<p>This paper attempts to study the contribution of Indian forest officials of the British Forest Department and Indian political and science activist’s role in developing the knowledge base of forestry in Colonial India. By tracing the developmental phase of scientific forestry in British India, following the official, institutional, and unofficial forestry literature, this paper will show how the Indians contributed significantly to developing the knowledge base of scientific forestry despite colonial administrative and racial constraints. The British Empire implemented scientific forestry to make the colonial forest policy in India with specific commercial and imperial goals in mind. However, the knowledge base of forestry evolved somewhat differently than the empire expected. Far from being passive receivers of Western knowledge, Indian subjects shaped the knowledge formation of scientific forestry through acts of acceptance and resistance. This paper will demonstrate that while Indian forest officials used the colonial administrative space to create their literature on scientific forestry, Indian writers, scholars, and nationalists were creating voices of resistance against the colonial forest policy.</p>