India: Contested glory: How our disputed past continues to haunt us in our present (Dileep Padgaonkar)

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/talking-terms/contested-glory-how-our-disputed-past-continues-to-haunt-us-in-our-present/

Contested glory: How our disputed past continues to haunt us in our present
January 10, 2015, 12:03 AM IST Dileep Padgaonkar in Talking Terms | Edit Page, India | TOI

The recent controversy over Hindutva-driven claims about the seminal contributions of ancient Indians to the world’s pool of scientific and technological knowledge must be seen for what it is: evidence of repeated attempts made for close to two centuries to sacrifice historical scholarship at the altar of one or the other ideology or political ambition. In each case the aim was either to glorify some parts of the past or to be sceptical about them with scant regard for analytical rigour.

Bereft of multiple interpretations derived from a critical scrutiny of texts and of archaeological artefacts what you get is not history but propaganda. More often than not it expresses an acute sense of insularity. Indeed, as early as the 11th century, al-Biruni, a towering Muslim scholar well versed in several disciplines, published a comprehensive survey of the arts and sciences, literatures and religions of India under the title Kitab Tarik al-Hind in which he observed: “Hindus believe that there is no country like theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no science like theirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited and stolid.”

He went on to add: “The so-called scientific theorems of the Hindus are in a state of utter confusion, devoid of any logical order, and in the last instance always mixed with silly notions of the crowd. I can only compare their mathematical and astronomical literature, as far as I know it, to a mixture of pearls and dung and of costly crystals and common pebbles. Both kinds of things are equal in their eyes, since they cannot raise themselves to the methods of a strictly scientific deduction.” The finest scientific minds closer to our times have echoed these very sentiments.

Before anyone rushes to rubbish al-Biruni let it be mentioned right away that he was all praise for the ancestors of Hindus he met. Unlike the latter, who were smug in their insularity, the former, he emphasised, were not narrow-minded. They shared their inventions and discoveries — notably in astronomy, mathematics and medicine — and their philosophical explorations with the outside world even as they were eager to learn from Greeks and Persians, Arabs and Chinese and many others without the constraints of religion, politics and commerce.

Such indeed was their reputation for scholarship that the 8th-century Abbasid Caliphs of Baghdad got their works translated into Arabic. Under Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the royal hospital was headed by an Indian physician. In his book Alladin’s Lamp, John Freely, an American scholar, provides a detailed account of how Greek science came to Europe through the Islamic world that had, in turn, obtained much of its knowledge from Indian savants.

For instance, Severus Sebokht, a distinguished 7th-century Syriac scholar, praised Hindus for “their valuable methods of calculation, and their computation that surpasses description”. Other fine minds in the Muslim world — 9th-century Baghdad-based mathematician and astronomer al-Khwarizmi, 15th-century Arabic mathematician al-Qalasadi — and in Christian Europe — 12th-century Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci — acknowledged their debt to their Hindu counterparts for their pioneering work in algebra, algorithm, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. (To Fibonacci goes the credit for introducing, via Arabic texts, ‘the new Indian numerals’ to Europe.)

Rather than engage in sterile ideological and political squabbles, those who take a lively interest in the history of ancient India would therefore do well to revisit it with analytical acumen. The example of Joseph Needham, an outstanding 20th-century Cambridge scientist, is worthy of emulation. Over a period of 50 years, he published a monumental work running into more than a score of volumes on China’s sterling accomplishments in the scientific and technological fields. He had mastered the Chinese language which enabled him to collaborate with China’s outstanding scientific minds. Needham changed the way the euro-centric world looked at China’s civilisation.

Some official and private initiatives are underway to produce an authoritative account of the genuine efforts of Indians to expand the frontiers of knowledge. But so far their outcome raises more questions than answers them. Any such endeavour needs to be spearheaded by someone of Needham’s stature. None is in sight. And it needs a lodestar of the kind that guided al-Biruni: “All cultures are distant relatives because they are all human constructs.” That lodestar too is nowhere in the firmament.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.