Introduction

In so far as the historical literature has identified a dialogue between Europeans and Indians in relation to the practice of modern astronomy in colonial India, the focus has for the most part been on the endeavours undertaken under the aegis of Indian princes. In particular, there has been mention of the observatory established at Lucknow under the King of Awadh. An example that has attracted somewhat less attention is the observatory that was built at Trivandrum under the Raja of Travancore. Hence evidence for engagement between Europeans and Indians in these observatories needs to be considered, the better to understand matters in Bombay and Calcutta. Indeed, despite being nodal points of European colonialism in India, the coastal metropolises have been neglected as sites of meaningful interaction in relation to the practice of modern astronomy. However, both in the observatory and in the field, European astronomers had to engage with Indians, not least due to the identified difficulties in undertaking the work at hand. Through tracing the fine grain of the source material for reconstructing the institutionalization of official astronomy in India – somewhat like the ethnomethodologist of SSK – it is possible to obtain a sense of this engagement. Moreover, the nature of the engagement demands a rethinking of the categories that have been used to describe it. Kapil Raj has advanced the concept of ‘co-construction’ or ‘co-constructive processes’ to describe collaborative structures in the development of modern science.