India lives in a strange dichotomy. On the one hand, we hark back to our glorious past to claim our cultural and material superiority. On the other hand, we remain blissfully ignorant and even dismissive of the achievements of our people in the present times. We have this strange habit of looking back in nostalgia and ignoring the work being done in the present. Due to this inherent dilemma, India has done grave injustice to its talented and gifted people. India does have a lot of achievements to show, but only if we care enough to have a look at them. One such unrecognized genius from India was D.R.Kaprekar, a mathematician who is followed by mathematicians the world over. Still, our own countrymen need to be made aware of their life and work.

Kaprekar was a school teacher in Nashik, who was obsessed with numbers and called himself Ankamitra (friend of numbers). He was by profession a school teacher, and unlike other mathematicians of his times, was not affiliated to any research association or Institute for most of his lifetime. He only possessed a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, but his fascination with number theory and recreational mathematics allowed him to research numbers and their fascinating qualities. His most important contribution to the field of mathematics is the Kaprekar Constant and Kaprekar Numbers. Kaprekar constant is the number obtained by taking  4 digits and arranging the largest and the smallest number using those 4 digits. After a maximum of seven stages, one would arrive at the Kaprekar constant, which is 6174. Similarly, for a 3-digit number, the Kaprekar constant is 495. The Kaprekar constant was discovered in 1946 and presented for the first time at the Madras Scientific Conference in 1949, but it didn’t receive international attention till it was talked about by Martin Gardner in 1975. Kaprekar Numbers, on the other hand, were numbers that can be obtained by dividing their squares into two parts and adding them together. For example, the square of 45 is 2025, which can be divided into two parts 20 and 25, the total of which is 45, making it a Kaprekar Number. Apart from these two internationally recognized numbers, Kaprekar also worked on another series of numbers like the Harshad Number (numbers which are divisible by the sum of their digits), Self Numbers (numbers which cannot be formed by adding the digits of any integer with the integer), and Demlo Numbers (numbers with a left, middle and right part, which are squares of a Repdigit. E.g. 121 is a Demlo Number for the Repdigit 11) etc. Despite his significant contributions to the field of mathematics, he is largely forgotten in his own country, while continuing to feature in International publications and discussions. Who is responsible for such a callous attitude towards our own achievements?

Firstly, we have internalized our scientific inferiority to the West so much that we rely on validation from the West to recognize the worth of someone’s work in our own country. Rabindranath Tagore got his worth in India, only after his Nobel Prize win for Literature; Satyajit Ray achieved more acclaim from the West than in his own country. Great Mathematician Ramanujan didn’t find patrons for his incredible talent in India but attained legendary status in the Western world. Every year, the great brains of our country go abroad in search of better opportunities, and when we see people like Satya Nadela, Indira Nooyi, and Sunder Pichai heading the global conglomerates, we try to take pride in their achievements. However, similar talents are unrecognized and underappreciated in their own country. When Kaprekar presented his theory at the Madras Scientific Conference, his work was not taken seriously and was deemed childish. His work was published in little-known scientific journals, and some were self-published as Pamphlets. Today, his works have inspired a lot of derivative works, but unfortunately, his work is still seen as inferior as compared to applied mathematics, and India has still not recognized the genius of Kaprekar.

Secondly, there is a serious problem in academia, which values institutional affiliation over the quality of research. Since Kaprekar was not qualified to be a professor or researcher, and did research out of his interest, he was not taken seriously by the academia. Indian academia works on the principle of “publish or perish”, which values the credentials of a scholar based on the number of journal publications, citations, and conferences, for a person like Kaprekar, it was difficult to make space for himself because his body of work was strikingly different from the kind of mathematical research that was conducted in Universities at that time. In India, the research arena is dominated by elitist groups of people, who attempt to block ideas and research that doesn’t suit their agenda. People like Kaprekar, who came from a small town without access to quality research facilities or even the avenues to publish their research, had to struggle to get their work published. The impact and reach of his research were severely restricted because it was published by the local press and not by some publisher of great academic repute. Had Karpekar received support from research organizations, his work would have reached greater heights. 

The third problem lies in the lack of institutional support from the government in promoting research and nurturing talents in India. India despite having such a huge population lags in conducting original and quality research, as the government support for research and researchers is abysmal, and the research scholars always find themselves financially and intellectually vulnerable. Kaprekar received a grant of Rs. 500 from UGC only after his retirement in 1962. However, many researchers are still waiting for institutional support from the government, and many more leave the field of research for better career opportunities. The lack of funds obstructs the visibility and the reach of research,  and researchers find it difficult to publish their work in reputed journals due to the high processing fees and the lack of government initiatives for publication support and outreach programs for research scholars, which harms talented yet disadvantaged scholars like Kaprekar.

Thus, we see that people like Kaprekar remain unrecognized in their own country, while the Western countries recognize his work and contributions in the field of mathematics. India needs to be inward-looking in recognizing and nurturing talents, and it should focus on nurturing the present and building the future rather than relying on the laurels of the past. It is the collective responsibility of the state, society, and academia to create an ecosystem that is conducive to the growth of new talent, new ideas, and innovations in India, which can be the building block for the prestige of the nation on the global pedestal.