Yesterday (26 November, Constitution Day) at Constitution club, I received the Nilakantha honor from the Dalit organization “Kabir ke log” from a former Union deputy education minister (and scholar) Dr Sanjay Paswan). Click for a related article on dalit scientific Read more…
The long-awaited book Rhodes must Fall, by the Rhodes Must Fall Group at Oxford has been published by Zed books, and is distributed by the University of Chicago press.
It carries my censored article “To decolonise math stand up to its false history and bad philosophy” together with a supportive essay by Kevin Minors a black Bermudan doctoral student.
Recall that my article was censored by the South Africa editor of the Conversation on the false ground that it did not meet their editorial standards (though I intensively interacted with an editor for a week before publication). Basically, the editor succumbed to the furious response of the whites, to my article. The Conversation had earlier published the foolish (and obnoxious) claim that mathematics is essentially the work of dead white males, so blacks and women should be taught to think like them. In response, I pointed out that black Egyptians knew fractions 3000 years before Greeks, Romans, or Europeans learnt about elementary fractions.
The Conversation did not mind publishing that obnoxious falsehood, but the editor had no place for any truth that was anti-West. So, she objected to my referring to my own published work. Why? What on earth is wrong with that? Why should one not refer to one’s own published work? Obviously the unstated but racist ground was her belief that what a brown man says is not reliable, therefore, she will not permit him to say anything original, even if it has been peer reviewed and published earlier. He is allowed only to repeat and quote what some white man says. (This is also the Wikipedia policy: a white man, or an article approved by white men, is the only reliable source.)
Though my censored article was initially widely reproduced, sadly it was taken down by most publications around the globe. Only one Indian newspaper, the Wire, recognized the problem of racist censorship and put it back. Another international publication retained it under the title “Was Euclid a black woman?”. This is described in my article on Mathematics and Censorship, and the censored article was published in full as part of an article in a peer-reviewed journal: Journal of Black Studies. Clearly the editor of the Conversation was using utter lies to defend racist decisions.
The important thing to emphasize now is that #OxfordMustFall.
Thus, consider what happened in the panel discussion at the University of Cape Town a year ago.
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The Palestine Technical University, Kadourie, Palestine, is organizing the Sixth Palestinian Conference on Modern Trends in Mathematics and Physics PCMTMP-VI, 5th-8th August 2018.
I was invited to give two plenary talks (scheduled on 7th and 8th Aug) on
Decolonising mathematics: how and why it makes science better (and enables students to solve harder problems)
An extended summary and abstract of my proposed talk are posted online.
The Israeli embassy has, however, refused me a visa. No official reason or explanation was offered for the denial of visa. When I asked, an official from the Israeli embassy did very rudely warn me not to apply ever again for an Israeli visa.
Now five years ago, I visited Palestine (See blog post “Mathematics in refugee camps”, and a nice video on History and Philosophy of science). Of course, I did have a terrible experience with the Israelis: they charged me some USD 200 for a taxi for 8.5 km, then put me on a share taxi and promised to give the receipt after I crossed the border! Never encountered such terrible cheats anywhere else in the world. But last time the Israeli embassy in India had issued me a visa.
So, I am left wondering what has changed. Three things have changed. 1. Decolonisation, 2. Einstein, and 3. Indo-Israeli relationship
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Here are the media reports for the Rajju Ganit workshop from Dainik Bhaskar, Nai Duniya, Talk show by Global Herald, and Free Press Journal Global Herald talk show प्रसिद्ध गणितज्ञ सीके राजू से खास चर्चा Dainik Bhaskar Nai Duniya26 June Read more…
We have never re-examined our math education since independence to eliminate the trash myths and bad philosophy brought in by colonial education. Since people don’t understand the problems at the level of the calculus, this workshop takes up issues at Read more…
Thanks to Djehuti Ankh-Kheru for recently putting up a video of this entire lecture in Amsterdam.
Ten years ago, on 14/15 Aug 2007, on the 60th 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 16th 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 50th 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…)
[This article was first published in the Conversation (Global edition) on 24 October 2016. It quickly reached a readership of 16737, before being taken down, obviously because it represents a dangerous piece of dissent against racism and colonialism. For more Read more…
My articles on this were published in The Hindu, 3 Sep 2014, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/nothing-vedic-in-vedic-maths/article6373689.ece?homepage=true, and in Hindi in Jansatta, on 10 Aug 2014, http://epaper.jansatta.com/318935/Jansatta.com/Jansatta-Hindi-10082014#page/17/1 Many people have commented: (at last view, the Hindu article had 204 comments and Facebook Like/Share count was 4.5K). Read more…
Petition is given below. To sign online go to:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/teach-religiously-neutral-mathematics
If you are convinced, do also SPREAD the word by forwarding this email to others.
Anyone who has children or grandchildren in school (or had a bad math experience in school) qualifies as a potential signatory, as does anyone who wants real independence.
1. Printable copy: http://ckraju.net/petition/Petition-to-teach-religiously-neutral-math.pdf
2. Detailed explanation: http://ckraju.net/petition/Math-petition-explanatory-note.pdf
3. List of relevant books, papers, news etc: http://ckraju.net/papers/Reading-list-on-history-philosophy-of-math.html
————Petition——————
To,
HRD Minister, Govt of India,
Ministers and Secretaries of Education of all Indian States,
Vice Chancellors of various universities,
Chairperson, NBHM,
Director, NCERT
Sub: Ensure that mathematics taught in public schools is religiously neutral.
Dear Minister/Secretary/Vice Chancellor/Chairperson/Director,
Colonial education served the interests of the coloniser, so it should have been critically reviewed after independence. Unfortunately, this was not done till now, and our education system still imitates the West. Uncritical imitation may be harmful. European universities were set up by the church and controlled by it for centuries. Long-term church control meant sustained pressure to make all knowledge theologically correct. So, religious biases are likely in Western knowledge.
Indeed, the accompanying note explains that this applies even to mathematics: mathematics developed differently in different cultures, but Europeans perceived it in religious terms relating to mathesis and eternal truth. As the note explains, most school mathematics, such as arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, and probability, actually originated in the non-West and was imported into Europe for its practical value. However, Europeans attempted to make it theologically correct, and align the notion of infinity to the church notion of eternity. In the process, they turned mathematics into metaphysics and introduced elements of Christian dogma in it, so that there is a subtle religious bias in the way mathematics is taught in schools and universities today. Eliminating that religious bias does not affect any practical application of mathematics.
Teaching a religious bias through a compulsory subject in public schools is unconstitutional. Mathematics should be taught in public schools in a religiously-neutral way and for its practical value. Therefore, if the charge is right, the teaching of mathematics in schools must be changed forthwith. Mathematics is commonly regarded as a difficult subject, and the superfluous theological complexities in it may be the reason for that. We note that actual teaching experiments have been performed, in universities in various countries, to show that teaching mathematics, devoid of theological complexities, also makes it easy. If the charge were not right, then our educationists ought to have publicly refuted it long ago, since it has been published in 4 books, 32 scholarly articles and numerous newspapers, in various countries, for over a decade. The silence is strange.
This matter concerns millions of students each year, including our children or grandchildren about whose education we are deeply concerned. Accordingly, we feel that the issue must be decided in a transparent way. Usually, such decisions (regarding what mathematics to teach) are taken by experts. But to avoid a biased decision, the experts must be properly selected. The non-experts who select the experts must explain why they chose those experts. The customary practice is to select experts by blindly trusting Western endorsements and certifications, but that method is inappropriate in the present context of a critical review of colonial education, where the interests of the colonised and the coloniser may diverge fundamentally. Whose interests do these experts represent? This must be transparent, especially if there is no concrete evidence that these experts contributed to the welfare of people in India. Relying exclusively on Western certified experts just amounts to continuing the colonial system of requiring permission from the West for any change of policy.