Government is celebrating 125th anniversary of Indian Mathematician Srinivasa ramanujan and observing his birthday as the National Mathematics Day. PM has also declared year 2012 as the National Mathematics Year. Reportedly, Robert Kanigel who is the author of The Man Who Knew Infinity (1991), first ever complete biography by an American author, was in India on an invitation from the Indian Academy of Sciences to give lectures as part of Ramanujan's birth anniversary celebrations. The Hindu has published his interview here. I happened to read this book when I was pursuing post graduation. With due respect to Kanigel & all those foreign authors who painstakingly research and publish about India and Indians, I somehow not comfortable with this fact of a foreigner writing so authoritatively about an Indian talent while we Indians remain alarmingly ignorant of our own scientific legacy.
Notwithstanding the amount and quality of research in such works, they still lack the cultural and social perspectives and remain confined to being nothing more than a skewed portrayal through a western lens.This arouses deeper questions. Why we Indian's are so poor in recognizing our own cultural legacy, our own historical achievements? Why do we need west to make us realize the true value of our accomplishments? What prevents us to be the first to write about our geniuses and our history and let the world know about it? Understand that We Indians have always been miserable in keeping the record of our own history. This is why Prof ramachandra Guha aptly raises this concern when he explored the central question of why historians of Asia do not write biographies and why they should duing a seminar in JNU.His main argument was that Asia has produced an interesting range of personalities and has a very rich literary tradition, but it is paradoxical why historians of Asia have not indulged in writing biographies. Among the probable reasons cited by Guha was the burden of religious inheritance in Hinduism and Buddhism and the belief in the cycle of rebirth. He further adds that an indifference to record keeping also precluded the writing of biography.
I wonder why do we always need a western cultural, literary or scientific yardstick to benchmark our accomplishments? Why couldn't a Ramanujan recognized by local authorities when he endured such hardships at home. Why did it take a GH Hardy sitting in England to recognize the talent in him? Understand that real talent needs right conditions at home to flourish. Only in stable economic and social conditions would they be able to seek recognition for their work.If such conditions are hard to come by in a politically, socially and economically unstable milieu, they migrate. We witnessed this during second WW when an overwhelming number of scientists and artists migrated from European countries of German occupations.This is not a new phenomenon for India too. Could this be exactly the reason why a Sun micro systems or a Hotmail got set up outside India? Or is this the reason why we have so many reasons to vehemently eulogize Non-resident Indian talents and their achievements while back home our scientific or artistic talent remains largely unacknowledged?
Notwithstanding the amount and quality of research in such works, they still lack the cultural and social perspectives and remain confined to being nothing more than a skewed portrayal through a western lens.This arouses deeper questions. Why we Indian's are so poor in recognizing our own cultural legacy, our own historical achievements? Why do we need west to make us realize the true value of our accomplishments? What prevents us to be the first to write about our geniuses and our history and let the world know about it? Understand that We Indians have always been miserable in keeping the record of our own history. This is why Prof ramachandra Guha aptly raises this concern when he explored the central question of why historians of Asia do not write biographies and why they should duing a seminar in JNU.His main argument was that Asia has produced an interesting range of personalities and has a very rich literary tradition, but it is paradoxical why historians of Asia have not indulged in writing biographies. Among the probable reasons cited by Guha was the burden of religious inheritance in Hinduism and Buddhism and the belief in the cycle of rebirth. He further adds that an indifference to record keeping also precluded the writing of biography.
I wonder why do we always need a western cultural, literary or scientific yardstick to benchmark our accomplishments? Why couldn't a Ramanujan recognized by local authorities when he endured such hardships at home. Why did it take a GH Hardy sitting in England to recognize the talent in him? Understand that real talent needs right conditions at home to flourish. Only in stable economic and social conditions would they be able to seek recognition for their work.If such conditions are hard to come by in a politically, socially and economically unstable milieu, they migrate. We witnessed this during second WW when an overwhelming number of scientists and artists migrated from European countries of German occupations.This is not a new phenomenon for India too. Could this be exactly the reason why a Sun micro systems or a Hotmail got set up outside India? Or is this the reason why we have so many reasons to vehemently eulogize Non-resident Indian talents and their achievements while back home our scientific or artistic talent remains largely unacknowledged?
3 comments:
Once again an apt observation from sociocultural perspective on the work of a genius. However, I am a bit averse of subversionists like Guha et. al. --well that is all IMHO, but you would be much benefited by reading more of his writings and comparing them with a, say KS Lal, Koenraad Elst or Dharampal.
Allow me share the link of probably the most erudite Indic scholar active on the net.He recently made a post on the genius of SR. Hope you'll appreciate it:
http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/squaring-of-the-circle-by-srinivasa-ramanujan/
I hope you won't mistake me for promoting any links. I share them only with those who are armed with at least a bare minimum understanding of scholarly discourses.
Cheers!
-R
Refreshing blog post on this ancient mathematical problem...hardly surprising to know that our different yajurvedic traditions had already arrived at multiple approximations of this...astonished to learn the interesting bit about relationship between value of pi and length of river. with a bit of googling on this, i ended up with this snippet -
"Professor Hans-Henrik Stolum, an earth scientist at Cambridge University has calculated the ratio between the actual length of rivers from source to mouth and their direct length as the crow flies. Although the ratio varies from river to river, the average value is slightly greater than 3, that is to say that the actual length is roughly three times greater than the direct distance. In fact the ratio is approximately 3.14, which is close to the value of the number pi... The ratio of pi is most commonly found for rivers flowing across very gently sloping planes, such as those found in Brazil or the Siberian tundra."....interesting ain't it?
brilliant blog overall...thanks for sharing
There are many many other matters being discussed over there, reflecting the towering mental acumen of the author.
Glad to know you enjoyed it!
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