Reclaiming India’s Place in the Story of Science

 

 

When people speak about “history,” they usually mean the history of kings, conquests, wars, and political revolutions. Even when textbooks are revised or reforms are debated, the focus remains on dynasties and battles — as though the scientific imagination of a civilization were somehow secondary. But if one truly wants to understand a nation’s intellectual heritage, one must look not only at its rulers, but at its scientists, mathematicians, and thinkers — the people who shaped how we understand the world itself. And it is here that an irony in the global story of science becomes clear.

The history of modern science often begins with a dramatic image: Galileo climbing the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropping two stones to show that objects of different masses fall at the same rate. His demonstration overturned Aristotle’s ancient belief that heavier objects fall faster — an idea that persisted, unquestioned, for nearly 1,500 years in Europe.

This story is taught worldwide as a triumph of reason over authority. But there is an uncomfortable detail hiding in plain sight: for a millennium and a half, no one in Europe bothered to test a simple experiment that even a school student could try today. Galileo’s brilliance is celebrated, as it should be, but Europe’s long intellectual stagnation before him is quietly forgiven.

Meanwhile, during these very centuries, India was witnessing one of the brightest periods in the global history of mathematics, astronomy, and scientific thought. Aryabhata proposed that Earth rotates on its axis, offered remarkably accurate astronomical constants, and developed sophisticated trigonometric methods. Brahmagupta formalized rules for zero, negative numbers, and algebra. Bhāskara II anticipated concepts of calculus and described gravitational attraction centuries before Newton. The Kerala school produced infinite series expansions that echoed what would later become central ideas in European calculus.

These contributions were not scattered accidents. They emerged from centuries of organised scholarship, rigorous debate, observational astronomy, and mathematical innovation. India’s intellectual tradition produced treatises, commentaries, and scientific lineages comparable to the great schools of Greece, China, and the Islamic world.

And yet, in global science histories, Europe’s forgotten errors are remembered, while India’s extraordinary achievements are often forgotten. Western narratives celebrate their breakthroughs while softly glossing over the gaps. Indian contributions, by contrast, are frequently reduced to footnotes or are treated as curiosities rather than foundational milestones. This asymmetry has shaped how generations of students — including in India itself — have come to understand science: as something invented elsewhere, in languages they do not speak, in cultures they do not inhabit.

This disconnect matters, because a nation’s confidence in shaping the future depends on its understanding of its past. The countries that dominate science today — from the United States to Israel to Japan — carry a deep cultural belief that scientific inquiry is part of their identity. India, paradoxically, is one of the world’s oldest scientific civilizations, yet its modern scientific institutions were built on colonial-era foundations that often ignored or dismissed indigenous knowledge systems.

But India is now re-emerging as a scientific power. From ISRO’s lunar missions to India’s digital public infrastructure, from breakthroughs in vaccine manufacturing to the rise of AI and semiconductor ambitions, India’s scientific and technological momentum is unmistakable. What is missing is not capability, but continuity — the sense that modern Indian science is not an imitation project, but the latest chapter in a civilizational story.

Reclaiming this continuity requires three shifts.

First, India’s scientific heritage must be taught with scholarly rigor.
This does not mean romanticizing the past, but recognizing genuine achievements. Aryabhata should be taught alongside Kepler, Sushruta alongside Hippocrates, the Kerala school alongside Newton. Students should encounter India’s intellectual traditions not as cultural trivia but as part of the global conversation of science.

Second, we must acknowledge the ruptures honestly.
The destruction of ancient universities, the loss of scientific lineages, and the colonial dismissal of indigenous knowledge created a deep break in India’s intellectual history. Understanding these ruptures is essential for rebuilding confidence without myth-making.

Third, India must integrate its civilizational identity with its modern scientific aspirations.
We are entering an era where Indian science is visible, ambitious, and globally relevant. But it will gain even greater strength when rooted in a longer tradition — when young scientists see not only the laboratories of Bengaluru and Hyderabad, but also the intellectual l
egacy of Ujjain, Nalanda, and Kerala as part of their story.

Science is not the property of any one civilization. It is a human inheritance shaped by many cultures, traditions, and languages. The story of science is richest when we recognize its multiple origins and the dialogues between them.

For India, reclaiming this place in the story of science is not an act of nostalgia. It is an act of confidence. It is a reminder that the spirit of inquiry — the courage to ask questions, to observe, to experiment — has lived here for millennia. And as India rises once again on the scientific frontier, it is time the world remembered this, and time India remembered it too.