Are we talented enough to recognise talent in others?

In late December, India celebrated World Mathematics Day and remembered Sreenivasa Ramanujan. But, remembered him too late. His premature death was a loss for this country as well as the world of mathematics. All that is left of his original work now are the three precious notebooks preserved carefully in the Wren Library of Trinity College in Cambridge, side by side with Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Our own Madras University where he sent the rest to be read, studied and assessed by the “learned” faculty there, are mostly destroyed or moth eaten after lying in their musty archives for decades.

But then, it also takes a brilliant mind to recognize brilliance in others. Ramanujan’s meeting with GH Hardy, Britain’s leading “pure mathematician” was a rare coincidence. Hardy’s recognition of that spark in this “poorly educated Hindu clerk from Madras” who dared to challenge him, was the beginning of a journey that ended tragically in his own country which had failed to recognize his brilliance. India’s greatest tragedy is its inability to identify and reward talent and excellence in any field.

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This lack of appreciation and encouragement among other things has driven away the best brains from this country to make their adopted homes richer and better in all respects. Ramanujan is a sad example of this rejection in his own land which drove him to England where he got that recognition too late and at great loss to his health. He came home after earning a distinguished Fellowship of the Royal Society in Cambridge to die young, leaving an irreparable gap in our scientific world. He was barely 32 years.

How many young scientists are recognised and encouraged in our science institutions? The spate of suicides in the IISc last year says it all. Senior professors not allowing their juniors to advance; guides preventing young scholars from completing a doctoral programme by delaying tactics; class teachers downgrading promising pupils while favouring mediocre ones in schools and colleges. Are things any better when these youngsters enter the world of work? A disgruntled junior manager can ruin their careers successfully knowing that they have no access to the “higher ups.” What protection for these victims of bullying and exploitation? Ramanujan himself was a victim of such harassment in the Port Trust of India where his boss accused him of misusing government paper because he collected waste paper from garbage bins to scribble mathematical equations! This led to his working with chalk on temple floors at nights where his precious work would be wiped away every morning.

Then, there are sportspersons, athletes, artistes, writers and a host of talented persons who do not have the clout or the money to promote themselves. They have only their talent and perseverance to survive. Is the Centre aware of their existence? The Bharat Ratnas and Padmabhushans are freely given away to those with clout and influence, just like the Rajyotsava and other state awards. Why did it take years and years for India to recognize an MS Subbulakshmi? Why do these tokens of recognition fail to see real genius? It is ignored as if it did not exist. Whether it is scientific awards, literary accolades, military decorations or even police medals - they are freely distributed to candidates with letters of endorsement from persons with no talent or capability.

Why has it taken one hundred years for us to realise that we had a wizard in mathematics on par with the best in the world? Why did we need a Hardy to tell us that Ramanujan belonged to the world of eminent mathematicians like Jacobi and Euler; or that his work would one day be in the distinguished WREN library which housed Morgan’s Bible and Newton’s Principia Mathematica? His biographer, Robert Kanigel, describes it as a “life’s work that resounds a century later.”

I spoke to Kanigel when he released his book The man who knew Infinity. He was totally captivated by this Indian clerk who turned science on its head. Picking up the story from how the poverty ridden young man lived in a mud hovel, wrote on a slate because he could not afford paper, lived on a handful of rice and rasam offered in charity; how he came to Madras in search of a job with tickets bought from friends, how he showed his notebook crammed with mathematical formulae to people who could not understand them -- until he arrived at Trinity College in Cambridge where this historic meeting of two brilliant minds occurred. It was an exciting journey of discovery for Kanigel to write about a scholar who showed the correlation between God, Zero and Infinity! When he closed the book, the author wept because Ramanujan’s brief life story was so wretched and sad. Can celebrating his centenary now or putting his face on a postage stamp wash his blood clean from our hands?