The ignoble bias

By S Ahmed (NDChronicle.Com)

That the capitalist West refuses to recognize the intellectual talent of the world outside its fold is a known fact. Men like John Stuart Mill and Macaulay did not even give credit to the early Muslims, Hindus or Chinese for the advancement they made in the field of mathematic, algebra, geography, science etc. They held Arab, Persian, Indian and Chinese civilizations much inferior to their own. But in the modern era perhaps nothing exemplify this bias better than Nobel Prizes to the individuals outside the West.

Today the western media may praise China for all sorts of achievements, but till date not a single Chinese living in that country has got the Nobel Prize for anything. The five who got are only Chinese born living either in the United States or elsewhere. In fact one of them is Dalai Lama, who got it for Peace, and lives in India.

Andrei Sakharov, arguably one of the most reputed Physicist of his time, never got Nobel Prize for Physics. Instead in 1975 he got Nobel Peace Prize simply because he always stood and spoke against the then Soviet Union痴 nuclear and political policy, Though Soviet Union was geographically a part of the West, yet since it was not in the capitalist fold, in about 106 years, only 21 Russians got the Nobel Prizes. During the 72 years of the Soviet rule末between 1917 and 1989末only 15 of them got Nobel Prizes末the rest six got in the pre- or post-Communist years. Some of them got Nobel Prize either for Peace or Literature because they opposed the Communist regime. What an irony is it that the Father of the Russian Hydrogen Bomb, Andrei Sakharov, got Nobel Prize for Peace and not Physics. It sounds somewhat strange that after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1989 not a single Russians got Nobel Prize for Literature, though earlier the Nobel Prize committee was quite generous towards the Russian wrters.

In India too Mahatma Gandhi never got Peace Prize. Nobel Prize eluded noted Persian and Urdu poet of the sub-continent Eqbal and Bangla poet Nazrul Islam末not to speak of many others. The Third World may not be scientifically so advanced as the West but why no Chinese, Arab, or Indian got Nobel Prize for Literature in the recent decades when they produced some outstanding poets, playwrights and novelists. If an Egyptian or Turk got the Nobel Prize for Literature in the recent years it was more for the political reason末they wrote against their country and faith末than the real talent in their respective literature. Apart from them the Prize for Literature are mostly confined to the European and American languages. The Nobel Prize for Peace has almost become synonym to Nobel Prize for Politics. Even in the field of Literature, Peace and Economics most of the Third World recipients are those who went and settled in the West and had little or nothing to do with the country of their birth.

According to Wikipedia till last year 160 Americans, 110 Britons, 94 Germans and 54 French got Nobel Prizes. The total number of Nobel Laureates is 758; besides 18 organizations too received the award. It remains a mystery as to why only 21 Russians got it when there is no denying the fact that till 1990 it was considered as a Super Power and scientifically and technologically almost as advanced as the United States or any other western country. It was Soviet Union which sent first man to space and after the United States was first to trigger nuclear test. Britain and France made nuclear tests with the help of the United States as it wanted to counterbalance the Soviet threat in Europe.

Similarly not a single Japanese got Nobel Prize before the World War-II when it was educationally, scientifically and technologically as advanced as many European countries. In all 12 Japanese received Nobel Prize, most of them in the last two decades. This is simply because pre-World War-II Japan was not a part of the western bloc末in fact it was emerging as a threat to them in the East.

If the West has not been recognizing the achievements of others outside their fold today, one can only imagine its attitude in the history.