Science and Society

1-The fraud-news blitz

Ten years ago, on 14/15 Aug 2007, on the 60^th anniversary of India’s independence, PTI London released a piece of fraud news. All major newspapers in India prominently carried it, Hindustan Times on the front page, The Hindu on the back page etc. According to the news, two British researchers from Manchester and Exeter universities had established that the calculus developed in India before Newton. But they added that this left Newton’s greatness unaffected.
The news was based on a press release posted on the Manchester university website (now removed from its site, since it was a fraud, but archived here).
The news was also carried internationally, for example, by the London Telegraph. I phoned them, and pointed out that I had recently published a whole book dealing with the transmission of the calculus. Cultural Foundations of Mathematics (Pearson Longman. 2007). The subtitle of the book itself said this: it was “The nature of mathematical proof, and the transmission of the calculus from India to Europe in the 16^th c. CE”. The book emphasized the development of calculus in India with a different philosophy of mathematics, and its theft by Cochin-based Jesuits. This theft of knowledge was carried out to solve the major scientific challenge then facing Europe: navigation. But, after stealing it, the same churchmen wrote utterly false histories glorifying the West by claiming that Newton and Leibniz invented the calculus. Colonialism was built on this false history, not any technological superiority, as I have explained elsewhere.
My calculus book was the culmination of a ten year effort since 1997, partly funded by two agencies: the Indian National Science Academy since 1998 (Project on Madhava and the Origin of the Calculus), and the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture, with which I was associated since its inception in the early 90’s, but accepted an Editorial Fellowship only in 1999. The 500-page book (an authored volume, not an edited volume) was the 50^th volume in the PHISPC series.
When I brought this to the notice of the London Telegraph they said they had not checked the news, and removed the fraud news item from their website.
In Hindustan Times the front page news carried the signature of Vijay Dutt their London correspondent.

I contacted the HT office, and further pointed out that one of the purported authors of the Manchester paper had been earlier involved in plagiarising my work and warned in 2004 by Exeter University. The HT had given prominent coverage to that news in 2004.
(If the above is difficult to read, download the pdf file posted here.) (more…)