The historical literature on science in colonial India is a rich and expanding field. However, while astronomy in earlier periods of Indian history has interested Indologists and Nehruvian scholars for some time, astronomy in the colonial period has attracted relatively modest attention, and indeed fostered little consensus. The existing literature on astronomy in colonial India includes works that see astronomical endeavour as part of the imperatives of the English East India Company, the principal agency of British rule in India until 1858. However, the historical literature also includes works that identify an interaction of traditional (Indian) and modern (Western) astronomical knowledge, again within the context of colonialism. In general, earlier authors seeking to chart the advent of modern astronomy in India described the spread of Western science. However, later authors stressed that astronomy in the colonial period could be about a coalescence of Indian and Western scientific ideas, and as such, representative of a dialogue within the colonial encounter. So, from a reading of this historical literature on astronomy in colonial India, it becomes clear that there are some fundamental, and as yet unresolved, questions. These relate to how Europeans and Indians engaged with astronomy in colonial India, and how this changed over the period, and whether modern astronomy was just representative of diffusive Western science, or whether there was greater scope within its practice for a cognitive interface between Europeans and Indians.