Whose brilliance is it anyway? | Review of A Touch of Genius, ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee

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A Touch of Genius, a caller anthology of the writings of “Indian Nobel laureates”, edited by historiographer Rudrangshu Mukherjee, is some nationalist and captious of nationalism — perchance by mishap — and exists successful an unresolved hostility with itself.

But first, Mukherjee’s instauration is absorbing. His usage of Isaiah Berlin’s favoritism betwixt the hedgehog and the fox to reason that ‘genius’ is that which resists disciplinary pigeonholing is insightful. The intelligence connections helium traces betwixt immoderate of the laureates besides springiness the postulation a coherence it mightiness different lack.

Risking familial essentialism

Now, 4 of the book’s Nobel laureates — Har Gobind Khorana, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Abhijit Banerjee — won the prize for enactment they did extracurricular India. None of them were Indian citizens for astir of their lives. What makes them oregon their enactment “Indian”? When the media addresses these individuals arsenic “Indian Nobel laureates”, the narratives hazard celebrating familial essentialism: the conception that India tin assertion their enactment due to the fact that they stock their genes with Indian ones astatine a colonisation level.

Chandrasekhar did each his astir important enactment erstwhile helium was astatine the University of Chicago. Khorana conducted his prize-winning enactment connected the familial codification successful the U.S. and Canada. Ramakrishnan did his enactment connected ribosomes astatine the University of Cambridge. Banerjee has lived and worked successful the U.S. for decades now.

If anything, these individuals could be, oregon could person been, ‘Indian’ due to the fact that they were moulded by Indian acquisition and taste environments earlier they left. In a speech with the American physicist Spencer Weart included successful the book, Chandrasekhar says C.V. Raman’s find had a “big impact” connected him. Ramakrishnan grew up successful Tamil Nadu and Banerjee’s parents were some Indian economists. It is hard to accidental wherever intelligence enactment happens.

However, that doesn’t meaningfully marque their enactment ‘Indian’. In fact, the statement is champion applied to Amartya Sen, Rabindranath Tagore and Raman. Sen’s intelligence preoccupations are astir India per se. Tagore and Raman worked successful India, for Indian institutions, connected problems they encountered successful India.

The curation omits these distinctions, however. Many of these laureates near India partially due to the fact that the technological and organization infrastructure of their clip could not enactment their work. If a laureate has not toiled successful Indian conditions, including those peculiar to the state pre-liberalisation — from chronic underfunding to the attraction of organization powerfulness successful idiosyncratic figures — the statement lone has the counterproductive genealogical meaning.

A Nobel Prize certifies accomplishment successful a peculiar domain implicit peculiar criteria astatine a peculiar humanities moment. It says thing astir the laureate’s broader wisdom. Yes, these individuals person the worldly and reputational state to deliberation successful nationalist without contiguous nonrecreational consequences. The scope of penning successful the publication is besides remarkable: it has a physicist penning connected beauty, an economist connected Bengal’s rivers, and a molecular biologist connected mortality. But the prize confers nary peculiar authorization here: contented belongs to anyone, Nobel Prize oregon no.

Beyond the nation

Indeed, if we could acceptable speech the luminance of its authors, A Touch of Genius seems similar a showcase of technological humanism, often delivered successful contrasting voices. Raman’s prose is simply a relic of a much romanticist epoch of find arsenic helium imbues the carnal satellite with a consciousness of Victorian wonder. Ramakrishnan, connected the different hand, offers a conversational and witty voice, and successful the process manages to uncover himself to beryllium human, not institution.

Chandrasekhar wields a blase diction arsenic helium looks for quality successful “King Lear, the Missa Solemnis, and the Principia” portion Kailash Satyarthi eschews world region for the affectional testimonial, focusing connected the “blackened feet” of a hopeless begetter oregon the “cool sunlight” a rescued kid feels. Together with Khorana’s modesty and Banerjee’s somewhat irreverent scepticism, the postulation proves the laureates’ quality to bid the English connection was indispensable to making their specialised “geniuses” a nationalist legacy.

Having assembled specified a singular portrait, the anthology strains to crook it into a smaller, stiffer frame. Simply, you cannot usage Tagore — the book’s astir voluminous contributor — to marque an statement for Indian greatness without sawing disconnected the subdivision you are sitting on.

Likewise, Sen describes ideology arsenic a cosmopolitan worth and his essays importune connected the value of reasoning and idiosyncratic capableness implicit immoderate corporate identity. The presumption is fundamentally anti-essentialist. Mother Teresa’s writings are besides astir Christ, love, and the soul; her theology oregon morals are not Indian due to the fact that they beryllium to the planetary past of the Catholic Church, rooted successful a Christo-centric worldview indifferent to the book’s nationalist enclosure.

In the end, A Touch of Genius is perplexing due to the fact that its 2 characters are astatine likelihood with each other. It could beryllium a accidental for readers to grow their minds but lone if they besides inquire pugnacious questions astir what the ‘genius’ successful its pages truly has to bash with India.