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?
Adnan Siddiqi,
Now that you have criticized him I think my respect for Mirza Ghulam Ahmad has increased . Now I will read Mirza Sahab’s books with affection and for a reason to learn.
[quote post="431"]Qadyani is a derogatory term)[/quote]
why is it a derogatory?. Qadyanis are those who live/used in ‘Qadyan/Qadian’. A small town near Gordaspur, India where he was born.
Mirza ghulam used this term in his name as ‘Mirza Ghulam Qadyani’, something which is like ‘Hafeez Jalandhri’ or ‘Sahir Ludhyanvi’. I don’t understand why this term is considered offensive when their supreme head never felt ashamed of it?.
[quote post="431"]The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement and Al Islam, I haven’t come across any “objectionable� material which make them something other than Muslim.[/quote]
Again dependant on media *grin*. You can always have access to books written by him. One become very famous among his followers; Roohani Khazain; a detailed document about the belief. Other books are Dafe-ul-Bala,Tazkira,Malfoozat Ahmedia. One can always access related material if he’s really willing to *know* for something. It’s not a difficult task.
Speaking of referring a website, it’s like someone refer me Microsoft’s IE website to praise about the product rather some neutral source.
Ahsan is exactly right. This is Dr. Salam’s achievement not of any religion or country. It is, however, the very bad reflection on our country and all of us how we treated him and so many others.
Let us be clear about the Nobel Prize of Dr. Abdus Salam. He was awarded this prize for his personal scientific achievements in a particular field of Physics. His “Nobel Prize” was neither for Pakistan nor for Islam. Pakistan and Islam may be proud of him but they can not enhance his echievements. On the other hand Pakistan and Islam can ignore him if they wish but they can not diminish the value of his Nobel Prize. All the credit goes to Dr. Abdus Salam for his achievement.
Ahsan
“If you consider me a non-Muslim….that is your problem. Treat me as a non-Muslim mason if you like, but do let me lay a few bricks for the mosque you want to build.�
Wow….. If you haven’t read his words yet. Please read it again and again till you actually understand the meaning behind it.
Being a physics major myself… I have more pride in Abdus Salaam than, well I will just leave it at that.
Let us please not make the same grave mistake that Bhutto and Zia made, by assuming that we are capable of determining who is or is not a Muslim. That is a decision best made by God. Not by any parliament, not by any mullah and certainly not by any of us. Whether the laws of the country and anyone thinks Dr. Salam was a Muslim or not is irrelevant. What I know is that by his words and by his actions he was much more a Muslim than most who claim to speak for the entire religion. Beyond that its between God and him alone.
Never the less he was a great scientist, not to be controversial about that, we must recommend him on the state level as a personality that has acquired a “Nobel prize” for Pakistan, but it is not required/necessary that to may ever has acquired an extra ordinary work for Pakistan, we call him/her as a Muslim, is it necessary? Definitely not!
I am re-producing an article here, by Tehmina Masud which was published in
The News Post, on December 5, 1996.
SALAM REMEMBERED
“Abdus Salam is dead. A titan has fallen. As part of His grand design, the Creator sometimes produces a giant like Abdus Salam in a nation which has otherwise produced and patronised pygmies.
Salam’s high intellect and vision to transform Pakistan into a nation at the forefront of science and technology had little relevance to a country which has always been eager to plunge backwards. In the late thirties and early forties, some of the greatest scientists in Europe faced Nazi persecution and were forced to emigrate to the US where they revolutionised American science.
In the early stages of his career, finding the Pakistani soil hostile, Salam left Pakistan to enrich European science. For about three decades he worked in the UK and Italy. All these years he was adored by Italians whose language he did not speak or understand, revered by Britishers whose culture he hardly liked and despised by his own countrymen whose affection he always sought.
In a country where there were hardly any scientists or technologists who had the intellect, imagination or will to think or act in a big way, Salam had little say in the affairs of science and technology in Pakistan. He made passionate appeal to his countrymen when at Faiz Memorial Lecture at Lahore he said:
“If you consider me a non-Muslim….that is your problem. Treat me as a non-Muslim mason if you like, but do let me lay a few bricks for the mosque you want to build.”
Nobody really cared for him or his words. About the loss of great people, Shakespeare said “the Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” The skies may by in mourning over Salam’s death but there is hardly any gloom or grief seen in the land in which he was born and now lies buried. Those who mattered most were too busy in the mundane duties of the State to find time to receive his body at the Lahore Airport or place any floral wreaths on his grave.
Our nation stands diminished by its treatment of Salam. Who knows how many centuries we may have to wait before we produce another Salam. Societies and civilisations which do not respect their scholars and thinkers are destined to vanish. ”
Its about time that the children in pakistani schools be introduced to this great man. Who was just not a genius, but an exceptional, generous and a caring human being.
It is personlities like him, which can inspire the young pakistanis, that passion and sincereity is always rewarded. He is among those ‘real heroes’ of Pakistan , who can actually touch the hearts and souls.
The govt. of Pakistan, is in the process of making changes in the curriculum and in the text books. I guess, adding a few chapters on Dr. Abdul Salam and his work, at all levels of studies, will be a fruitful execrise. If nothing else,it will reinstate the younger lots’ faith in the tradition of inquiry, thinking and looking for answers, which is crushed rather early, by most teachers if not all, in our schools, in the name of discipline.