Colonial legacies and the British Geological Survey in cold war South Asia: 1960s-80s

This article explores change and continuity in the institutional objectives and actions of the British Geological Survey across independent South Asian countries, namely India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, and Burma/Myanmar. By focusing on this geographical space from the 1960s, the article tells a political tale of adjustment, in which the colonial background of the British presence in the region was overlain by the Cold War foreground of international competition. The Geological Survey had the required pedigree to prolong the British presence in important technical arenas of these emerging nation-states, albeit within the redefined parameters of development, overlapping interests, and competing benefits. The article sketches the Survey’s history of exchange and collaboration across South Asian countries (except Bhutan), as its projects adapted to national preferences and global pressures. It traces how and why its proposals prioritised certain interactions over others and tracks the ways-and-means through which it pursued geological and attendant commercial aims. The article also attempts to situate these interplays within regional and ideological frames, within which politically conscious technocrats sought capital and influence to reorient earth science objectives so that these could simultaneously accrue national products and generate neo-colonial prestige.