Abdus Salam8217;s son flays Pak hypocrisy

Ahmad Salam,the London-based investment banker son of the Nobel laureate,said: 8220;There is a consistent hypocrisy in Pakistan. When it suited them,they took advice from him on nuclear and science issues,but would never be seen to engage with him officially8221;.

8220;Officials from Pakistan8217;s atomic and other agencies would travel all over the world to seek my father8217;s advice behind closed doors,but officially they never engaged with him. I was told that when some cabinet ministers wanted to attend his funeral,they were told not to8221;,he said.

The 8216;ultimate insult8217;,he said,was when the word 8216;Muslim8217; on his father8217;s tomb in Pakistan,which initially read 8216;First Muslim Nobel Laureate8217; was erased on the orders of the local magistrate.

The highest official representative for the funeral was the local police inspector.

Pakistan8217;s constitution was amended in 1974 to declare that Ahmadiyas were not considered Muslims under the country8217;s law.

All Pakistani passport applicants are required to sign a section saying the Ahmadi faith8217;s founder,Hadrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who died in 1908,was an 8216;impostor8217; and that his followers are 8216;non-Muslims8217;.

Ahmad Salam said his father was very touched by the 8216;phenomenal warmth and affection8217; he received during his visit to India after winning the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979,and recalled that both Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi had offered him Indian citizenship.

Abdus Salam had close links with India,mainly with the academic community.

He was honoured by many Indian universities with doctorates and invitations to address their convocation ceremonies.

During a visit to India,Ahmad Salam said his father went to Punjab to meet his Mathematics teacher who was bed-ridden,and when they met,Salam took off his Nobel medal and placed it on his teacher8217;s chest,and said: 8220;This is for you8221;.

The teacher had taught him in undivided India.

8220;Even now there is so much affection for my father in India. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister worked with my father in the South Commission,and just last year he spoke in glowing terms about him during a speech at the Third World Academy of Sciences in Hyderabad8221;,Ahmad Salam said.

Abdus Salam made a significant contribution in developing the theoretical framework that led to the recent success in the quest for Higgs Boson.

Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg,with whom he shared the Nobel Prize,independently predicted the existence of a subatomic particle now called the Higgs boson,named after a British physicist who theorised that it endowed other particles with mass.

Ahmad Salam runs a charity organisation set up by his father, the Mohammad Hussain Hajra Hussain Nobel Talent Fund,to help meritorious students to come and study in the UK.

The Nobel laureate8217;s family is also closely involved with Imperial College London,where he set up the Theoretical Physics department.