by SHASTRI RAMACHANDARAN
South Asian laureates are treated in a shabby manner at home, as if they are undesirables, best got rid of. This year, the response was somewhat mixed.
Every year when the Nobel Prizes are announced, Indians lament that they have been deprived of their “due recognition”. Yet when an Indian, such as Abhijit Banerjee, is awarded the Nobel Prize, Indians, as a whole, take no pride in it. India does not love its Nobel laureates. Nor does the rest of South Asia. Pakistan and Bangladesh too, berate and belittle their laureates. South Asian laureates are treated in a shabby manner at home, as if they are undesirables, best got rid of.
This year, the response was somewhat mixed. Generally, “progressive” sections of the intelligentsia cheered when the prize was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer. Though there were conspicuous exceptions.
Bengalis felt they had a particular reason to be proud. Banerjee, though a US citizen now, is a Bengali. Bengalis have produced five of the 10 Indian Nobelists, beginning with Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, the two foreigners — Ronald Ross in 1902, for discovery of the malaria parasite, and Mother Teresa in 1979. The other two are Amartya Sen in 1998 and Banerjee in 2019. Of the three laureates from Madras (now Chennai), the first, Sir C V Raman, who got the Nobel in Physics in 1930, worked in Calcutta. While Tagore was the first Asian to receive the Nobel (for literature), Raman was the first Asian to get one in the sciences. Both had a Bengal connection.
Bengalis may also recall that when Abdus Salam, the Pakistani laureate in Physics, came to India, he went to his pre-Partition physics teacher Anilendra Ganguly’s house in Calcutta. Salam placed his Nobel medal in Ganguly’s hands and said, “Sir, this is yours, not mine”. Modesty muzzles the Bengali from claiming credit for that Nobel.
While the prime minister and a galaxy of eminent individuals greeted Banerjee, there were big names in academia and public life, including Union ministers, that trolled and trashed this year’s Nobel winner and his seminal work which is part of a global trend among economists concerned with the poor. All because Banerjee did not endorse demonetisation, criticised the GST implementation and had his evidence-based poverty alleviation proposals, including the scheme for a minimum income, lauded by parties other than the BJP.
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