BHARATI PAWASKAR
He visited a class V consisting of 65 students in a school in Goa and asked how many of them liked maths. To his amazement, 64 students raised their hand in affirmation and only one girl didn’t. She admitted that she hated maths. However, when the class was taught Vedic Mathematics for two hours, and an exam was taken at the end of the training, it was this little girl who got 10 out of 10 whereas no other student got 100 per cent marks.
“This is the power of Vedic Mathematics. Those who have hated maths throughout their life fall in love with it instantly as it wipes out their maths phobia, making calculations easy and speedy for them. Vedic Mathematics increases creativity and improves brain power,” claims Sagar Sakordekar, who has been taking Vedic Mathematics classes in Goa and the neighbouring states for the past 13 years.
A computer engineer who pioneered computer training in Goa three decades ago, Sagar has been teaching Vedic Mathematics to students of class V to class X since 2006 and in the 750 workshops that he conducted during these years he trained 35,000 odd people including students, teachers and maths enthusiastic adults in Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat.
What are the benefits of Vedic Mathematics? “Vedic Mathematics is very useful for those who want to answer any kind of competitive exam where calculators are not allowed. It proves to be a big advantage as it increases the speed in which the calculations are required to do in objective questions or logic in competitive exams,” states Sagar who is happy to teach the basics of this ancient science to kids in government school at affordable price.
“My class is of three days, two hours each (total six hours) and I charge Rs 200 per student. So far I have covered 350 odd schools in Goa out of the 470 and these include private as well as public schools,” informs Sagar whose institute, SRS Vedic Mathematics Academy conducts All Goa Vedic Mathematics Competition annually, in September.
Sagar recalls an incident which underlines the benefit of Vedic Mathematics. One of his ex-students, Amey Tilgul, once met him and boasted that he appeared for some exam recently with 40 others. He was the only student in that class who did not have to use calculator and he could solve all the mathematical equations before anyone else did.
Sagar adds, “I remember, a year ago Amey had stood first in the All Goa Vedic Mathematics competition. The Vedic Mathematics that he learnt in my class was enough for him to surpass others who did not have that knowledge. I keep meeting such young students who had learnt Vedic Mathematics in school and are now doing very well in higher studies. For Vedic Mathematics, one has to keep practicing. That’s the reason I take competition every year so that my students brush their knowledge from time to time and participate to test their ability.”
Vedic Mathematics is the ancient system of Indian Mathematics which was rediscovered from the Vedas by Swami Sri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji (1884-1960), a great scholar of Sanskrit, Mathematics, History and Philosophy who spent eight years (1911-1918) in forest solitude in his attempt to interpret Sanskrit texts from Vedas, that other scholars had dismissed. He wrote 16 volumes expounding the Vedic system but these were unaccountably lost and when the loss was confirmed, in his final years he wrote a single book on Vedic Mathematics which was published in 1965, five years after his death.
According to Tirhaji’s research, Mathematics is based on 16 Sutras, or word-formulae. These formulae describe the way, the mind naturally works and are therefore a great help in directing the student to the appropriate method of solution. The most striking feature of Vedic system is its coherence. The whole system is beautifully interrelated and unified. The general multiplication method, for example, is easily reversed to allow one-line divisions. Difficult problems or huge sums can often be solved immediately by Vedic method. These striking and beautiful methods are just a part of a complete system of Mathematics which is far more systematic than the modern system.
The simplicity of Vedic Mathematics lies in the fact that calculations can be carried out mentally too. It is flexible. Pupils can invent their own methods and are not limited to one correct method. This leads to more creative, interested and intelligent pupils. But the real beauty of Vedic Mathematics cannot be appreciated without actually practicing the system. One can then see that it is perhaps the most refined and efficient mathematical system possible.
“And there is no age bar to learn Vedic Mathematics. Anyone interested can pick it up easily,” assures this 53-year-old teacher who is committed to bring in a change in the young generation in Goa, creating everyone’s interest in a boring subject like mathematics. He takes one hour free introductory workshop if invited by schools or institutions.
