Sandipan Baksi presented a paper titled “Science Writing in Hindi: a Critical View of its Origins, Tendencies and Influences: A Study of Some Hindi Periodicals” at the office of the Foundation of Agrarian Studies.

The paper attempts to trace aspects of the process of development of Hindi Science Writing in India under the colonial Rule. It bases itself essentially on a survey of the contents of some of the popular Hindi literary periodicals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which also published scientific articles as well as articles on issues and subjects related to science.

The presentation was divided into three parts. The first part argues that Science writing in Hindi evolved in the context of contentious political developments, which went a long way in shaping the former. This was followed by a more descriptive section, which focused on some of the striking characteristics of Hindi Science writing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The final part of the presentation attempts to understand the underlying motivations, that sustained this process of Hindi science writing in the late nineteenth century and further promoted it in the early twentieth century, and highlights the influences on those sections of the Hindi speaking elite who were at its forefront.

The paper concludes that this process of the development of science writing in Hindi was, on one hand, a part of the activity of the popularization of science and on the other, it was also a striking instance of the effort to strengthen Hindi, as part of a cultural/linguistic nationalist project, within which, among other aspects, it was also a revivalist effort to establish the scientificity of traditional or “ancient” knowledge.

A version of this paper was presented at the International Conference on “Translation in Science – Science In Translation”,held on March 30-31, 2017 in the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany.