Maths without tears could be coming soon

AFTER yoga and curry, India’s next gift to the world could be the secret to lightning quick mental arithmetic, according to its Hindu nationalist government.

Vedic mathematics, a set of supposedly ancient techniques said to help even the most numerically challenged to conquer difficult sums, is surging in popularity as ministers claim they could hold the key to better education.

From next month, three Indian universities will offer courses in the techniques and pupils can watch a digital TV channel devoted to the subject. Several thousand teachers have been recruited for private college courses. Its supporters believe Vedic maths could become a major export.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attempted to claim the foundations of swathes of knowledge for India. It is argued that algebra, trigonometry, Pythagoras’s theorem, the concept of zero and the decimal system all originated in India. Perhaps less credibly, Modi has claimed its ancient thinkers conceived of powered flight thousands of years before the Wright brothers. He has also claimed that Lord Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu god, was evidence of early Indian knowledge of plastic surgery.

Vedic maths is a series of short cuts for complicated calculations, based on 16 verses discovered in the early 20th century.

“I want it to go worldwide. Students in Singapore, the UK, the US are very interested because it’s so easy . . . mathematics without tears,” said Dinanath Batra, a Hindu nationalist educationist.

One speeds multiplying large numbers by breaking them down to their common bases: To multiply 48 by 52, the numbers are broken into (50-2) and (50+2) and the square of the smaller number (4) is subtracted from the square of the larger (2 500) to reach the answer of 2 496.

Division is simplified by multiplying the denominator into a base 10 number: 44/25 = 176/100 = 1.76.