In this essay, I will discuss a conflation of knowledge and demands for political reform in mid-nineteenth-century India. At the centre of my discussion is an objection to the often-reiterated argument that emphasizes how colonial forms of knowledge underpinned the British regime in its bid to control and subjugate Indians. Rather, I would suggest that Indians appropriated and put to work data and institutional forms for making and communicating knowledge that the British initially had monopolized, in political activities challenging the British administration.