Archive for November 22nd, 2009
The unsung Prof Salam by Farhatullah Babar
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November 22nd 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!
Source l The News
Obama & Pakistani-Americans by Aziz Ahmad
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November 22nd by Aziz Ahmad.
President-elect Barack Obama took the stage in Grant Park, Chicago, just before midnight on November 4, scanned the sea of people assembled to listen to him, and greeted them: “Hello, Chicago!” The crowd roared back with joy. Obama flashed a shy smile, waited for the roar to subside, and then continued:
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”
The crowd roared again, even louder, their faces glowing with excitement and emotions, and tears of joy welling up in their eyes.
Outside Grant Park, across the United States of America, an estimated 70 million people sat riveted to their TV sets watching Barack Obama speak. Millions more, around the world, watched or listened to him. Never before, so many people, around the world, had listened to an American president or anticipated and celebrated his victory. It was a moment unprecedented in history.
Imagine, in 1958, in North Carolina, two black boys — Fuzzy Simpson, age 7, and Hanover Thompson, age 9 — were invited to join a group of five White children, including two girls. One of the girls remembered playing with Hanover when his mother had worked as a maid in her family’s house. Overjoyed at being reunited with her old playmate, she kissed him on the cheek. According to Randall Kennedy, who recounts the incident in his book, “Interracial Intimacies,” when the girl innocently told her mother, the two boys were arrested and convicted of attempted rape. The juvenile court sentenced Fuzzy to 12 years in jail and Hanover to 14. Because of a public outcry, President Eisenhower persuaded the governor to intervene, and the boys were released.
Fifty years later, on November 4, overriding the deeply entrenched prejudices, North Carolina voted a Black man to be the president of the United States of America. And so did Virginia, home to Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, who had declared that the “Negro” was only meant to be a slave.
Obama’s victory had many layers to it. Millions of words have been written about it. Millions more will be written in the days and months to come, to peel the various layers and analyze them. But few things are obvious.
First, 2008 had to be the year of the Democrats. George W Bush’s policies had made Americans yearn for change. And Obama promised that. Second, Obama was probably one of the smartest candidates to emerge in the presidential politics of America. His multiracial background, his youth combined with his education and intellect, his eloquence, and the way he formulated his message and presented it made him one of the most charismatic presidential candidats in the recent history. There was a third factor, and this is equally important. It is the ability and willingness of the American society to recognize its mistakes and past prejudices and try to correct them.
Election of a black president, however, does not mean that racism is now dead in America. But it does mean it no longer rules. Obama’s candidacy and campaign touched and electrified all the ethnic communities in the United States. According to the polls, 96 per cent blacks, 87 per cent Muslims, 78 per cent Jews, nearly 70 per cent Hispanics, and 65 per cent Asians voted for Obama. And, more whites voted for him than they had voted for any Democratic candidates in the past since and including Jimmy Carter.
Obama’s campaign also stirred the Pakistani-Americans out of their traditional apathy towards the local political process. Both men and women actively participated in the whole political process — from fundraising to door-to-door campaigning.
Pakistani Americans and the Muslim community, with the exception of African-American Muslims, had traditionally voted Republican, as they did for Bush in 2000. But they were dismayed by Bush’s disastrous post-9/11 policies, which included racial profiling, warrant-less wire tapping, harassment of Muslims at airports, etc., and began swinging towards the Democrats.
Obama, on the other hand, emphasized, during his campaign, the importance of diplomacy versus military action, the urgency of withdrawing American troops from Iraq, the need for closing down Guantanamo Bay, and stopping the torture of prisoners.
American Muslims used Fridays, religious holidays, and their conventions to register Muslim voters. In Virginia, for example, they had drafted 30 cab drivers to take people to the polling stations all day on the Election Day.
Pakistani-Americans, like the Muslim-Americans at large, are justifiably pleased with their involvement and achievement in this election. They also appreciate the fact that Obama has inherited huge problems, which will not disappear in a hurry. But they do expect Obama to fulfil his promises. One hopes that Pakistani-Americans as well as Muslim Americans in general have now realized that the only way to influence the policies of the country, which is now their home, is to get involved in the process of policy making at grass roots level.
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