ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the intricate relationship of science and Colonialism, with regard to Amitav Ghosh’s fiction. It elaborates upon the problematic and complex terrain of science in the context of the colonial expansion with the underpinnings of the insight that science is not an apolitical activity, carried out in vacuum but one affected by the social and economic exigencies of an age. (Arnold, 2000). Further, the chapter extensively discusses Ghosh’s debut novel The Circle of Reason to elaborate upon the largely mimetic nature of the transfer of western science to Indian climes. (Adas, Panikkar) The tone of the book, which is at once ironic as well as comic, reinforces the absurdity inherent in this imposition of western knowledge as the standardized science over and above the existing epistemologies. The chapter focuses on the case of (pseudo)science of phrenology, extensively portrayed in the novel as a case in point. At one time, looked upon as a credible means to measure racial characteristics, largely the measurement of skull, it was later discarded as a pseudo science by the western establishment. The novel rests on the central character’s obsession with phrenology, his total reliance on it as a form of knowledge, and all this is played out against the larger irony of its current disuse and the transfer of western science into Indian society.
