All glory is fleeting!!
as the victorius Roman generals had their slaves whispering in their ears while
entering the city with pom -as per US General Patton - in the movie.
Umesh
Chan Mahanta [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: India's Nobel connections
14 Oct 2007, 0037 hrs IST,Chidanand Rajghatta
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Yet another Nobel season has gone by and no Indian has won the Prize
outright, not that it will deny us some more hysteria and
over-the-top headlines. So eager are we to grab any Indian connection
to success, howsoever remote, that we will celebrate this year's
peace prize shared between Al Gore and the Inter-governmental panel
on Climate Change, because the IPCC is currently headed by Dr R K
Pachauri, a fine scientist in his own right.
But it's not the same thing as a home-grown Indian individual winning
it, the hypernationalist joke about Gore (Goray) being from Pune
aside. Still, if you are part of the national mood of hype and
hoopla, we'll count IPCC-Dr Pachauri's win as the 11th Nobel for
India.
How 11? You would start with Rabindranath Tagore, the first Indian to
be awarded the Nobel (for literature in 1913). Sir C V Raman was the
second native-born resident Indian winner and the first Indian to win
a science Nobel, for physics in 1930.
But even before those landmarks, India can claim two other Nobel
'connections.' Ronald Ross, who won the Nobel for medicine in 1902,
was born in Almora and was listed as an ''Indian physician of
Scottish origin.'' He joined the Indian Medical Service in 1881 and
worked in Calcutta, Bangalore and Ooty. Rudyard Kipling, the
arch-imperialist who won the Nobel for literature in 1907, was born
in Bombay.
Independent India almost had its first Nobel laureate in 1948 when
the committee is said to have pencilled in Mahatma Gandhi for the
Peace Prize. But he was assassinated just before the nominations
closed. The Nobel is not awarded posthumously so we 'lost' that.
It would be another two decades before another Indian, this one
slightly more desi than Ross and Kipling, won the award. In 1968,
Punjab-born Dr Har Gobind Khorana, then a US citizen, won the Nobel
for medicine. Sadly, he had left India just after Independence when a
job he was promised was denied by a last minute intervention by a
minister who plumped for his nephew.
A sixth Nobel came India's way in 1979 when Albanian-origin
Calcutta-resident Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa) won the peace
prize. Four years later, Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, like Khorana a US
citizen and less known as C V Raman's nephew, won the Nobel for
physics. In 1989, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama and resident of
Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, was awarded the Nobel for peace.
Amartya Sen, arguably the most Indian of all post-Independent
connections despite living and teaching in the west, won the Nobel
for Economics in 1998. Finally, in 2001, V S Naipaul, as much Indian
as Trinidadian but a West Indian all the same, won for literature. So
Dr Pachauri is the 11th.
Keen readers can probably dredge up a few more Indian Nobel
connections. For instance, Winston Churchill, who won the Nobel in
1953 (for literature, would you believe it) served as a young
lieutenant in Bangalore during World War I. So do we count that to
make a dozen for India?
On the flip side though, Khorana was born in Multan, Chandra in
Lahore, Mother Teresa in Skopje and the Dalai Lama in Takster
(Tibet). So Pakistan, China, Albania and Macedonia may be puffing up
their count too, although they don't seem to be as hyperbolic as we
currently are.
The sad truth is our Nobel 'connections' are made up of India-born
westerners, pre-Independence British subjects, and non-resident
Indians who held other citizenships. While we celebrate sundry rich
lists and other spurious records with gusto, no home-grown resident
Indian has won a Nobel since Independence. So, much for rising,
shining India.
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Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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