ABSTRACT
Scientific institutions are modern icons, and these came to India as part of the colonial baggage and soon became the carriers of new ideas and in fact claimed to symbolize modernity itself. But this modernity came in quite a subverted form, was refigured further by the recipients, and this came to be known as colonial modernity. Did the process of institutionalization differ in colonial and non-colonial settings? What debates did institutionalization spark? What did it mean to the colonizer and the colonized? Did things change substantially after Independence? We claim the world’s third largest science and technology manpower. What are our strengths and weaknesses? And finally, whither India?
