Indic
Mathematics:
India and the Scientific Revolution
Dr.
David Gray
The study of mathematics in the West has long been characterized by a certain ethnocentric bias, a bias which most often manifests not in explicit racism, but in a tendency toward undermining or eliding the real contributions made by non-Western civilizations.
A perfect example of this sort of misattribution involves the so-called Pythagorean theorem, the well-known theorem which was attributed to Pythagoras who lived around 500 BCE, but which was first proven in Greek sources in Euclid's Geometry, written centuries later. Despite the scarcity of evidence backing this attribution, it is not often questioned, perhaps due to the mantra-like frequency with which it is repeated. However, Seidenberg, in his 1978 article, shows that the thesis that Greece was the origin of geometric algebra was incorrect, "for geometric algebra existed in India before the classical period in Greece." (1978:323) It is now generally understood that the so-called "Pythagorean theorem" was understood in ancient India, and was in fact proved in Baudhayana's Shulva Sutra, a text dated to circa 600 BCE. (1978:323).
BSE - bullish trend
" Okay, I'll buy you a necklace if the Sensex
touches 7000. And if it hits 7500,
I'll sell it and put the money back in stocks".
Maoists
Gain Momentum in India
by B.Raman
As in Nepal, in India too, the Maoists have been waging a People's War
in 13 States of the Indian Union. Indian policy-makers and media refrain
from calling them Maoists, possibly due to a fear that characterising
them as Maoists might create negative perceptions of China in the minds
of the public, at a time when the relations between the two countries
are improving. They, therefore, choose to refer to them as Naxalites,
originating from the word Naxalbari, which is the name of a village
in the State of West Bengal, where this movement was born four decades
ago.The late Mao Zedong and his Thoughts
have been responsible for more deaths of innocent civilians in acts
of terrorism in Indian territory outside Jammu & Kashmir (J&K)
and in Nepal than Osama bin Laden and his Thoughts as expressed in his
periodic fatwas, broadcasts and telecasts.
How does one characterise the Maoist movement in India --- understandable though not justifiable political violence due to economic and social injustice against the deprived sections of the population? Ideological insurgency? Ideological terrorism? If it is just political violence, how does one explain instances of indiscriminate killing of civilians through the use of land-mines and improvised explosive devices and targeted assassinations of political leaders such as the attempt in 2003 to assassinate Shri Chandrababu Naidu, the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh? It would be more appropriate to describe it as a mix of insurgency and terrorism as in the case of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an ethnic and not a Marxist or Maoist organisation. as one saw in the case of the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) of Sri Lanka, a Marxist organisation, and as one has been seeing in the case of the Maoists of Nepal.
CHINA
- INDIA Strategic Alliance: Should
not be Unthinkable: An Analysis
by Subhash Kapila
China and India are rising powers in the global strategic firmament. China and India are also civilisational powers with a glowing heritage and history of civilised institutions dating back to centuries. Before the advent of Muslim rule in India, both countries had a record of friendly exchanges and interaction with no adversarial past.
China and India’s adversarial postures emerged after the Communist take-over of China after a long civil war and India’s independence from British rule. Analytically, it can be asserted that China and India may not have entered into an adversarial mode had Tibet remained an independent buffer state. China’s assertion of its historical control of Tibet by military occupation in 1950 and Indian Prime Minister Nehru’s acquiescence to it changed the strategic situation. China’s borders now rested on the old India-Tibet border. This paved the way for the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and all that followed is now recorded in contemporary history.
The contemporary scene in China-India relations today is that both nations are engaged in attempting to put the past behind and forge new relationships based on the emerging global strategic realities. Trade and economic ties have grown exponentially in the last five years and China’s new leaders have expressed determination to find solutions to the China-India boundary dispute which be-devilled relations in the past. MORE