Pakistan’s First Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Abdus Salam (Left), Pakistani Islamists protest the appointment of a minority Ahmadi Muslim as an adviser to the government, in Lahore, Pakistan (Right). File Image – Imperial College of London / AP
It was 1979 when Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg walked on the stage to receive their Nobel Prize in Physics. The two shared the award with a man who was wearing a black pathani and a white turban, representing his country in its full glory. The man was none other than Pakistan’s first Nobel Prize winner, Professor Abdus Salam. For the world, Salam was the first Muslim to win a Nobel, but, in his own homeland of Pakistan, he was not considered a Muslim at all.
The main reason is that he was an Ahmadi, a sect that believed that the Messiah Ghulam Ahmad lived after Islam’s prophet Muhammad and insisted that they were part of Islam. However, they were declared as non-Muslims in Pakistan in 1974 by former PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
Since then, the community has faced all sorts of persecution because of faith. Salam was not only relegated to the side but even his grave was desecrated. This begs the question, does religion triumph over science in Pakistan? To answer this question Firstpost had a candid conversation with Pakistani physicist and author Pervez Hoodbhoy. The nuclear physicists and vocal activists gave insight into Prof. Salam’s life and delved into the deplorable condition of science in Pakistan.
The early life of Abdus Salam: Pakistan’s unsung scientist
While describing his early life Professor Hoodbhoy said that Salam was a prodigy from an ordinary family in Pakistan’s Jhang. “You know, there are a lot of kids who just defy expectations, and they just seem to be specially endowed and he was amongst them. So, then partition comes along and he stays in Jhang. And then after he completes his schooling, he moves to Lahore,” he said.
While studying at the Government College Lahore, Salam blossomed in his full glory. At 18, he published his first paper in which he offered a more efficient solution to a problem initially addressed by Indian mathematician Ramanujan. “His is a very laborious method,” Salam wrote in his very first paper titled “A problem of Ramanujan.”
From Lahore, he bagged a scholarship and pursued higher education at Cambridge. “He was able to get a scholarship to study at Cambridge University. And this was done with the help of people around him. They were convinced that they should pool the money and get this young man to excel,” Prof. Hoodbhoy averred.
When Salam returned to Pakistan to teach mathematics at Government College, Lahore, he understood the challenges of teaching science in a country with poor educational infrastructure. “They wanted him to run the football team. And that was something that he didn’t like very much. So then he stuck around for a while and then went off to do his PhD,” Hoodbhoy recalled.
How Ahmadis started getting excluded
One of the major reasons why Salam’s legacy is usually relegated to the side in Pakistan is because he belonged to the Ahmadiyya community. The minority group have been facing constant persecution for decades.
When asked about the origin of this hate towards the sect, Prof. Hoodbhoy noted that the “problem festered before partition”. However, the Pakistani scientist maintained that Ahmadis were “enthusiastic about Pakistan” and that the country’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah was “not a sectarian man”.
“I would say that the Ahmadiyya sect was very enthusiastic about Pakistan. And Jinnah had his very close second lieutenant. I mean, lieutenant in the sense that his advisor Zafarullah Khan, who later on became Sir Zafarullah Khan,” Prof. Hoodbhoy explained.
“And at that time, you see, Jinnah was not a sectarian man, but this problem had festered before partition. In 1952, there were riots in Lahore against the Ahmadis. In fact, that was Pakistan’s first martial law,” he told Firstpost, recalling the riots led by the Jamaat-e-Islami. “But the early beginnings of atrocities against the Ahmadis go back to 1952,” Prof. Hoodbhoy explained.
Nobel, nuclear plant and ICTP: What Salam did for science, Pakistan and the world
Salam’s scientific endeavours were not free from misses. It was commonly believed that the Pakistani legend would have won the Nobel before 1979. Hoodbhoy recalled that in the 1950s Salam received a bad piece of advice from Nobel Prize winner, Austrian theoretical physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. “Yeah, well, I don’t know how seriously to take it. I mean, here is bad advice given by one of the greatest theoretical physicists of that time, Wolfgang Pauli. When Salam sent his papers to him with a great idea Pauli said, ‘Young man, think of something better. This won’t do,’” Hoodbhoy said.
“So Salam threw away the paper. However, physicists, T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang published a paper on the same lines for which they got the Nobel Prize,” he added, noting that Salam learned a lesson from it and became more confident.
In 1979 Salam ultimately won the Nobel for Physics with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Lee Glashow for their work in formulating the electroweak theory, which explains the unity of the weak nuclear force and electromagnetism. Hoodbhoy mentioned that Salam also predicted the existence of vector bosons, the particles which are much heavier than the protons. “Later on, when these particles were discovered, there was absolutely no doubt that this was spectacular work,” he remarked.
Salam’s scientific contribution was not limited to the Nobel, before he even won the awards, he contributed significantly to creating a foundation of science in Pakistan. Whether it comes to helping in the development of agricultural science in the country or contributing to the growth of Pakistan’s Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission, commonly known as SUPARCO.
Interestingly, Salam was close to Bhutto at the time when Pakistan was creating its nuclear infrastructure. While speaking to Firstpost, Hoodbhoy recalled how both Salam and Indian physicist Homi Bhabha were in love with the idea of a nuclear reactor.
“Let’s remember that those were days when people used to think that nuclear power was the way to go. And remember that Homi Bhabha and Abdus Salam were both Cambridge graduates. They knew each other well,” he said.
“They admired each other’s work in physics and they were all in love with the idea of having nuclear reactors. It was a time when people used to say that with nuclear energy we would be able to produce electricity so cheaply that we won’t even need electricity meters,” Hoodbhoy recalled.
When asked what was Salam’s role in Pakistan’s development of nuclear arsenal, Professor Hoodbhoy mentioned that it was a “quiet one”. “Bhabha and Abdus Salam, they wanted nuclear power, but they also wanted nuclear weapons. And in fact, I’d say that Abdus Salam did play a role in the making of Pakistan’s weapons, although he never did any calculations himself. He just quietly approved of it. He did ask his students to look at how implosion devices work, but I don’t think he did any calculations himself,” he added.
According to Hoodbhoy, one of the reasons why Salam established the famous, International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) was because of the warmth he received from the developing world.
“I think Salam’s internationalist outlook became more pronounced with time, with Pakistan’s rejection, the fact that he had been welcomed by countries all over the world that they saw him as for what he was. He was given such warmth in Bangladesh, and in India as well, and that feeling in him probably started to go away that I should be doing things only for Pakistan,” Hoodbhoy exclaimed.
“While building ICTP, he extended invitations to people from all over the world including India and everywhere, you had always far more Indians than Pakistanis over there but also people from South America, from Africa, he tried to bring in Arabs but some came”. He added.
Interestingly, the ICTP will complete its 60th anniversary on November 15.
The slippery slope: When Pakistan chose religion over development
Things went downhill when Pakistan’s so-called “pragmatic leader” Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared Ahmediyyas as non-muslim. When asked what made Bhutto make such a drastic decision, Hoodbhoy mentioned that he just wanted to “save his skin”.
“It’s very simple. He did it to save his skin. He was under attack by the right-wing religious parties. He wanted to show that he was more Islamic than them. Although earlier on, he used to say, I drink alcohol, but I don’t drink people’s blood,” Prof. Hoodbhoy averred, insisting that Bhutto did not have an “inch of Islamism in him at that time”.
Hoodbhoy went on to call the former Pak premier’s decision “the first step down the steep slippery slope”. “Once you give in to religious fanatics, then they want more and then more and then more. And so he ended up doing a lot of crazy things like making Friday an official holiday, it didn’t help,” he added.
So what happened to Salam and his legacy amid all this?
When asked about what was Salam’s reaction to the draconian law, Hoodbhoy emphasised that the legendary scientist was “shocked”. “I think it was as if he was hit with a hammer on the head. And it caused a complete change in the way he started looking at the world. He became intensely conservative. He did try to speak to Bhutto, but Bhutto didn’t have any time for him,” Hoodboy recalled.
The situation of the Ahmadiyya community started to deteriorate even further under the Zia-ul-Haq regime. Hoodbhoy recalled the turbulent time when Salam came back to Pakistan after his Nobel win.
“In 1979 he got the Nobel Prize, 1980 he was invited by Zia-ul-Haq. He was given Nishan-e-Pakistan (highest civilian award), but it was in a closed session of Parliament. Nobody else was allowed to be there. And we couldn’t invite him to our university because the Jamaat-e-Islami said that if he came, we would attack him,” he recalled.
Hoodbhoy made it clear that Zia neither had sympathy for Salam nor the Ahmadiyya community, he awarded Salam because it would “have looked odd” if the whole world honoured him and Pakistan did not.
How Pakistan chose religious radicalism over science and development
Pakistan’s outright disrespect for their first Nobel laureate did not stop there. When Salam wanted Islamabad’s nomination for a top position at UNESCO, he was completely sidelined and instead, Pakistan decided to send, some say, a less worthy candidate. Many believe that this was the straw that broke the camel’s back since Salam’s health deteriorated soon after.
“He was very upset. I know because he talked to me about that. And he wanted to run for the UNESCO top position,” Hoodbhoy recalled. “But Pakistan decided to give it to Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, who was Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s lieutenant and had been the ambassador to the United States. Now Khan was an okay chap but he had no business accepting Pakistan’s nomination in competition with Salam and of course, he lost badly,” he added.
Hoodbhoy noted the contributions Salam made in Pakistan which neglected him due to his faith. “He was responsible for setting up the Pakistan Space Program, SUPARCO. He was responsible for advising the government on getting a reactor from Canada installed in Karachi. And also in agricultural research, in many different things, Pakistan couldn’t have found anybody better,” he said. “And yet, because of religious prejudice in Pakistan, he was effectively rendered powerless after 1974,” he furthered.
Hoodbhoy insisted that Pakistan’s major tragedy is it prioritised religion over science. “Everything is joined up with religion and that I think has been Pakistan’s tragedy and of course, I wish more people thought in these terms but whenever you join up science with a religion, any religion, that is fatal for science,” Prof. Hoodbhoy averred.
Nehru and Bhutto: How leadership changed the scientific future of India and Pakistan
It is interesting to note that Pakistan initiated its space programme nine years before the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was established. However, while ISRO compete with NASA and China’s space agencies in the race to space exploration, the glory of SUPARCO faded away.
“It was doing okay in the 1960s and it was sending up the sounding rockets and learning the essentials of rocketry but Pakistan didn’t have a sound, strong scientific base. It’s education system particularly where science is concerned is weak,” Hoodbhoy recalled, adding that SUPARCO owed everything to Americans, who were investing in the space agency for strategic benefits.
“I think it is the base in physics and mathematics which in the case of India and China are very strong and in the case of Pakistan are very weak. That accounts for the difference in the levels of performance of SUPARCO and ISRO,” Hoodbhoy told Firstpost when asked about what exactly went wrong.
By putting forward the contributions made by Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, he emphasised that leadership makes a major difference in a country’s development. “Now Jawaharlal Nehru was outrightly secular and he was enthused with the idea of modern western science changing India, making it modern, making its people modern,” he said.
“Nehru separated the two (science and religion) cleanly and clearly and he set up those modern institutions that ultimately became the backbone of India’s scientific strength. I would say that in earlier years Pakistan was following the same route and if we had not had the misfortune of, well not just 1974, but particularly what came with Zia,” he added.
Any hope for the future
Throughout his career, Salam has had a close association with India. After winning the Nobel Salam took out time to visit India and pay respect to his “guru” Prof. Anilendra Ganguly. When asked by Hoodbhoy, if collaboration like this would be possible in the current climate, he mentioned that India would not have anything to gain from such collaboration if it happened, but Pakistan would learn a lot.
“Today such collaboration doesn’t seem possible in the present political climate. I think it would be very good for Pakistan,” Hoodbhoy asserted, recalling the time he approached India’s very own former President Abdul Kalam, to discuss the future of scientific collaboration between the two nations.
“For India, it wouldn’t matter because India is so developed scientifically and Pakistan is so underdeveloped scientifically. But it would create such good feelings between the two countries. And let’s remember that’s important to have because both of us have nuclear weapons and can wipe each other out. So why this enmity which has gone on for so long? It’s time to make up,” he concluded.
Stay tuned to read more about the fascinating life of Prof. Salam from his son’s point of view.
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