What did Ramanujan emphasise?

Concept — In a passage-based question the answer is what the passage itself asserts about the subject named in the stem. Locate the sentence that makes a direct claim about that subject’s own contribution, and read every choice against what the passage actually says. A phrase that merely occurs somewhere in the passage is not automatically what the passage asserts.

Applying it to this passage — the stem asks what Ramanujan’s emphasis was. The passage’s only direct statement of what his work drove at is: “Without so much as raising his gentle voice, he blazed a great path through the centre of Indological studies.” The sentence that follows keeps the same focus: “He gave us so many new paradigms that no Indologist can now think about India without thinking through his thoughts.” On the passage’s own account, then, what his work was directed at is a path driven through Indological studies, and each remaining choice is either contradicted by the text or absent from it, as set out below.

Checking the remaining choices against the passage —

• “The criticism on the British mills” — the mills occur inside a simile, which compares Indian scholars to “the raw fibres that were taken from India to be processed in British mills”. What the passage takes issue with there is the establishment’s attitude; it makes no claim about the mills themselves.

• “Creating controversies in American Indological Studies” — the passage describes a different manner of working: he “taught them all how to weave a theory, a folktale, a poem, a book”, and did so “without so much as raising his gentle voice”.

• “The study of Western languages only” — the passage records the reverse direction. At a time when “Sanskrit meant Greek and Latin”, he joined Edward C. Dimock in proclaiming the relevance of Tamil, Bengali and the other mother tongues.

Answer — A path through Indological Studies.