Maligned Martyr

Portraying the Pathos

- ANUBHAB ROY

The world we live in tends to operate on a binary basis - pairs like black/white or hot/cold, stand as guideposts to meaning. Religion and science have occupied a binary central to human civilisation since its dawn. While the former is largely considered fictive in contrast with the latter, many notable figures throughout history have navigated this opposition, to believe in religion and science as complementary to each other. Author and playwright Nilanjan P Choudhury's second play, The Trial of Abdus Salam, is an imagined courtroom drama on the titular figure, the first Muslim Nobel Laureate in science - a man condemned by orthodoxy within the same religion to which he had credited his scientific bent.