Deepak Kumar (historian)

Deepak Kumar is an Indian historian. His specialization is history of science in India. Currently, he is a Professor of History of Science and Education, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Kumar has lectured at numerous universities within India and abroad, has held visiting fellowships at the universities of Cambridge, London, Leiden, The Smithsonian Institution, etc. and has also taught at Wisconsin University, Madison, USA, and York University in Toronto, Canada.

He has sought to demonstrate in several of his books that British colonialism in India played a major role in how European scientific fields developed. Science and the Raj: A study of British India is one of the pioneer contribution in the field of history of science in India. His latest work The Trishanku Nation encapsulates his reflections on contemporary India.

In describing medical encounters in colonial India, Kumar argues that Western medical discourse occupied an important place in the process of colonization and it worked towards a scientific hegemony. "Indigenous systems were so marginalised that their practitioners often sought survival in resistance rather than collaboration."

Books

Kumar, Deepak (ed.), Science and Empire: Essays in Indian Context, 1700-1947. Delhi: Anamika Prakashan, 1991
Kumar, Deepak (ed.), Disease and Medicine in India: A Historical Overview, Tulika, 2001 ISBN 81-85229-51-1
Kumar, Deepak, Science and the Raj: A Study of British India, Oxford University Press, 2006 (2nd edition) ISBN 0-19-568003-0
Kumar, Deepak & Roy MacLeod (eds.), Technology and the Raj, SAGE, New Delhi, 1995 (Enlarged Hindi version was published by Granthshilpi, Delhi in 2002)
Kumar, Deepak, Vinita Damodaran, Rohan D'Souza (eds.), The British Empire and the Natural World: Environmental Encounters in South Asia, OUP, Delhi, 2010.
Kumar, Deepak & Chaube, Devendra (eds.), Hashiye ka Vritanta (Narrative of the Margins), in Hindi, Aadhar Publications, Panchkula, 2011.
Kumar, Deepak and Rajsekhar Basu (eds.) Medical Encounter in British India, OUP, Delhi, 2013.
Kumar, Deepak, J.Bara, N.Khadria and R. Gayathri (eds.), Education in Colonial India: Historical Insights, Manohar Books, Delhi, 2013.
Kumar, Deepak, The Trishanku Nation: Memory, Self, and Society in Contemporary India, OUP, Delhi, 2016.
Kumar, Deepak and Raha, Bipasha (eds.), Tilling the Land: Agricultural Knowledge and Practices in Colonial India, Primus, Delhi, 2016.