Justice Markandey Katju explores why India, once a global leader in science and technology, fell behind the West after centuries of innovation and discovery.
Justice Markandey Katju applies Dr Joseph Needham’s question to India, asking why ancient India’s scientific brilliance declined while Europe surged ahead.
Needham's Grand Question applied to India
By Justice Markandey Katju
Dr. Joseph Needham (1900-1995) was a brilliant British biochemist who had obtained a doctorate from Cambridge University in 1925, specializing in embryology and morphogenesis. Later, Dr. Needham developed an interest in China, and after visiting China several times wrote his mammoth book ‘Science and Civilization in China’ in 24 volumes ( see Simon Winchester’s ‘The Man Who loved China’).
In this book Needham posed the problem, known as ‘Needham’s Question’ or ‘Needham’s Grand Question’, in respect of China, but which in my opinion applies equally to India.
The problem is this: Why did China (and India), which were far ahead of Western countries in science and technology at one time, later fell behind, did not have an Industrial Revolution, and therefore became poor, backward, and consequently victims of imperialism and colonization, which caused enormous harm and misery to the peoples of these countries?
There is no doubt that both India and China were at one time far ahead of the Western countries in science and technology.
China invented gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and paper and printing, which, according to Sir Francis Bacon, were the three most important inventions facilitating Europe to pass from the dark Middle Ages to the Modern age. But why did China’s progress in science and technology stop thereafter? According to Dr. Needham it could have been the Confucian philosophy, which was incompatible with scientific development, which was responsible for this. But is this explanation not superficial?
As for India, I have explained in my articles below that India was far ahead of the West in ancient times.
For instance, Indians invented the decimal system in mathematics, which the most revolutionary invention in history, without which scientific progress in the world would have been extremely difficult. Details of this are given in the above articles, so I am not repeating the same.
Aryabhatta, who reputedly lived in the 5th Century A.D., worked on quadratic equations, binomial theorem, etc, and calculated the value of pie to a fairly accurate degree. He also made significant contributions to astronomy, being perhaps the first person in the world to prove that the earth rotates on its axis, thus causing day and night. Brahmagupta, Bhaskar, etc also made great contributions in mathematics, etc.
In medical science, India was at least 1000, if not 1500, years ahead of any country. Thus, Sushrut, the father of surgery, invented plastic surgery in the 6th century B.C. while the Britishers discovered it only towards the end of the 18th century A. D. during the Anglo-Mysore wars, and that too, from an Indian vaidya who lived near Pune.
The harbor at Lothal in Gujrat, which is regarded as quite modern in its construction, was built around 5000 years ago, and is regarded as part of the Indus Valley Civilization.
In my article ‘Sanskrit as a language of Science’, more details are given, and there is a great deal of literature showing our achievements in science and technology in ancient India. We were far ahead of the West at that time. In fact most Europeans (except in Greece and Rome) were living in forests at a time when we had built mighty civilizations with the help of science and technology.
Why, then, did we fall behind the West? Why did we not have an industrial revolution? Why was our advance in science and technology blocked, while Europe produced Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Robert Boyle, Cavendish, Priestly, Lavoisier, Maxwell, Gauss, Max Planck, Rutherford, Heisenberg, Pauli, Niels Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Chadwick, Madam Curie, Otto Hahn etc in physics, chemistry and mathematics, William Harvey, Ross, etc in medicine, Edmund Halley, etc in astronomy, James Hutton in Geology, Hooke, Linnaeus, Buffon, and Darwin in biology, etc. No doubt we produced C. V. Raman, Srinivas Ramanujan, Chandrashekhar, S.N. Bose, etc but these are just a handful
What happened that made the development of science and technology almost stop in India ( after the great burst of scientific creativity in ancient India), while the West progressed rapidly ?
This is Needham’s Grand Question for India, yet to be solved. A great deal of research is required to solve it
(Justice Katju is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India. These are his personal views.)
