Math is not a tool for cultural nationalism

In August, the University Grants Commission (UGC) released the draft undergraduate curriculum for nine subjects, including mathematics, as part of the National Education Policy (NEP). The next month, 900 Indian mathematicians signed a petition calling for the UGC to withdraw the draft math curriculum.

Concerns

They argued that it is “riddled with grave defects” that could harm students’ academic and career prospects. They raised concerns about the limited coverage of core subjects, the neglect of applied math, and the poorly conceived design of elective courses. They also voiced reservations about the promotion of a political agenda related to ancient Indian knowledge systems — the draft curriculum includes courses on Kala Ganpana (traditional Indian time calculation), Bharatiya Bijganit (Indian algebra), Shulba Sutra (maxims of fire-altar measurements), among others.

One of the key promoters of the NEP and of the draft curriculum is Manjul Bhargava, winner of the 2014 Fields Medal, and a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University. He said at a talk in New Delhi on September 4, “It is not about trying to put down or belittle other cultures or civilisations and glorify your own. Every civilisation has made important contributions to math that we can be proud of. We must own ours and be proud of them. It acts as an inspiration to the current generation”. He argued that proponents of “western math” often downplay the immense contributions of non-Western civilisations. In doing so, they leverage math — perceived as universal and objective — as a tool for culturally marginalising these foundational contributions.

Though this critique carries some element of truth, it raises a crucial question: are we not committing a parallel error by forcing math into a nationalist mould? To focus a singular “Indic” lineage in the teaching syllabus for the subject requires an equally problematic distortion of its universal character, selectively highlighting one cultural contribution while ignoring the indispensable role of others. This approach replicates the very colonial logic it seeks to oppose.

While the social and historical context of math is undeniably cultural, the truth of its statements is universal. The proposition that 2 + 2 = 4 is not a “Western” truth; it is a mathematical truth, independent of the culture that discovers or uses it. In this light, the project of cultural nationalists in India, who seek to highlight mathematical contributions as belonging exclusively to a single civilisational lineage and as evidence of its cultural superiority, commits the same error as that of the Western colonialists they often accuse. Both attempts aim to monopolise math culturally, which undermines its status as an objective, universally accessible pursuit of truth.

Thus, many critics are wary that a nationalist or revivalist agenda could overshadow historical accuracy and academic rigour. The fear is that the narrative could become “India invented everything first,” which is not only historically inaccurate but also counterproductive to the spirit of scientific inquiry. Politicians often provide fodder for this concern. For instance, a politician from the ruling party recently declared in a school that a Hindu deity was the first to travel to space; this is part of a continuing sequence of such pseudoscientific pronouncements.

A collaborative effort

The foundations of mathematical thought emerged from a transcontinental endeavour. It was shaped by transactions and exchanges among cultures such as the Babylonian, Egyptian, Indic, Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Greek. In the remnants of buildings, water facilities, and aqueducts left by the Harappan settlers, which predate the composition of the Vedas, one can see engineering math in a visible form. To confine mathematical thoughts to a distinct “Vedic” category in a college-level syllabus is, therefore, ahistorical and pedagogically unsound. Early formulations naturally contained immature ideas and assumptions incompatible with scientific methods, reflecting an imperfect understanding of the world. While it is valuable to study this evolution from a sociological or theological perspective, any such teaching module must incorporate all major ancient schools of mathematical thought and emphasise their interactive nature; it should not be mixed up with a modern math syllabus.

Trained in conventional pedagogy and content, most math teachers lack the training in Indology required to teach ancient Indian math texts (such as those of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta) with an objective lens. Would they be capable of imparting training free of ideological bias to students? To expose students solely to one stream of historical math, with all its imperfections, as an instrument to establish cultural superiority is to do them a profound injustice. This approach obscures the bigger picture: that math is a universal human achievement, refined across centuries and continents through collaborative efforts. It is also unclear what measurable math skills students will gain from this study component that they wouldn’t gain from a standard curriculum. Will it improve their problem-solving abilities, logical reasoning, and analytical skills, and make them globally competitive in a world that AI, machine learning, and data science will dominate?

The initiative appears to be a top-down imposition of a nationalist ideology on the education system. The debate is no longer just about what is taught, but about the purpose of education and the safeguarding of scientific reasoning as the cornerstone of a democracy.

C.P. Rajendran is an Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru