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He loved the pure,
austere beauty of thought. His piercing eyes gazed at the snow-white peaks of
abstract mathematical truths and beyond. Yet, his feet did not leave the mundane
earth, an earth that was hard and burnt, bearing the footprints of struggling
masses. He was himself the greatest architect of the marvelous pillars of
profound knowledge, which were to him synonymous to his life. Yet he did not
hesitate to forsake it when the voice of struggling humanity summoned him from
deep within his heart. And today, with the war-mongering, blood-thirsty vultures
lurking over our head, the arrogant, devilish laughter of vanguards of
imperialism tearing apart our dreams, it’s high time to recall Alexander
Grothendieck. To get inspiration from the uncompromising battle of this lone
crusader. And to learn from his mistakes and confusions as well.
Grothendieck, born in
1928 in Berlin, was the greatest exponent of pure mathematics during the second
half of last century, a name uttered with equal reverence in the community of
mathematicians as that of Einstein among physicists. His overwhelming presence
in almost all the branches of pure mathematics during the 50’s and 60’s
literally revolutionized the subject, as a recognition of which he was awarded
the Fields’ Medal (equivalent of Nobel Prize in mathematics) in 1966. His
prodigious creativity expressed itself in the form of more than a thousand pages
of mathematical literature in slightly more than twenty years of time. He was a
faculty at the newly-founded I. H. E. S. (a centre for excellence for advanced
mathematics and theoretical physics) since its early days, and it was his
charismatic academic leadership that brought I.H.E.S. to the summit of
international reputation.
There was, however,
another Grothendieck, who was becoming increasingly concerned of the world
outside mathematics; a world that had already seen the monstrous face of horror
in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in countless concentration camps, in the bloody
battlefields of Vietnam. He hated to be one of those elites who prefer a life
insulated from the outside world by a self-created and self-admired wall of
ignorance and pride. In fact, he used to describe the day-to-day life at I.H.E.S.
as that in a ‘gilded cage’. He was very much at home with the poor and
marginalized people, for whom the doors of his residence were always wide open.
Grothendieck was
pacifist to the core of his heart, and it was far from a passive one. During the
Vietnam War, he travelled to Hanoi accompanied by a number of fellow
mathematicians to express solidarity with the Vietnamese people and to protest
against the US imperialism. His abhorrence of war and anything related directly
or indirectly to it made him more and more critical of the existing relationship
between science and the establishment: both the state and private corporate
sectors. He was fully aware of the real reasons behind wars; namely the
omnivorous greed of the capitalist imperialism trying to spread its tentacles to
every corner of the earth. In fact, this consciousness was something inherited
from his parents, Shapiro and Hanka, who were in the forefront of the struggle
against fascism during the turbulent days of thirties and forties. Shapiro took
active part in the Russian Revolution overthrowing the Tsar, and later on in
various leftist movements against the Nazi’s in Germany, where he married Hanka.
The couple fought in Spain against Franco, and were detained after they had fled
to France following the victory of the fascists in Spanish civil war. They got
released for a while, but Shapiro was again arrested and finally died in a
concentration camp.
Alexander did not
have much company of his parents until a much later date when Hanka could
reunite with her son. However, the child did inherit the spirit of struggle. The
revolutionary ambience of the boarding school in which he spent quite a few
years during the year, which became a centre for covert resistance against the
Nazi occupation, must have played a significant role in shaping his
consciousness. After reunion, his mother sketched a profile of the heroic
struggle of his father, which he kept deep in his heart throughout his life.
This fiery heritage
might not be easily visible in the self-contained mathematician, but those who
closely knew him could not overlook it in his glowing, determined eyes,
reflecting an uncompromising and firm character. Even his early academic career
was influenced by his determination to refrain from anything related to military
affairs. He decided to stay away from physics (in spite of his love for the
subject and its natural interrelation with his own subject, mathematics) as he
conceived of physics after Hiroshima-Nagasaki to be destined to have an
ever-lasting, "unholy" link with the military sciences. Eccentric as it may
appear, one must understand the depth of his hatred against war and imperialism
from his early days. He hoped that mathematics would remain as one of those
islands where the air could never be polluted by the smell of blood. His dream
was, however, just too short-lived; he had to discover very soon that there were
already too many links ! On several occasions during the 60’s, he declined to
participate in conferences fully or partially supported by funds from NATO, NASA
or the ministry of defense of different countries. In some cases his reputation
forced the organizers to find some alternative source of funding to ensure his
participation. In 1966, he rejected an invitation from Moscow in protest against
the aggressive policies of the-then USSR that he did not approve of.
Then came the turning
point of his career when in 1970 he discovered to his disgust and surprise that
some percentage of the budget of his own institute (IHES) had been coming from
the D.R.E.T. (Direcion de la Recherche et des Etudes Techniques), a small
funding agency of the French Ministry of Defense. This triggered off a long and
bitter debate between Grothendieck and the founder-director of IHES, Leo
Motchane, who was a staunch supporter of the theory of ‘isolation’ of science
from its socio-political perspectives. It became a symbolic clash of two
opposite views on science. Grothendieck demanded an immediate halt to the flow
of funding from D.R.E.T.. It was nevertheless not a significant proportion of
the whole budget, and could easily be cut down. However, the political views of
Grothendieck, declining to dissociate science from the socio-political aspects,
was totally unacceptable and alarming to Motchane, who was in fact the
representative of the capitalist state determined to keep the intelligentsia
under its firm control. Thus, Grothendieck had no choice but to quit his beloved
institute right away.
This decision came as
a big shock to all of his colleagues and students at IHES who tried in vain to
convince Motchane to accept Grothendieck’s demand. However, as Grothendieck
pointed out later on, none of them shared his courage and determination to risk
their career, and thus could not sustain any form of strong protest against the
administration.
Following his quit
from IHES, he looked for a place to continue mathematical research with full
independence and without any form of financial aid from funding agencies related
to military affairs. It appeared to be an extremely difficult search, as most of
the top-ranking universities and institutes, which would otherwise be more than
happy to have the greatest living mathematician in their faculty, were now
scared of his fiery presence, and failed to satisfy his strict preconditions
regarding the funding agencies.
In the end, he did
find some relatively low-profile places satisfying his criteria where he taught
for few more years, but those were not so much suitable for his advanced
research, and on top of it, he was now more and more interested in direct
socio-political movements. This led him to found a small group called ‘Survivere’,
which means to survive, for anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle aimed at a
peaceful, pollution-free world. He declared himself as a "militant activist" of
this group, and devoted all his time and energy to this movement. However, it
failed to attach itself to the wider political movements. One must say that in
spite of his insight into the real face of imperialism and his burning hatred
against it, Grothendieck had confused ideas about the path of resistance, and
the Survivere Movement could not gain a broad popular base. All these made
Grothendieck psychologically unstable, and finally he secluded himself in a
small hamlet in France, where he’s still alive, but completely cut off from the
outside world.
The life of
Grothendieck has a number of important lessons, which are of relevance even
today. We are going through a dark age when the imperialist powers, led by the
arrogant and aggressive U.S.A., are flexing their muscles all over the unipolar
world. As a natural consequence there is more pressure than ever on the
intellectuals, especially the scientists, to lend their intellect and expertise
to the capitalist states and private multinational agencies engaged in war or
preparations for war. There are more and more lucrative incentives as well for
joining hands with such agencies, for example, in the form of high-salaried
jobs, fellowships, grants, projects and so on. And even subjects with purely
academic or aesthetic values are not left out…there are jobs and various
fellowships, grants etc. for such subjects too sponsored directly or indirectly
by agencies linked with the military. The purpose is two-fold: firstly, to keep
the intelligentsia under control, to keep them away from expressing any
rebellious political views against the state-policies; and secondly, to earn
some kind of respectability or legitimacy in the eye of the public. The Indian
scenario is no different: the Department of Atomic Energy (D.A.E.) is the main
source of funding to a number of prominent institutes like T.I.F.R. and Inst. of
Mathematical Sciences, where purely theoretical research on mathematics, physics
and related subjects are carried out. It is perhaps needless to mention that
with the rising fascism in India and its newly-gained nuclear weapons targeted
to emerge as a regional power and close ally of USA, the main objective of D.A.E.
in near future will be far from anything peaceful. And one must not forget how
the authorities of this agency suppressed any voice of criticism or protest in
the past: suspension of fellowship of Prof. D. D. Kosambi who was a faculty of
T.I.F.R. in 1962, and the more recent episode of threatening a physicist from
Inst of Math. Sciences with possible suspension for criticizing India’s nuclear
policy are examples of this.
The need of the time
is to take sides against imperialism. The responsibility of any intellectual
with conscience is to come forward and join hands with people struggling against
it, and a first step towards this may be to boycott any kind of funding, direct
or indirect, from the state or private agencies linked with the war-monger
imperialist forces, specially the USA and its allies. Grothendieck’s heroic
crusade must be an illuminating source of inspiration in this context. And there
is no place for any half-hearted resistance, any double-standard that is not so
uncommon among the elite intellectuals, who protest against the imperialist
aggression from a safe distance on one hand and yet do not hesitate to accept
funds or grants from military agencies. It is relevant to recall how
Grothendieck criticized such opportunism in his speech given at the University
Paris VI in 1970 :
" …So easily my
colleagues accepted contracts with the army (American generally) or agreed to
take part in scientific meetings financed by military funds…This does not
prevent them from professing the ideas `of the left’ or from being indignant at
the colonial wars (Indo-China, Vietnam, Algeria) carried out by the same
army…They generally justify this by saying that this did not limit in any sense
their independence or freedom of thought. They refuse to see that this
collaboration gives an aura of respectability and liberalism to this apparatus
of control, destruction and depreciation. This is something that shocked me."
Finally, one should
not forget that in spite of their great reverence for Grothendieck, not too many
of his fellow-mathematicians could show enough courage to take sides with him,
which would have required a determination to forsake most of the social status
and privileges that such people are accustomed to enjoy. This is always
difficult for people in the higher echelons of the society to take such all-out
risks. The number of those who don’t retreat from the half-way remains to be
relatively few, and their lone battle often ends up in an isolated island of
frustration, like what happened to Grothendieck, unless they can join hands with
the struggling proletariat in a really meaningful way. The more people come
forward to join the anti-imperialist struggle the better it is for the future of
mankind.
References :
( 1) www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Grothendieck.html,
(2) http://modular.fas.harvard.edu/
sga/from_Grothendieck.pdf
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