Relative-ity

On the 12th February, 1952, only about a week before the Ekushey tragedy, the Pakistan Observer published an editorial where the nepotism of PM Khwaja Nazimuddin was commented on. Nazimuddin, though an East Pakistani, came from the nawab family of Dhaka that did not speak any Bangla, and thought that his, and Jinnah's, first language Urdu was the only language suited to be the national language of Pakistan. That created intense hostility against him in this province. The Observer, perceived as one of the leading fomenters of discontent against the Muslim League government for pointing out political, administrative, military and economic disparities between the western and the eastern parts of the country, was already under close watch. In that editorial the erudite editor, an outstanding student of his time and a top government bureaucrat before he decided one fine morning to leave it all and go into journalism, also mentioned in passing  the name of one of the early Caliphs accused by historians of being partial to his relatives. Naturally, the government seized this opportunity to call the leader blasphemous, banned the newspaper, and imprisoned the Editor.

By a strange coincidence Abdus Salam died of a heart attack, exactly 25 years later, on the night of the 12th February 1977. He certainly never let his family know his deeper thoughts, about whether on each anniversary of being arrested, he relived his traumatic experience. Yes, it could be a simple co-incidence, for Abdus Salam, like his neighbour Sheikh Mujib, never nurtured any grudge.

Amusingly, the Observer had more than its quota of relatives of the Editor, and some people not coming from his home district could be heard to complain, though as a private organisation it was not really answerable for its employment policies. These complaints never had strong legs to stand on. One nephew and son-in-law, who was a news editor of the newspaper, is now one of the most respected columnists of this country. The photographer nephew won international prizes and took the famous photo of Noor Hossain just before he was killed by Ershad's police. Another nephew in the news section became another distinguished news editor in that paper and much later in another paper. The son of a niece is today the president of the Press Club. Yet another nephew, who found a job in the Radio with his help, became a leading poet of the country and won the Bangla Academy Award. Nephew Kafiluddin Mahmood, who died last month, never needed any help from him or anybody else to become one of the country's most well-known bureaucrats and the finance adviser in the first caretaker government. Among other nephews was a secretary and a top officer of ILO, and the commissioner of a Division. Indeed the list of his relatives who made it to the top in journalism or in public service by dint of their own merit is too long to be attributed to influence. Not all nephews need an uncle.

In Indian social evolution the caste system arose when it was found that children of parents in particular professions gained a head start as they began to help out in the family business at an early age, and learned secret tricks not available to others. It probably had more to do with the advantage of an early exposure than any intrinsic talent obtained on genetic grounds. The human genes are so complex that expressions of the genes related to skills usually depend on complicated combinatorics, not sustainable through generations, and apart from gross physical features such as height, skin/hair/eye colour, blood group and susceptibility to some diseases, it is unlikely that too many of the parents' attributes would be passed on to the progeny through genes. If an editor's son becomes an editor, it is most likely that the former has simply inherited the ownership of the business and/or learned how to handle demands for increased wages and less working hours from journalists graduating from departments of journalism with flying colours. Sons of non-owner editors have a wider choice of career. They can become, for example, physicists!

Abdus Salam's father was not a journalist, nor a bureaucrat; he was a lawyer, and his grandfather was a lawyer too. Reasonably successful in their profession, and honest and honourable, both ancestors were successive chairmen of the union board virtually all their adult life, but with no money leeched from clients, or constituents. Salam must have picked up the habit too, with only a roof to leave behind for his family after a long career. He was, basically, a scholar, and probably could have had a successful career as a scientist as well.

* * *

Harvard University, November 2008.

Professor RN is a world famous professor of astrophysics, and is attending the public lecture by his student RS who has just passed the PhD oral. He meets her father.

-Congratulations. Your daughter's thesis was one of the best done here. I hear you are a physicist too.

-Yes.

-And the mother?

-Another physicist.

-Your daughter has a sister too, she told me.

-Yet another physicist.

The father looks behind, but stops short of introducing his daughter's American friend, also present in the seminar, who too is a PhD student in physics. Professor RN follows the gaze; he must have seen the boy many times.

-Any other physicists in the family?

-Yes, a first cousin. Also his sister-in-law is in our physics department.

Professor RN, a Brahmin coming from South India, the son of a pioneer biophysicist, looks very happy and grins.

-You and I can begin a caste of physicists.

* * *

How about a caste of politicians first? This has a stronger case. Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Indira Priyadarshini, Rajib and Sanjay Gandhi, Rahul and Barun Gandhi, Arun, … the line goes on. The two Roosevelts, the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Rockefellers, … the Bhuttos, the Bandarnaike/Senanaike family… There is an article in wikipedia on political families, which, despite being highly abbreviated, has a long enough list collected from all over the world to make people wonder. The children and other relatives of politicians do get an advantage. They meet important people at home and form early connections. They learn about the tricks of the trade — how to read between the lines when sycophants speak, and how to speak in a way so that one may later make a volte-face without losing face, how to make unholy alliances, and how to repudiate them when they are inconvenient.

Politically uncomfortable relations have to be handled with care. Was the Nehru family truly secular at heart, or did the head rule over the heart? Was Vijaylakhsmi dragged back home after an affair with a Bangladeshi Muslim who was staying with the Nehru family, or was Firoz, a handsome Parsi, converted to Hinduism, given Gandhi's name, and then thrown out after two sons for political reasons? On the other hand, in this country leaders of opposing political parties are occasionally seen to form marital alliances. The tag of a particular political party appears sometimes less important than the label of a politician in general, or of financial solvency, acquired in whatever way. Politics is not just a profession, it forms a social class. It is often said that when a well-known powerful supporter of the Pakistan army died in jail after liberation, the president of this country, generous to a fault, promised his sons, including one now languishing in jail, that they did not need to worry as he would become their foster father. Some of the president's surviving descendants may at times appear to over-indulge their fondness for the arrogant, irreverent son with a dark past, but can do nothing in the present circumstances. To survive, physically or politically, sometimes one has to sacrifice even one's own brothers. Not many magnanimous feelings for the chief adversary though, but that is a long and embarrassing tale.

The green monster afflicts even the greats. Isaac Newton, the apparently modest and quiet genius, had once remarked that he was able to see beyond others only by standing on the shoulders of giants. But Newton had a bitter quarrel with another remarkable contemporary scientist, Leibnitz, about who invented calculus. Einstein's theory of relativity was first formulated in three dimensions by Galileo centuries earlier and his interesting formulas about space-time and mass-energy were calculated by contemporaries Lorentz and Poincare before Einstein's 1905 paper. There is no mention of Einstein in the research papers of the other two, and vice versa. However, in the popular domain Einstein gets all the credit, probably because he looks more interesting to the media for ethnic and visual reasons.

Popularity is the most important goal for players in the world of entertainment and politics. Since intrinsic skill is rather ill-defined in these fields, less so in the latter, tricks and gimmicks of the PR men often play an effective role. It is perceived that being related to somebody with a glorious past counts a lot. In the Bollywood movie world, there is an uncanny preponderance of children of older or dead stars. They are all talented, but would not have gotten the big breaks in the beginning of their career if they had come from unknown families. In our politics, living celebrities promote their children in the same occupation, if they are unable to find success in any field where personal ability counts. And if they had celebrity relatives who are now dead, measures are taken to deify them, so that reflected glory on the successors can be put to good use. If that process requires diverting astronomical amounts of public money to non-urgent projects, there are no pangs of conscience. But, then, people do have the last laugh. All celebrities lose their lustre and end up in the forgotten attic after prolonged over-exposure.

* * *

Office of a Chairman of a Department of Public University. 2004.

Sir, you wanted to meet me?

Yes, you have been recommended by the Dean for admission into our Department on the Freedom-fighters' children's quota. I see that your merit serial number is 8345. The last normal merit serial is 2345. Do you think you can cope with the studies here?

Yes, Sir.

Very good, you are confident. That is necessary. Where exactly did your father fight during the liberation war?

I don't know , Sir.

I see, you don't like fighting. You look like a peaceful chap. Ah, this certificate smells nice. Very fresh. It was written only four months ago, and says it is a 'provisional certificate'. You do remember when we had the liberation war, don't you ?

Yes, Sir. 1971.

That was quite some time ago. Surely, there are some papers, perhaps torn and moth-eaten, dating back to that time, in your house, that relates your father to his commanding officer and sector, etc. Would you mind bringing them to me tomorrow? I am eager to learn about your father's heroics.

I am not sure if they are there.

Come, come, they must be the most treasured papers in your home. I am sure you will find them. Okay, take one week to get them and then come back and see me.

Sir, on second thought I think I am not interested in enrolling in this department. May be my father can speak to the Dean and get me into another one.

Good idea, and good luck.

* * *

In an obscure corner of a by-lane of Old Elephant Road there is one-room museum commemorating a kid who did not go to the USA for higher studies though he was admitted into a prestigious college. Instead he fought in the Liberation War. He was unmarried and left no descendants to reap the benefit of his martyrdom. We know his name only because his mother wrote a book about him, which appears so taciturn that readers have to supply the tears.

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Dr Ahmed Shafee is a Professor of Physics at the University of Dhaka