Adil Najam
As reader zamanov has reminded us elsewhere, today marks Dr. Abdus Salam’s 10th death anniversary. (See new biography of Dr. Salam here).
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?
Assalamo Alaikum w.w
I am so pleased to read this article. In fact I salute you Mr Adil Najam for such a selfless analysis of his wonderful works and personality.
I wish we Pakistani came out of sect’s obsession and see the things as they are.
Thank you
wassalam
Does Gordon Fraser’s book about D. Abdul Salam, “Cosmic Anger” available in Pakistan?
(Link to book, added by ATP Editor)
Alhamdolillah, still there are people like Adil Najam who can take just stand against “politically incorrect” issues or personalities. Inshallah, one day, we as a Nation, will stand up against all religious, ethnical and social prejudices. Only a real Mard-e-Momin can speak the truth when antagonizing the religious or secular establishment means putting ones career, family and even life at risk. Here is another such article from a well-known person.
The unsung Prof Salam
Saturday, November 22, 2008
By by Farhatullah Babar
Twelve years ago Pakistan’s only and the Muslim world’s first Nobel laureate Professor Abdus Salam passed into eternity on November 21, 1996. Salam was chased and hounded both in life and in death. Even when dead and buried the pious ones could not tolerate the tombstone inscription that read, “Abdus Salam the First Muslim Nobel Laureate”. A brigade of the pious performed the holy task of rubbing off ‘Muslim’ from the tombstone as a magistrate dutifully looked on.
When alive he was shunned and his achievements ridiculed. His admirers had organized a function in Islamabad to honour him on his seventieth birthday as he lay on his deathbed in London. The pious ones protested. “Any function held to honour Salam would amount to defaming Pakistan”, the Aalmi Majlis-i -Tahaffuz-i-Khatm-i-Nabbuwat warned. They also demanded that a case be instituted against Salam for ‘ridiculing Pakistan’.
When the press clippings were put up to the then prime minister, Shaheed Mohtarma Bhutto, she simply wrote on it ‘rubbish’ and asked that the function be held. Not only that, she also wrote a personal letter to Salam on his 70th birthday recalling his services to science and Pakistan and the honour he had brought to the country, which ‘will never be forgotten’ and asked the then high commissioner in London, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, to personally deliver the letter with a flower bouquet from her.
The custodians of morality also greeted with contempt the Nobel Prize that was awarded to him in 1979. In the Eid sermon that year the imam of the Lal Masjid in the federal capital, said that Salam had been honoured by the Jews and the enemies of Islam because he was a non-Muslim.
After the Nobel Award the Physics department of the Quaid-i-Azam University wanted to invite him but was not allowed by the administration fearing extremists’ reaction. He gave the lecture at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) far away from the reach of detractors. The special convocation for awarding him doctorate degree was also not held in the university campus, but in the old parliament building in Islamabad. Islamic expressions in his address were deleted from the reports by the official media as that was the norm under Zia’s bigoted dispensation.
After a long period during which extremists played bluff and bluster a commemorative stamp has finally been issued and a department in his alma mater, the Government College Lahore, now a university, is also named after him.’
Professor Salam took all criticism of the fanatics in normal stride. “If you consider me to be a non-Muslim, it is your problem”, he once said. “But permit me to lay a brick in the mosque you want to build.” But they did not want him to lay even a brick.
Salam’s most impressive contribution for the promotion of science in developing countries has been the setting up of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics at Trieste in Italy in 1964. He wanted to set up the Centre in Pakistan but Ayub Khan’s financial advisors rejected the idea forcing him to set it up in Italy.
Unsung in his own country, Professor Salam was widely acclaimed worldwide. The Centre he established in Italy was named after him. A moving eulogy was read out on his first death anniversary that said:
“On the occasion of the first year anniversary of the death of Abdus Salam, let us celebrate the accomplishments of this extraordinary man and let us honour his memory by renaming the Institution to which he devoted so much of his intelligence and energy, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics. It’s the right thing to do for both the man and the institution.”
When he received the Nobel Prize in 1979, Indira Gandhi immediately invited him but he declined to visit India before first visiting his home country. He spurned offers to become a British or Italian national. Later he visited India but only to seek his primary school mathematics teacher who was still alive. Reverently Salam put his Nobel gold medal around the neck of his maths teacher.
During his visit to Beijing, the Chinese Academy hosted a dinner in his honour. Breaking all protocol the Chinese president also came to attend the dinner to honour Salam.
Until 1979 scientists believed that there were four fundamental forces that drove every thing in the universe. Salam’s work proved that two of these four forces were actually one and the same. The number of fundamental forces was thus reduced to three. Salam believed that actually one single force drove the universe and that some day someone will be able to prove that the three remaining fundamental forces were one and the same.
When asked as to what he thought was the inspiration behind the great idea, which had earned him the Nobel Prize, Salam said, “Whenever faced with two competing theories for the same set of observation I have always found that the theory which was more aesthetically satisfying is also the correct one”. He said he drew inspiration from this verse of the Quran, which says,
“Thou will see not in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection,
Return thy gaze; Do you see thou any fissure?
Then return thy gaze again, and again,
And thy gaze comes back to thee dazzled and weary”.
Towards the end, Salam was afflicted with a rare disease of the nerves that gradually took its toll. Finally he was unable to talk even as he fully understood what was being said to him.
May his soul rest in eternal peace!
The writer, a former senator, is spokesperson for the PPP.
Email: drkhshan@isb.comsats.net.pk
The thing that really irks me is that Islam teaches us religious tolerance and acceptance.
Why don’t we practice that as a nation and give deserving people their just applause?
Great person…….nither in physiques but also as a man………amplitude of pakistan and Islam…..
Any country would be proud of a scientist like Abdus Salam. He should be given the due respect in the country and there must not be an effort to shun his legacy.
His religion or sect doesn’t need to be given so much attention as it is immaterial.
In America, Jew scientists and heroes are given due respect without any bias. What’s the fault of someone who is born in a religion. He learns the faith from parents and it is wrong to expect him to leave the religion just because majority believes in the other faith.
As far s I can tell the Salam documentary did not air after all despite Geo/Jang making the announcement. So much for GEO Asools being over publicised these days;
“1. Biases: There will be no bias in the following areas:
i. Against any religion or sect”
Taken from http://www.geo.tv/asool/geo_asool.pdf
Feel free to provide feedback to Geo on asool@geo.tv
GEO TV to show Abdus Salam documentary on his anniversary;
http://jang.com.pk/jang/nov2008-daily/21-11-2008/t opst/main15.gif