Asymptotic freedom

One of the great successes of modern science is discovery of the theory of strong nuclear force which is responsible for the binding of neutrons and protons inside different nuclei. Particles called gluons are responsible for this strong force which provides us with the energy in nuclear reactors and in atom bombs. One of the most surprising results of this theory – colourfully called "Quantum Chromodynamics" – is that particles that constitute the protons and neutrons are inseparable when they are far apart, but have no interaction when very near.

This 'asymptotic freedom' seemed so counter-intuitive even to scientists that the principle took a long time to sink in. Later, after many experimental tests, Nobel prizes have been awarded for it. In the social context we know that people usually interact strongly with one another when they are near one another in a family, in school, or at their work place, and they are usually apathetic to "outsiders". So we have social groups – families, clans, nations, and finally humanity.

In more recent times scientists at CERN, the biggest laboratory in the world that is mostly dedicated to particle physics, are suspecting that they have discovered the Higgs boson, the elusive particle predicted by the theories of Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg and Glashow, which is needed to make particles massive.

Many years ago, when I was working at Salam's International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Italy, I declined an invitation by the great Salam to work on his theory, because I had an intuitive feeling that it was not the most basic theory, and the Higgs particle was only an artefact to make the theory work. So elusive has this particle been for the last four decades that it acquired another interesting name – "the God particle". It is not directly related to strong interactions in the usual theory and there are ways of bypassing it. Which have always seemed more attractive to me. However, I will not mind if it is finally discovered now, because I no longer work in particle physics!

Between March 26 and September 30, 1971, I was working in Trieste, usually trying to avoid Salam, not only because of the Higgs. For some reasons, this great scientist believed that the freedom movement in East Pakistan was a passing fad, and Pakistan would remain in tact, like the fate of Nigeria which overcame the Biafra phenomenon. It was a relief to get a post-doc fellowship in Cambridge after that.

On December 16, 1971 along with all my friends, I watched the surrender of the Pakistani force in the university centre of Cambridge. We burst into tears when the new national anthem was being broadcast by BBC. We were so far from our new country, but felt an inalienable bond with the rest of the nation. We made up our mind to return as quickly as possible to the new Bangladesh and did so.

After four decades of living in a free Bangladesh, sometimes I see questions as to whether we really are free. Freedom perhaps is what the physicists call a vector quantity – it has many components. Not all of them may be of the same magnitude.

Bangladesh has a fairly free media. Today we can see Bangladeshis as entrepreneurs succeeding in garments and pharmaceutical industries. There are other individual cases of success, which probably would have been rarer in a united Pakistan, where non-Bengalis dominated. But we have not yet achieved a satisfactory literacy rate which is essential for a democratic free country. And we have not been able to mitigate our legacy of corruption, which is essential to ensure a level playing field in a free country.

Let us hope a satisfactory degree of freedom is not as elusive as the God particle, and also that we learn to act together within Bangladesh for its good, and not become isolationists seeking self-interest only, i.e. let us hope our freedom and nationhood is not only a sentiment to be felt by expatriates working hard far away from their mother land.

We are not quark particles making up neutrons and protons.

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Ahmed Shafee is vice chancellor of East West University.