Soon after he joined the college as a professor of Mathematics, Salam travelled to Bombay to exchange ideas with Wolfgang Pauli, another renowned physicist. On his return to Lahore, the principal of Government College charged him for leaving his station of duty without prior permission. According to K.K. Aziz, Salam feared he might be dismissed from service. “Instead of honouring him for his brilliant achievements,” writes Aziz, “he was humiliated by the college and by the education department.”

Salam was denied an official residence, as was his right, and when he pleaded his case with the then minister of education, Sardar Abdul Hameed Dasti, he was curtly told “pagdi te kam karo, warna jao” (if it suits you, continue with the job, if not, leave).

A little later, Salam was asked by the college principal to “earn his keep” by opting for one of the three options provided to him: to act as the superintendent of Quaid-i-Azam hostel, to supervise college accounts, or to take charge of the college football team, which he eventually did. In October 1953, Chaudhry Ali Akbar, Punjab’s education minister, visited the college and after emphasising his sole interest in the number of students who passed the university exams every year, insultingly said, “for example, if Professor Salam’s pass percentage doesn’t please me I will send him back to Jhang.” That was the time Salam mentioned to a colleague, “I have made up my mind. I must get a job somewhere abroad.”

A job abroad was not a problem. While he was driven by his desire to serve his country despite being mistreated by bureaucrats and politicians, efforts were under way to bring him back to Cambridge. On the forefront of this movement was N. Kemmer, Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy, Edinburgh, and formerly Stokes Lecturer in Mathematics and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Salam, according to Kemmer, was “one of the greatest citizens of Pakistan,” and “the man” for lectureship at Cambridge University “before anyone else in the world.” Salam eventually accepted the offer, but again, the prime determinant for this move may have been his desire to have the “necessary financial backing to establish his own school of theoretical physics with the highest international reputation” in Pakistan. His dream was ultimately partially realised as he set up a department of theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, and later, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.

Such is Mujahid Kamran’s depiction of one of the greatest citizens of Pakistan that the book, The Inspiring Life of Abdus Salam, can be read as an attempt at atonement for what the country did to Salam. The austere and engaging narrative tells the story of the citizen who, for many, has become the principal source of respect for the nation.

Kamran has gleaned various sources, including his personal conversations with Salam, to build an engaging narrative which starts with the physicist’s early years and follows him as he blazed through school, college and university to pursue his dream to know the essence of the universe. As the author traces Salam’s rise, he also shares many anecdotes from Salam’s school and college days in Jhang, as well as from his days at Government College and then at Cambridge. The book is divided into 15 chapters with two appendices which offer information about Salam, some of which has been published for the first time, such as Salam’s educational records from matriculation to masters.

Himself a professor of physics, Mujahid Kamran could have narrowed the readership of his book but he manages to maintain a balance in his account of Salam as a physicist and as a human being. Wherever Salam’s contribution to physics is discussed, inevitable as he lived and breathed it ever since he published his first scientific paper at the age of 17, it is done in a very accessible manner. Kamran’s passion for science, having penned six books on the subject, never belittles the significance of the poetic sensibility which Salam nourished from a very early age. The narrative relishes at the description of how Salam contributed an essay to his college magazine in which he established the time when Ghalib changed his penname from Asad to Ghalib, and later muses at how Salam considered pursuing English literature instead of an MSc in Mathematics. The book testifies that Salam had a poet hidden inside him.

The Inspiring Life of Abdus Salam is a comprehensive biography which traces not only Salam’s triumphs but also his tribulations. From his Government College days — staying awake for 48 hours at the bedside of his classmate Prem Luther who suffered an attack of appendicitis, nursing him by reading everything about appendicitis in the Encyclopedia Britannica — to the time when he won the Catalunya prize and a cheque for $200,000 which he utilised to assist others, the book offers a flurry of anecdotes which reveal the human side of Salam.

Nowhere in the book does one come across Salam complaining about the treatment meted out to him by his country. Salam, after receiving the 1979 Physics Nobel Prize, was immediately invited by India to tour the country. Pakistan followed. Salam came but venues for his lectures had to be changed, ceremonies had to be cancelled and death threats were received. His alma mater, Government College, did not invite him even to visit its precinct. The following year, he went to India where “Indira Gandhi invited Salam to her residence, personally made coffee for him and sat on the carpet saying it was her way of honouring him.”

The Inspiring Life of Abdus Salam is a highly engaging and an unputdownable volume. Though Salam exists only on the periphery of our nation’s consciousness, Kamran has tried to bring him to the centre. This book acquaints us to the inspiring man he was.

It is said about the Greeks that they did not write obituaries, but only asked one question when a person died: “Did he have passion?” Ask Mujahid Kamran about Salam, and his answer would be in the affirmative.

The reviewer is assistant professor at the department of English at the University of the Punjab

The Inspiring Life of Abdus Salam

(BIOGRAPHY)

By Mujahid Kamran

University of the Punjab Press, Lahore

ISBN 978-969-9325-11-3

329pp.