India's schoolbook histories
By Subhash Kak Rediff August 22, 2003
Living as we do in the multicultural age, it is not
fashionable to speak of the soul of a nation. But by
examining a nation's achievements, one can form an idea of
the moving spirit behind its history.
A strong ideological position or cultural prejudice may make
a person denigrate achievements in the fields of art or
philosophy. Thus early nineteenth century English
historians, unable to judge Indian sculpture using Western
canon with its notion of progress, dismissed Indian art.
India's contributions to science, technology and crafts are
well documented, if not widely known. For example, before
the British arrived, Indians had a system of inoculation
against smallpox; year-old live smallpox matter was used,
and it was very effective. Tikadars would fan out into the
country before the smallpox season in the winter. The
British doctor J Z Holwell wrote a book in 1767 describing
the system and how it was safe. European medicine did not
have any treatment against this disease at that time.
Inoculation against smallpox using cowpox was demonstrated
by Edward Jenner in 1798 and it became a part of Western
medicine by 1840. No sooner did that happen that the British
in India banned the older method of vaccination, without
making certain that sufficient number of inoculators in the
new technique existed. Smallpox in India became a greater
scourge than before.
India's technology was flourishing before the British. It
has been estimated that India's share of world trade in 1800
was about 20 percent (equal to America's share of world
trade in 2000). The historian Ruttonjee Wadia says that
ships built at Mumbai in its heyday were 'vastly superior to
anything built anywhere else in the world.' According to
Dharampal, there were 10,000 iron and steel furnaces
operating in the eighteenth century India.
The story of the destruction of India's textile industry by
the British is too well known to need repeating. The British
became masters of India at a very opportune time. First,
they cut off India's export markets. Soon the innovations of
the dawning industrial revolution gave their products a cost
advantage that became permanent in the absence of new
investments to upgrade Indian factories.
As India became de-industrialised, it turned into a huge
monopoly market for British products. British Raj made token
investments in science and technology. In 1920, India's
scientific services had a total of 213 scientists of whom
195 were British!
But this story of India's economic decline (and the loss of
memory of its previous condition) is a complex one. Here, I
would like to speak of scientific progress alone, a unique
measure of a culture that can be appreciated by all, even
those whose ideology or experience of art and aesthetics is
different.
Suppose you were offered a history of the English without
reference to Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell or of the
Americans without mention of Edison, Michelson, or Feynman,
you would say it overlooks the real genius of these
nations. Youth in these countries brought up without the
stories of these masters would not be quite English or
American in spirit.
Given this, why is it that Indian schools leave out mention
of India's great scientists from its textbooks? Most readers
of this column will have heard only one or two names of the
greatest Indian scientists and mathematicians: Lagadha,
Baudhayana, Panini, Pingala, Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Madhava,
Nilakantha, whose ideas have shaped the world.
Who are these people? Lagadha wrote the first astronomical
text in 1300 BC. Baudhayana (800 BC) gave the 'Pythagoras
theorem' centuries before the Greek. Panini (400 century BC)
has been called the greatest genius who ever lived: his
grammar of the Sanskrit language is exhaustive and yet it
uses only 4,000 computer program-like rules. Pingala (400
BC) invented the binary number system (counting by 0s and
1s) that, 2,500 years later, turned out to be basic to
computer operations.
The astronomers Aryabhata and Bhaskara may be familiar to
some from the eponymous spacecrafts of the Indian Space
Organization. Aryabhata (500 AD) took the earth to spin on
its axis and he described the planet periods with reference
to the sun. He also took the solar system to be several
hundred million miles across. In all of these things he was
ahead of the rest of the world by more than a thousand
years. Bhaskara (12th century) was a brilliant
mathematician.
The last two names belong to the amazing Kerala school of
mathematics and astronomy. Mâdhava (c 1340-1425) and
Nîlakantha (c 1444-1545), who made fundamental contributions
to power series, calculus and astronomy, are amongst the
greatest scientists who have ever lived. Their invention of
calculus came two hundred years before Newton and Leibnitz.
Three British historians have recently suggested that Kerala
mathematics may have provided key ideas for the scientific
revolution in Europe. The need for clocks to keep accurate
time on ships became of critical importance after the
colonisation of America. There were significant financial
rewards for new navigation techniques. These historians
argue that information was sought from India due to the
prestige of the eleventh century Arabic translations of
Indian navigational methods. They suggest that Jesuit
missionaries were the intermediaries in the diffusion of
Kerala mathematical ideas into Europe.
The only rational explanation for leaving out mention of
India's great scientists from schoolbooks appears either to
be bureaucratic sloth in the centralised textbook writing
agency or the internalisation by Indians of the ideology of
British colonialists who justified the Empire on the ground
that India had a lot of religion but no science, thus being
incapable of self-rule.
Macaulay's programme to estrange Indians from their culture
has been so successful that most textbook authors are not
even aware of the Kerala school, or of Pingala and Panini's
scientific contributions. Many who are passionate in their
love for India are so misguided by the prestige of the
Orientalist narratives that they believe that Madhava and
Nilakantha are fictional characters, product of a conspiracy
to create an imagined greatness for ancient India.
To me, India represents the spirit of excellence and pursuit
of beauty and truth in art and science. There is nothing
parochial about this idea; it is inspiring, and it helps us
find our common ground with all humanity. Our schools must
celebrate this spirit and remembering great masters is a
part of the process. Making peace with the past will make it
easier to move on with the business of creating a great
future for everyone.
External Link:
Ian Pearce's history of Indian mathematics www-history.mcs.st-www-history.mcs.st-Open ↗
andrews.ac.uk/history/Projects/Pearce/index.html
Subhash Kak, professor at Louisiana State University, will
contribute a monthly column to rediff.com
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