When re-reading a two-decade old essay returns one to sources with new insights: a thread on re-reading David Arnold’s, ‘A Time for Science: Past and Present in the Reconstruction of Hindu Science, 1860-1920’ (1999) in 2020.

DA does a close reading of the writings and speeches of a range of Bengali Hindu scientists (medical doctor, geologist, homeopath, chemist, physicist, and philosopher) to excavate the multiple discursive strategies by which they situated the history of Hindu sciences alongside

their practice of the new imperial/western sciences. Throughout, DA specifies the particular argumentative strategies by which these actors turned to the past and made history usable. Actors like Ray and Bose seemed anxious to dispel any direct connection between the past and the

national future. At the same time they used Hindu epistemic, linguistic, literary and cultural resources (in the form of metaphors, images, equivalences). I wish there was an essay as good as this one (on the variety within Bengali Hindu scientific discourse) for the Arya Samaj!

For anyone teaching the history/anthro of science and religion in South Asia, Arnold’s essay would be great paired with Gyan Prakash’s ‘Image of the Archaic’ and Banu Subramaniam’s Holy Science for a class on ‘Science’s Usable Pasts.’