Welcome remarks by the Director during the Vimarsh lecture by Prof C K Raju on "Practical Gaṇita vs Religious Mathematics" on Thursday 14th September, 2023

Dear Friends,

I would like to welcome you all to today’s Vimarsh talk by Prof CK Raju on an unusual but interesting topic “Practical Gaṇita vs Religious Mathematics".

Prof Raju is PhD from the Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata and was the member of the C-DAC team, which built the first Indian Super Computer in the 1980s.

He has taught and researched mathematics and published several books. These include; Ending Academic Imperialism (2011); Euclid and Jesus (2012); Cultural Foundation of Mathematics (2007); Towards a Consistence Theory (1994); Eleven Pictures of Time (2003). In his work, he has shown how to relate science and religion, proposed, given a new philosophy of math called Zeroism. He has received several honours and awards including the TGA award in Hungry in 2010 for correcting Einstein’s mistake, the fellowship of Institute of Complex Thought, Lima; and received the Bhartiya Dharohar Award, MP.

You can see from his brief CV that Prof Raju is an original thinker who has made significant contribution in the field of mathematics, physics and Indian scientific heritage.

In today’s talk Prof Raju is going to explore the characteristics of Bhartiya Ganita. He has written several articles and given talk on the subject. He points out that the West was much behind Indian and Egyptian math for millennia and had difficulty in understanding Indian mathematics. They invented formal axioms and symbol to understand calculus. The axioms based mathematics is not superior to Bhartiya Ganita, which is easier to learn and use. Dr Raju has been advocating a radical shift in teaching calculus the way it was originally invented by Arya Bhatta in 5th century C.E.

You will hear from him today how Bhartiya Ganita differs from formal mathematics.

I request Prof Raju to take the floor.