Munshi Zakallauh : Popularisation of Western Science in Vernaculars in the Nineteenth Century

Munshi Zakallauh(1832-1911) - a prolific author and translator ,was a teacher at Delhi College , and one of the most distinguished scholars of his day. He belonged to that small fraction, who , at a time, when Muslims in Delhi were largely indifferent to new learning, showed much keenness for western education and the new sciences. He was conceivably the last historical object of an era that saw many changes and for a while , simultaneously accommodated the two world- the rotting and the evolving . While on the one hand he personified the traditional values of an old world culture, he was also a creative thinker whose revolutionary input to modern education in northern India earned him the reputation of a dedicated educationist and open-minded enlightenment rationalist. Encouraged by the feeling that western education could be disseminated through the vernacular, he devoted his life to translating and writing numerous textbooks in Urdu on science and mathematics. This paper is focused on the contribution of Munshi Zakaullah for the popularization of western science in vernacular.