Science and Engineering Education at IIT Madras: Indian and German Perspectives and Practices in Conflict

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras was set up with West German assistance between 1959 and 1974. From its beginning, Indian and German actors differed in what kind of engineering school IIT Madras would be and hence how its engineers should be trained. The Indian planners envisioned IIT Madras to be an MIT-like research university while the German planners insisted that Indian engineers needed largely practical training. Through the 1960s, the nature of the German engagement became more research oriented with competition from the other IIT’s but the critique of German faculty remained: Indian engineering training was too theoretical and lacked practice. In my presentation I want to unpack different understandings of practice and how they relate to a larger discourse on science, technical education, the caste system and colonial legacies in India. The critique of practice deficiency was not an argument between scientists on one side and engineers on the other, as it was shared by all German professors. The physicist Werner Koch, for instance, who had studied with Robert Pohl in Göttingen and had worked in the electrical industry, wanted physics teaching for engineers to be largely practice-oriented. Koch introduced Pohl’s textbooks as well as Pohl’s lecture demonstrations to IIT Madras. Koch’s call for “re-educating” Indians, I argue, was informed by a narrow understanding of educational transfer from Germany to India that ignored social differences and hierarchies on both sides.