In their eighteenth century encounters with India and the east in general, the British displayed genuine interest in, respect for, and desire to benefit and profit from traditional empirical technologies. Dyeing and printing of cotton textiles using natural materials, zinc metallurgy, steel (wootz) making, and variolation are examples of the bases on which European initiatives were built. There is a persistent pattern in Britain’s scientific and industrial discoveries of the early nineteenth century. Once a milestone was reached, details of the steps leading to it were obliterated. Eastern antecedents of scientific discoveries were ignored or belittled and modern science presented as a stand-alone, without any pre-history. In 1837 a Bengal cavalry officer after an exploratory tour of Egypt and Arabia in connection with steam navigation declared: ‘It seems to be a law of nature that the civilized nations should conquer and possess the countries in a state of barbarianism and by such means, however unjustifiable it may appear at first, extend the blessings of knowledge, industry and commerce among people hitherto sunk in the most gloomy depths of superstitious ignorance’ The use of the phrase ‘law of nature’ in the context of human affairs is significant. It is as if the authorship of the powerful knowledge system of modern science bestowed such cultural and racial superiority on the Europeans as to give them a divine right to rule over others. This was also the time when British India decided to terminate its continuity with the Mughal administration, stopped uncritical support for oriental learning, jettisoned Persian as the official language and embarked on English-alone language policy.