Motilal Banarsidass is a 100 years old and celebrating typically with a programme of more than a 100 workshops on the hot new buzz: Vedic Mathematics. India’s best-known firm of Indological publishers is justly proud that it was their publication of the first textbook on Vedic math that led to its discovery and popularity in the West. Typically, Indians opposed it when the book first appeared and they oppose it now. Let’s not forget that the zero and Hindu numerals were invented here and went to Baghdad university, where the great mathematician al-Khwarizmi wrote his treatise ‘Upon Calculation With Hindu Numerals’ which went west and changed history. “But Indians can’t accept that though even the West is conceding it now,” snorts R.P. Jain, one of the fourth generation of brothers that now man the firm. (The fifth has already begun work with separate imprints in management: no messing with the classical, purely Indological prestige of the mother ship.) And the math textbook that set the Thames on fire? ‘Vedic Mathematics’. Circa 1930, by Jagadguru Shankaracharya Bharati Krisna Tirtha of the Goverdhan Mutt, Puri, who also served as Shankaracharya of the Dwarka Mutt. (Bharati Krisna Tirtha was a scholarly Tambrahm of the old sort. But since his book appeared in the apogee of the Raj, nobody gave him credit. Now ironically, with its publication by the determined and devout firm of MLBD, Vedic Math is now taught in British schools. The gora has won again. “We hope our people wake up to this treasure,” says Jain.) But then, the Jain family is used to playing a part in some very interesting historical dramas. A Jain ancestor, Lala Buta Shah, was court jeweller to Maharaja Ranjit Singh at Lahore. He was asked to evaluate the Koh-i-Noor — along with a pile of valuables which were war booty from the defeated Afghan, Shah Shuja — and actually took it home for three whole days without a single security guard. And then it was Lala Motilal Jain who, in 1903, couldn’t hack being a jeweller and decided to set up shop in Said Mitha Bazaar in Lahore as bookseller by flogging his own personal library of spiritual literature. His wife raised his startup capital of Rs 27 by furiously knitting and selling socks. Partition drove Motilal to Varanasi and Patna before he established his main branch in Delhi. His sons Banarsidass and Sunderlal inherited the business. Eventually it was a team of uncle and nephew (Sundarlal and Banarsidass’ son Shantilal) who built up MLBD after Independence, with some solid encouragement from founding fathers like President Rajendra Prasad and President Radhakrishnan, especially the latter, who was a dedicated Upanishadist himself. Today you can rootle around MLPD for just any old agama or sutra text, the 18 Maha Upanishads, the heavily controversial 1920s translation of the Manusmriti, Sir Auriel Stein’s works, German translations of Vedic fire worship rituals and the ten-volume critical edition of the original Mahabharata by Ved Vyasa that sells for a trifling 10 k. Such richness, because of Motilalji’s realisation back in 1903 when Independence was barely a gleam in the eye, that India’s true, imperishable wealth lay in her own head.
