Education Policy And The Ancient Wisdom
The National Education Policy has just arrived. Only time will tell if it rcelaimed the Vedas and the Vedic Maths and their wisdom or put them to sleep forever. With it; the truth!
Arithmatic is axiomatic! It is the ultimate truth of everything upon which the entre cosmos and even its chaos is based. Everything is measured within the matrix of time and motion. In the good old days, the essence of research meant approaching an outcome from different perspectives and hence the word re-search!
A meaningful film that lost its substance as a consequence of its beautiful narrative, was “The Man who knew infinity” that spoke of Ramanujan. The film has a scene where Ramanujan is walking the beach in Madras with his wife and asks his wife what she sees. “Sand” says the pretty girl. Ramanujan then picks up sand in his hand and says, “Imagine if you could look closely, you could see each grain, each particle. You see, there are patterns in everything”
The dichotomy between western and Indian belief has always been on the inflection point between evidence and existence. While the western world dwells in evidence to acknowledge existence, the Indian system believes in the tenet of existence preceding evidence. In other words, the lack of evidence does not mean lack of existence. It sees patterms even in space.
In that difference of thought lies the delta of intuition that is owed entirely to the Indian belief and system. In their case, while church remaind the custodian of faith and logic was based only on evidence. The Indian System has the distance of sun from earth mapped in four lines written by Swami Tulsidas, in his ode to Lord Hanumana, the monkey god.
Ramanujan was the first Indian exponent who with his ‘Summation Theory’ proved Infinity. His postulation was acknowledged by the Trinity college. In that he bridged a major divide betweeen the western thought and Indian belief. The confluence of which should only be credited to Ramanujan and rightfully so to the “Ramnujan Theory of Summation”. That theory of summation found its application in quantum physics too, that acknowledges that vacuum is not empty but seething with activity populated by virtual particles that pop in and out of existence all the time.
While we acknowledge the genius of Stephen Hawking, it is beyond an argument that if Aryabhatta invented zero that led us to understanding the complexity of the infinite cosmos, then Steehen Hawking is only an exponent of that ‘existence’. Among several of Hawking’s works, “A brief history of time” and “The theory of everything” has etablsihed “Existence” as the predecessor of “Evidence”.
The dominance of english language and numericals have however snowed the Indian belief system much under its own pedagogy, that is further buttresed by the infalliable argument of the British that leaves all other languages indefensible that“English puts every other language at an equal disadvantage” While it sends the jury into a tizzy, the affairs of the world carry on.
Surely, Thomas Macaulay, and his argument that Western learning was superior, and could only be taught through the medium of English was both positively arrogant and misplaced.
At one end of that disadvantaged spectrum lies Sanskrit and our ancient Mathematics. While Sanskrit and its derived languages are the only ones in the world that have phonetics that read as they are written and are devoid of all deceit and silent consonants and vowels, the calculations have been outsourced to calculators and computers.
Hindi as others, derived from Sanskrit comprises 5 sets of 5 phonetics in each set help train the throat, the palate, the tomgue, the teeth and the lips. A NASA associate Scientist, Rick Briggs, in a research paper in 1985, claimed Sanskrit – the ancient Hindu language – as the most suitable language to develop computer programming for Artificial Intelligence programs.
With AI tools coming up and IOT becoming a reality, the time is not far when the human logic and reasoning will be outsourced to machines rendering the humans redundant. The ramifications can be as numbing as disastrous if equally exponential. Human intelligence will be the biggest casualty of Artificial Intelligence.
It is on this point of inflection that a case needs to be built for Vedic Maths. Its time the education paradigm is reinvented, to make learning fun and meaningfully gamify the teaching learning pedagogies. Our children are captive to a completely bland education that is neither inspiring nor effective. Neither values nor employment skills are given. Let alone children, we ask if even as adults how often have, we thought of our conscience. Each indidvidual is trying to build her or his own tower of babel.
An essential part of the logic building was an understanding of mathematics, a study of numbers, shapes and patterns, rooted in science, astrology and even astronomy and their knowledge and learning.
This is the time to bring to life from the rigor mortis of conventional mathematics that is taught there. This is the time to introduce Vedic Mathematics in our curriculum both in schools and colleges. Through such mathematics they could resolve truth or falsity conjectures and even predict nature. The Konark Sun temple and Jantar Mantar are a living embodiment of beauty, art, architecture, culture and truth.
The ancient or Vedic mathematics has algorithms for whole number multiplication, division, fraction conversion to repeating decimal numbers, calculations with measures of mixed units, summation of a series, squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots, and divisibility by osculation. A living example until recently, Shakuntala Devi, the prodigal daughter of the nation, a mathematician and a Guinness record holder, who lived in our times, explained the methods she used, to do mental calculations, in her book “Figuring: The Joy of Numbers”. Simply put, the art of manipulating numbers enhances the power of reasoning, creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving ability. Pythagoras said that “Numbers rule the universe”.
The 16 sutras of ancient Vedic mathematics are simple and involve additions and subtractions and are even consistent with several numerical methods credited to Newton. They are useful in writing algorithms and codes for computers. Even convergence of numerical methods can be ensured by following the sutras. Instaed of dismissing these as cheap tricks, focussed research into them is called for. Maybe, there are many more sutras to be discovered. Our institutions and universities can make a start. Our policy makers in Shastri Bhavan must hand hold them.
While our ancient Mathematics is only pleading to be allowed to live and co-exist alongside the western system, there cannot be a greater disservice to a community than killing its heritage and cultural ethos. The oldest religion, Hinduism and along with it, its rich learning pedagogies, may be marginalised in the process. With that argument it may be time to pick up sand and look at it closely and perhaps realise that each granule of sand is wrapped in a sheath of water and thereby carries upom its skin an ocean itself. The National Education Policy has just arrived. Only time will tell if it rcelaimed the Vedas and Vedic Maths or our linguistic roots, Sanskrit.
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