On the eve of another Pakistani on the verge of a Nobel Prize,I am reproducing the biography of Dr Abdus Salam(the only other Pakistani to be awarded a Nobel, in 1979), as recounted by eminent
historian, K.K Aziz in his book THE COFFEE HOUSE OF LAHORE, from page 200-209.
I hope Malala doesn't suffer the same fate.
Dr. Abdus Salam
Salam was the son of Chaudhri Muhammad Husain,
a schoolteacher of Jhang and Hajirah who belonged to Faizullah Chak near
Batala. Muhammad Hussain was Jat and Hajirah a Kakkezai. Faizullah Chak was an
almost exclusively Kakkezai Village. The Kakkezais were a close-knit community.
Born in 1926 and educated at the Government High School and Government
Intermediate College, Jhang, Government College, Lahore and St. John’s College,
Cambridge, he made it a habit to excel in every examination he took. He stood
first in 1940 in the matriculation of the Punjab University and again in 1942
in the F.Sc. Examination. He joined the Government College, Lahore in 1942 to
study mathematics A and B and honours in English. He graduated in 1944 winning
every laurel in sight: 300 out of 300 marks in Mathematics, 121 out of 150 in
English Honours, standing first in the University and breaking all records in
the B.A examination. In 1946, he took his M.A in Mathematics, scoring 573 marks
out of 600, and topping the list.
In September 1946, he left for Cambridge on a Punjab Peasant
Welfare Fund Scholarship to study Mathematics at St. John’s College as an
undergraduate (Its worth mentioning here that this fact was recently mentioned
in an article by Javed Chaudary, and the origin of the said fund was the money
that was left over from the War tax, after the war had finished-AM). If in
India, his academic career was brilliant, in Cambridge, it was dazzling. He got
a first both in preliminary in 1947 and Part II in 1948, and then gave up
Mathematics for the time being because on the higher level it could not be
fully mastered without a good knowledge of physics. In an unprecedented
performance, he read Physics for one year and took its Part I and II together
in 1949; scoring a first and surprising even his teachers.
His scholarship was extended for two years (it should have
been three years) to work for his Ph.D. He came to Pakistan in the summer,
married Ummatul Hafeez, and returned to Cambridge in 1949, deciding to tackle
theoretical Physics for his doctoral thesis.
The year 1951 was the time for him to harvest the fruits of
his labour. He completed his thesis(though he could not get his PhD till the
following year because the university statutes required that the candidate
spent nine terms before being eligible to receive his doctorate), won the smith
prize(From Wikipedia: The Smith's Prize was the name of each of two
prizes awarded annually to two research students in theoretical Physics,
mathematics and applied mathematics at the University of
Cambridge,Cambridge, England-AM), was elected Fellow of his College, and named
Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University.
Pending the award of his degree, he came to Lahore and was appointed Professor
of Mathematics and Head of Department of Mathematics at both the Government
College and the Punjab University. In 1952, he went to Cambridge for his viva
voce and to receive his doctorate.
His problems began almost as soon as he took up his job at
the Government College. Instead of honouring him for his brilliant
achievements, he was humiliated by the College and the Education Department. He
was not given an official residence, as was his right. Temporarily he stayed
with Qazi Muhammad Aslam, the professor of Philosophy at the College, and
continued his efforts to get a house allotted to him. Disappointed with the
indifferent attitude of the officials he asked for an interview with the
Minister of Education, Sardar Abdul Hameed Dasti. Salam told him that he had a
family to accommodate and was entitled to a residence. The minister brought an
end to the interview by refusing any help and declaring: “If its suits you, you
may continue with your job; if not, you may go” (Translation from Punjabi-AM).
Salam was so frustrated with that he was considering a resignation, but soon a
house was found for him and he stayed on.
But that was just the beginning. A little later, the
Principle, Professor Sirajuddin, asked him to do something to earn his keep
besides his teaching. He was given three choices: to act as Superintendent of
the Quadrangle Hostel or to supervise the college accounts or to take charge of
the college football team. Salam chose to look after the footballers.
Occasionally, at the end of his chore at the University Grounds, he would drop
in at the Coffee House and tell me (K.K. Aziz, the writer-AM) about his
bitterness on being forced to waste his time. A man who had worked 14 hours a
day at Cambridge as a student had now hardly any time to read new literature on
his subject, and the facilities in the college laboratory were dust and ashes
compared to the Cavendish Laboratories where he had worked as an undergraduate
and a doctoral student. It was not difficult to take the gauge of Salam’s
frustration.
A more serious contretemps occurred in the Christmas Holidays
of the same years. Professor Wolfgang Pauli, the 1945 Nobel laureate of physics
and a friend of Salam, was visiting Bombay on the invitation of Indian science
association. He sent a telegram to Salam wishing too see him and asking him if
he could come to Bombay. Salam, who had been craving to talk to a peer in his
field, at once left for India, and spent a week with Pauli. On his return to
Lahore, he was charge sheeted for absenting himself from his station of duty
without prior permission. Salam was shocked. He was used to European freedom of
movement and had been part of Pakistani bureaucratic set-up for a mere three
months. The principal made so much fuss about the incident that Salam feared
that he might be dismissed from the education service. At this point S.M.
Sharif, the director of Public instruction of the Punjab, intervened and the
period of Salam’s absence was treated as leave without pay.
When Salam had been elected a fellow of St. John’s College
in 1951 he had accepted the honour on the condition that he would be allowed to
go to Lahore and teach there and live in St. John’s only during the long
vacations. St. John’s was so anxious to have him that it made an exception and
accepted his condition. This was a measure of Salam’s love for the Government
College; he was prepared to forego the considerable honour of a fellowship of
St. John’s for the sake of the prospect of teaching at the Government College.
But he had been insulted and humiliated so often by the College he loved so
much and for which he had sacrificed the full facilities of the St. John’s
fellowship that he now forced to look somewhere else for his professional
future. As luck would have it, in the middle of the same year (1953), the
Stokes lectureship at St. John’s fell vacant. The holder of the lectureship,
Nicholas Kemmer had been offered the Tait professorship of natural philosophy
at the University of Edinburgh. He had been Salam’s teacher at St. John’s and a
fellow at Trinity College. He was so keen on Salam’s succeeding him at St.
John’s that he wrote to the Punjab University, pleading that Salam should be
persuaded to accept the offer. The vice-chancellor, Mian Afzal Husain, had kept
in touch with Salam since his departure from Cambridge and 1946 and had great
admiration for his work. He advised Salam to accept the lectureship and go to
Cambridge. Salam’s love for Pakistan and the Government College was boundless.
Notwithstanding the treatment he had received from the authorities of College,
he was still reluctant to snap the umbilical cord that tied him to his alma
mater. Finally, s.m. sharif solved the problem by suggesting and sanctioning an
arrangement that satisfied Salam. He was to go to St. John’s on deputation from
the Government College for an unspecified period and would receive a deputation
allowance of Rs. 181 per month. He left at the end of 1953 and took charge of
his lectureship on the new year’s day of 1954.
He stayed at St. John’s for exactly three years, and on 1st
January 1957 took up a professorship at the Imperial College of science and
technology in London; he was then 31 years of age, and thus won the distinction
of being the youngest professor in the British Commonwealth. He retired from
here in 1993 for health reasons. Between leaving the Government College and his
death, his march to the summit of his profession was phenomenal. At St. John’s
he taught some advanced courses and made his reputation on the international
level by the research papers he published and by his work as scientific
secretary of the first United Nations atoms for peace conference in Geneva in
1955. His research and teaching at Imperial College attracted favourable
attention of the greatest scientists of the world. He acted as the chief
scientific advisor to the president of Pakistan from 1961 to 1974. In 1964, he
established the International Centre of Theoretical Physics and served as its
Director from 1964 to 1994 and its President from 1994-1996.
He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979(he had come very
close to winning it in 1957). Immediately after the news of his Nobel Prize was
published in October, Government of India and Indian scientific bodies invited
him to tour the country. There was no reaction from Pakistan until the Pakistan
high commissioner in London informed his Government of India’s invitation. Only
then did the Government of Pakistan ask him to visit his home country. Salam
decided to visit Pakistan first and India a year later.
In December 1979, on his arrival in Lahore, Peshawar and
Islamabad, he was received by junior army officers who were military
secretaries to the provincial governors and the president. The convocation of
Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad summoned to bestow upon him the honorary
doctorate of science was cancelled because of the warning from the students
belonging to the right-wing Jamaat-i-Islami to disrupt the function, and the
venue was shifted to the hall of national assembly. In Lahore, his lecture
arranged to be held at the campus of Punjab University, had to be moved to the
senate hall in the city because certain groups had demonstrated earlier and
threatened to murder Salam. The University of Punjab refused to honour him with
a degree. The Government College did not even invite him to visit its precinct.
A year later when he was in India, five universities gave
him honorary degrees, including the guru dev Nanak university of Amritsar where
he delivered the convocation address on 25 January 1981 in rural Punjabi, and
the university, on his request brought to Amritsar four of his old teachers who
has taught him in Jhang and Lahore. The Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi,
invited him to her residence, made coffee for him with her own hands, and sat
on the carpet throughout the meeting near Salam’s feet saying that was her way
of honouring a great guest. Later in his tour of several Latin American
countries including Brazil, he was received everywhere at the airport by the
head of the state.
In 1986 the director general-ship of the UNESCO fell vacant
and nominations were solicited. Salam wanted to be considered and everyone was
sure that he would be elected. But the rule was that a candidate must be
nominated by his own country. Pakistan nominated Lt. General Yaqub Khan, a
retired army officer. Both Britain and Italy offered to nominate Salam if he
agreed to become their national. He refused. The Pakistani general received ONE
vote. A French member, when pressed by her Government to vote for the Pakistani
candidate, resisted, protested and then resigned, saying “An Army General will
run the UNESCO over my dead body”.
Salam died, full of honours and laurels from across the
world, on 21 November 1996, in oxford. His brother, who lived in Lahore, asked
the Government if it would like to provide protocol on the arrival of the
coffin. There was no response. He was buried in Rabwah, on 2 November at 11 A.M
at the foot of his mother’s grave.
For Reference
Aziz K.K. Abdus Salam. The Coffee House of Lahore. 1st
ed.Lahore; Sang-Meel Publications;2007. p200-209.
