Adil Najam
As reader zamanov has reminded us elsewhere, today marks Dr. Abdus Salam’s 10th death anniversary.
It should be a moment of deep reflection for all of us. He would have been as great a man as he was even if he did not won the Nobel Award in physics. But we would have conveniently forgotten him. That he did win the Nobel Award is a source of cosmetic and hollow pride for many Pakistanis. Cosmetic and hollow because it is also a source of visible unease. Even when we acknowledge that he was a great scientist (after all, the Nobel Committee thought so), we are uncomfortable acknowledging that he was a great man whose significance goes beyond his science.
As a brutally honest editorial in today’s Daily Times points out, “we are scared of honoring Dr. Salam.” We must not be.
The Daily Times editorial says all that needs to be said; it is worth reading, worth thinking about, and worth quoting in full:
The tragedy of our treatment of Dr Abdus Salam
Dr Abdus Salam (1926-1996) died ten years ago. He was the first Pakistani to get a Nobel Prize in 1979. But he might be the last if we continue to allow our state to evolve in a way that frightens the rest of the world. Our collective psyche runs more to accepted ‘wisdom’ than to scientific inquiry; and even if we were to display an uncharacteristic outcropping of individual genius the world may be so frightened of it that it might not give us our deserts.
We are scared of honouring Dr Salam because of our constitution which we have amended to declare his community as ‘non-Muslim’. When Dr Salam died in 1996 he had to be buried in Pakistan because he refused to give up his Pakistani nationality and acquire another that respected him more. But the Pakistani state was afraid of touching his dead body. He was therefore buried in Rabwa, the home town of his Ahmedi community whose name is also unacceptable to us and has been changed to Chenab Nagar by a state proclamation. But that was not the end of the story. After he was buried, the pious, law-abiding and constitution-loving people of Jhang, which is nearby, went over to Chenab Nagar to see if all had been done according to the constitutional provisions regarding the Ahmedi community to which he belonged.
And what did the constitution say? It said that the Ahmedis are not Muslims, that they may not call themselves Muslims, nor say the kalima or use any of the symbols of Islam. The original amendments to the constitution were passed by Z A Bhutto, a ‘liberal socialist-democrat’, and subsequent tightening of the law was done by the great patriot General Zia-ul Haq. Thus both the civilians and the khakis had connived in the great betrayal of Dr Salam.
After the great scientist was buried in Chenab Nagar, his tombstone said “Abdus Salam the First Muslim Nobel Laureate”. Needless to say, the police arrived with a magistrate and rubbed off the ‘Muslim’ part of the katba. Now the tombstone says: Abdus Salam the First Nobel Laureate. The magistrate remained unfazed by what he had done but Dr Salam’s grave is actually the tombstone of a Muslim culture that Pakistan had inherited from the founder of the nation, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. But ironies fly thick in Pakistan. In Jhang, for example, where Dr Salam grew up as a precocious child, the schools that he endowed with scholarships and grants now teach communal hatred rather than the love that he had in mind when he gave them his money.
Meanwhile, the Ahmedi community is under daily pressure and anyone with a twisted mind is free to persecute them.
Abdus Salam was born in Jhang in 1926. At the age of 14, he got the highest marks ever recorded for the Matriculation Examination in Punjab. The whole town turned out to welcome him. He won a scholarship to Government College, Lahore, and took his MA in 1946. In the same year he was awarded a scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he took a BA (honours) with a double First in mathematics and physics in 1949. In 1950 he received the Smith’s Prize from Cambridge University for the most outstanding pre-doctoral contribution to physics. He also obtained a PhD in theoretical physics at Cambridge; his thesis, published in 1951, contained fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics which had already gained him an international reputation.
In 1954 Dr Salam left his native country for a lectureship at Cambridge University. Before the Pakistani politicians apostatised him, he was a member of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, a member of the Scientific Commission of Pakistan and Chief Scientific Adviser to the President from 1961 to 1974. Pakistan’s space research agency Suparco was created by him and it is only symbolic that a group of Shia workers of Suparco were put to death in Karachi in 2004 by sectarian terrorists. Like Dr Salam, a lot of gifted Shia doctors have had to leave Pakistan because of the state’s twisted policies.
Dr Abdus Salam got his Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979. It was a most embarrassing moment for General Zia who had “supplemented” the Second Amendment to the constitution with further comic disabilities against the Ahmedis. He had to welcome the great scientist and had to be seen with him on TV. Since the clerical part of his government was already bristling, he took care to clip those sections of Dr Salam’s speech where he had said the kalima or otherwise used an Islamic expression. It was Dr Salam’s good luck that one of the believers did not go to court under Zia’s own laws to get the country’s only Nobel laureate sent to prison for six months of rigorous imprisonment. Dr Salam then went to India where he was received with great fanfare. He had gone there to simply meet his primary school mathematics teacher who was still alive. When the two met, Dr Salam took off his Nobel medal and put it around the neck of his teacher.
Let us admit in a whisper that Pakistan did issue a stamp commemorating Dr Salam years ago lest the government come under pressure to remove it from circulation. It is also true that his alma mater, Government College Lahore, now a university, has named certain ancillary departments and academic sessions after him following a long period of obscurantist domination. But Pakistan needs to feel guilty about what it has done to the greatest scientist it ever produced in comparison to the lionisation of Dr AQ Khan who has brought ignominy and the label of “rogue state” to Pakistan by selling the country’s nuclear technology for personal gain. Can we redeem ourselves by doing something in Dr Salam’s memory on this 10th anniversary of his passing that would please his soul and cleanse ours?
I suppose if he had accepted another nationality, everyone would have been better off. No one had to feel embarrassed here and he could have been buried somewhere else with whatever for his tombstone.
Adil,I am glad you posted this article. I loved that picture Salam’s old-world school report book.
Eidee Man, I am not sure if the story about the OIC is true because sometime in the 80s the UNESCO chief’s position fell vacant. Salam wanted that position for he felt he could work effectively for the promotion of education and science at the international level. Several Muslim and Arab governments were willing to support him for that position along with many Western countries but he had to be first nominated by his own government. However, Pakistan, then in the stranglehold of that Islamic fanatic, “merde Haq”, nominated his former foreign minister, Sahibzada Yakoob Khan, in place of Salam. Sahibzada lost the election easily even losing the votes of many Muslim countries.
By not giving due recognition to Salam Pakistan lost. Salam did not.
Regarding the mullahs who erased the word Muslim from his tombstone, I will repeat my earlier suggestion. Put all of them on Karachi Dream Cruise with a big hole in the bottom of the ship and set its course towards the high seas.
Eidee Man,
I too heard something like that. If I were him I would have bar all Muslims from the Institute just to teach a lesson to few ignorant souls. But then he was a great man and all great men were persecuted by shameless authorities.
P.S. Sorry for spamming the comment section but edit option isn’t working for me.
Eidee Man,
I too heard something like that. If I were him I would have bar all Muslims from the Institute just to teach a lesson to few ignorant souls. But then he was a great man and all great men were persecuted by shameless authorities.
I’m sending this e-card to all my family and friends.
He founded The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Studies to foster advancement of Physics among developing countries citizens. I know quite few Pakistanis who benefited from it.
I only hope that some day we could able to revoke that amendment as it shouldn’t be states business to mingle with people’s beliefs.
Adil, this is a great article. Our government and political parties should be ashamed..but, as they say in Sindhi, only those who have respect to begin with can be humiliated.
As if this wasn’t enough, Salam was also betrayed by the Muslim world at large. I don’t remember the details but wasn’t the center at Trieste supposed to be built within a Muslim country with IOC money?
Just wanted to Salute the great scientist and hopefully I wanted to pray that there is more tolerance and justice for all minorities in Pakistan.
Thats the prime reason why religion should be between a person and God, and not enforced nor judged by the people nor the Mullahs.
I never knew all that happened to Dr. Salam. It really is a shame, that we, Pakistan, didn’t give him enough credit when it was needed. We should applaud people like him. Regardless of his religious beliefs he was a Pakistani, enough said. I can’t imagine that people would go so far as to erase the “Muslim” written on his grave, and to cut out the parts of his speech in which he used the kalima. Who are we to judge who is muslim or not. I remember a story that I was told when I was young. There were two men: one was a drunkard, never prayed, never fasted, and didn’t even know the kalima. Then there was another man who said his prayers five times a day, fasted, and always said the kalima. One day Allah came to them both and asked them, “If this ship (imagine something like the Titanic) were put on this twig (imagine something like a toothpick) will it break.” The man who prayed five times a day, fasted and said the kalima responded, “It is impossible, the ship is just to heavy, the branch will obviously break” The drunkard, who never prayed, never fasted, and never said the kalima responded, “If Allah wills, this branch will not break.” Immediatly Allah opened the gates to paradise and the drunkard, who never prayed, never fasted, and never said the kalima entered paradise. The other did not go to paradise, instead he served his punishment in the hell-fire. Basically, the moral of the story is believing in Allah is the most important thing of all.