India’s history is still being studied through colonial eyes — because we haven’t digitised our own sources. Prof. C.S.C. Yogananda, mathematician and digital humanities pioneer, makes a compelling case for why decolonisation of education must begin not with ideology but with accessibility.
His core argument is both practical and urgent: vernacular Indian-language texts contain 8–10 times more knowledge than what’s available in Sanskrit alone, yet our textbooks still derive from Cambridge-authored English interpretations of local sources those scholars once read and filtered. The typewriter, he reveals in a striking historical detour, was the technology that pushed Kannada out of courts — not colonial intent alone. Today, AI poses the same risk if Indian-language data is not digitised immediately.
He advocates making all pre-copyright Indian books publicly available online as the single most powerful first step — one that would naturally catalyse demand for manuscripts and inscriptions. His vision for 2047: a classroom where medium of instruction is irrelevant, the Gurukula method of holistic learning is mainstream, and Aryabhata — not European footnotes — is where trigonometry begins.

About the Speaker:

Professor C. S. Yogananda is a renowned mathematician. He is the founder of Sriranga Digital Software Technologies which is aimed at digitizing the ancient Indian texts and manuscripts in Sanskrit and vernacular languages. He is also a well-known author who has published several writings on mathematics.