The Bihar Scientific Society

Similar efforts were made by Imdad Ali to democratise European science in India. He had a firm faith in the efficiency of local languages and believed:

England, France and Germany would never have attained that exalted degree of civilisation, which they now enjoy if the works of science originally imported from Rome and Greece in Latin and Greek, were not disseminated among the people by means of their own vernacular.

Imdad was not opposed to English education, but he emphasized that the Society should not bring in religion into the scope of its inquiry. He was a deputy Collector. He had started publishing pamphlets and then a regular journal attacking Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq and calling on Muslims to boycott Syed Ahmed's reform movement. Imdad was of the opinion that Indian students did not acquire properly the knowledge of Western science and technology when it was taught through the medium of foreign language. Consequently, they failed to transmit adequately their newly acquired scientific knowledge to their countrymen for lack of suitable expressions in the Indian languages.

For the purpose of spreading European scientific knowledge through the Indian languages, Imdad Ali founded an association in 1868 at Muzaffarpur called the British Indian Association. Later the name was changed to the Bihar Scientific Society. The principal aim of the Society was diffusion of all kinds of knowledge throughout India. The emphasis was on bringing Western arts and sciences within the reach of even the lowest denominations of the society through translations in the local medium of Urdu, thus creating equality of opportunities to learn science in a stratified society. The Society also started a fortnightly Urdu newspaper called Akhbar-ul-Akhyar , which dealt with the educational subjects and aimed at improving “the moral, intellectual and social condition of the people.” As such, the Society entrusted the translation of many books on sciences to Maulvi Zakaullah and M. A. Rahim. The subjects in which books were translated included trigonometry, materia medica, optics, animal physiology, chemistry, dyeing, geography, botany, mechanics, algebra, agriculture, zoology, arithmetic, law, hospitals, mineralogy and masonry. The Bihar Scientific Society also established five schools at different places in which Western sciences were taught through the medium of Urdu. The schools were opened at Saran, Narban, Jaitpur, Hari and Sitamarhi in the vicinity of Muzaffarpur.