A Princeton University mathematician of Indian origin has won the Fields Medal this year. He is among four winners, including Maryam Mirzakhani, a mathematician from Iran who is currently at Stanford University, and the first woman to win the prestigious medal.

Manjul Bhargava is a specialist in number theory who has proved a number of important results among them a special case of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture, one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems that have, historically, remained unproven. The Fields Medal is only one more milestone in this young mathematician’s journey that has involved proving many creative theorems and problems.

Mathematics, of all the arenas of human endeavour, is removed from nationalistic feeling. But the award of the prize to a person of Indian origin is an apposite occasion to ask another question: whatever happened to India’s indigenous tradition of mathematics? Incidentally, 2014 also marks the 1,000th birth anniversary of the medieval Indian mathematician Bhaskaracharya, who penned a treatise called the Lilavati. While Bhargava may be of Indian origin, the tradition to which he belongs is of Western origin, dating back to at least Pierre de Fermat (1607-1665).

There is no doubt about an Indian mathematical school that began with Aryabhatta in late fifth century AD. But at the same time, there can be no denying—except for modern day mythologists who believe that Indian mathematicians knew it all—India’s mathematical tradition was arrested before it could develop. The tradition had potential for sure. For example, Bhaskaracharya studied, among other things, Pell’s Equation—a polynomial equation of the type x2-ny2=1—but then matters stopped there. Between Bhaskaracharya and some medieval writers of mathematical commentaries, India’s mathematical history is obscure until 20th century when Srinivasa Ramanujan carried out respectable mathematical work. (Incidentally, one of the theorems that Bhargava proved—the 15 Theorem of John Conway and WA Schneeberger—involves quadratic forms, a subject that Ramanujan studied).

So, whatever happened to Indian mathematics? There are many ways to look at the story. One is to ask an Indian version of the “Needham Question”: If India indeed was ahead in scientific discoveries at one point in its history, how did the West march ahead not only in economic growth and prosperity but also in the creation of mathematical knowledge? Unlike Europe, where even during the Dark Ages, universities never ceased to exist, India never knew an organized system of producing and disseminating knowledge during this period. While, at the end of its feudal age, Europe took off—intellectually and economically, India experienced a reverse journey into servitude as Britain colonized her.

But here is where the story takes a twist: It was the British who opened the first universities in India in the 19th century as part of a modernizing colonialism and did not “kill” an indigenous tradition which, in any case, had wilted away a long time ago. The story of India’s mathematical poverty, to use a mathematical analogy, is not a linear equation; it is more like a non-linear differential equation.

While India’s lost mathematical tradition is worthy of historical exploration, there is no cause for mourning. In recent years and decades, Indians and people of Indian origin have made creative contributions to mathematics. Recognition of such efforts, while important, is only second to the mission of proving beautiful theorems and interesting discoveries. A young crop of mathematicians trained within the country is now among the best in the world.

A concluding word about the Fields Medal. While it occupies a special place in the scholarly awards, is not the final word in the recognition of mathematical genius and creativity. Consider number theory itself where a number of outstanding mathematicians did not win the prize. Chief among them Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem and Goro Shimura and Yutaka Taniyama, the two mathematicians who made an important cross connecting discovery that made Wiles’ proof possible.