British attitudes to local Indian skill and knowledge varied widely. The famed British surveyor and administrator George Everest was disparaging in 1832, declaring that
“though the natives may be competent to making screws and other small matters, which do not require any very fine work, it does not follow that they are equal to all the nicer and more delicate parts of Mathematical Instruments.”(2)
But when the Survey of India lost its British instrument specialist Henry Barrow in 1839, Everest came to depend on the Madras-born instrument-maker Syed Mir Mohsin Hussain (d. 1864). In a report endorsing Mohsin Hussain’s promotion, Everest wrote that
“[Mohsin Hussain] is peculiarly remarkable for his inventive talent, the facility with which he comprehends all mechanical arrangements, and the readiness with which he enters into all the new ideas of others. … He has both genius and originality.”(3)
Mohsin Hussain was eventually granted the title of Mathematical Instrument Maker to the British Survey, on half the pay of Barrow.
Read more about the role of Indian ‘Pundits’ in British surveys of North India