sensitivities about the way India was represented on the global stage through its material culture, reminiscent of debates around earlier nineteenth- and twentieth-century international exhibitions. An argument unfolded between the British on the one hand, who insisted on representations of poverty as demonstrated by the bullock cart, and the Indians on the other, who preferred to showcase their progress as evinced by their satellite programme. The divergences were never just about a scholarly representation of science and technology in India, but rather were about image; about which aspect of modern, post-independence India was projected to the outside world.