kolkata when the west tries to study and understand the past it is termed renaissance whereas when the same is done in india it is called revivalism and an attempt to rake up the past said motilal banarasidass publishers chairperson rama ranjan banerjee on saturday banerjee was speaking at a function to commemorate 100 years of the publishing firm in kolkata mlbd has been specialising in books on indology since its inception the centenary is being celebrated with a series of functions all over the country kolkata was third in this series governor of west bengal viren j shah was the chief guest on the occasion from a small shop of sanskrit books on esoteric subjects mlbd progressed to a priniting unit in the 1920s today it is a publisher and distributor and has more than 3000 titles to its credit people often say studying the past is a waste of time what they do not understand is that studying is not going back in time it is necessary to understand who we are mukherjee a former professor of sanskrit at jadavpur university said sanskrit scholar and former chancellor of tirupati sanskrit university sitanath goswami regretted the increasing western influence on teaching in schools and colleges he said indias contribution to the sciences philosophy and literature was being overshadowed students know more about galileo and copernicus than about aryabhatta few know that bhaskaracharya worked with calculus almost five centuries before the west discovered it goswami said to build awareness on indias contribution more than 100 seminars on vedic mathematics has been held across the country goswami said