Ramchandra's Treatise through `The Haze of the Golden Sunset': An Aborted Pedagogy

Abstract

In 1850, Yesudas Ramchandra published a work entitled A Treatise on the Problems of Maxima and Minima. The inspiration behind the work lay in the nineteenth-century understanding that the Indian tradition of mathematics was essentially algebraic. As part of the task of `revitalization' undertaken by the avant-garde of the Indian intelligentsia, Ramchandra sought to introduce the Indian people to the latest developments in calculus, in their `native' idiom. In the paper, we discuss the conditions under which the work emerged, as well as the cultural grounding of this mathematical pedagogy. Even though the work evinced the interest of leading mathematicians such as Augustus De Morgan, who campaigned for its publication in England and circulation in Europe, the book did not find a niche for itself in Indian school/college curricula. On this count, we raise some conjectures and questions. We argue that, in the post-1857 period, the theories of knowledge that held that it was possible to graft modern scientific learning on to a Sanskritic base could not overcome the Macaulayan education programme. The spirit of Ramchandra's Treatise was quite at odds with the imperial education policy, though it would have been in tune with the early Orientalist educational programme.