The two-room bungalow, the birth place of Pakistan’s only Nobel
laureate, today stands empty, testament to the indifference,
bigotry and prejudice surrounding the country’s greatest
scientist. Professor Abdus Salam, the child prodigy born to a
humble family on the sun-blasted plains of Punjab who won
accolades all over the world for his ground-breaking research in
theoretical physics, is all but forgotten. He was the
trailblazer who helped pave the way to the recently hailed
discovery of the “God particle” — one of the greatest
achievements in science for the last 100 years — but as the
world went into overdrive, Pakistan stayed largely silent. Not
even boasting from India, whose late physicist Satyendra Nath
Bose also contributed to the discovery, snapped Pakistan out of
lethargy. And the reason? Because in the eyes of the law, Salam
was a heretic. “Our people are not educated. They just know this
is the house of Dr. Salam, who was a scientist, and they,
including me, are unaware of his contributions. They a