Recently, during the Centenary celebrations of R.K. Narayan in Mysore, it was recollected, how Graham Greene helped the struggling author when he arranged for the publication of his first novel in England and subsequently too. Graham particularly liked the style of RKN and many times even corrected simple grammatical mistakes of the upcoming author. In short he was a guide to his unseen friend and author. It is remarkable that in their friendship of over 30 years, they met only ONCE, that too briefly, in 1964!
Similarly, one has read about how the genius of Mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan was ‘unearthed’ by Prof.G. H. Hardy at Cambridge. Ramanujan who was a clerk at Port Trust Office worked on his favorite subject of Mathematics after office hours. He had scribbled problems on the back of bills and pamphlets, as he was unable to buy stationery. When he sent all his’ ‘Papers’ to Prof. Hardy, it was lying on Professor’s table quite sometime. One day, out of boredom, when he had nothing to do, and decided to have a look at Ramanujan’s papers, a jolt went thro’ him. The problems which were raised was not from a professor or a graduate student in Maths but from a clerk working in Port Trust office, ( Where rudimentary arithmetic, such as addition, multiplication is all that is required !). Subsequently, Prof. Hardy arranged for Ramanujan to study in Cambridge, where his genius was brought to international acclaim. Due to continuing poor health, Ramanujan had to return to India and passed away when he was still young.
Another example that comes to mind is that of Rabindranath Tagore and The English poet W.B. Yeats.
The question is, these two Indians achieved great fame and recognition due to a timely leg up from an unknown foreigner who did not even know them at all. To help out somebody, recognize a genius from a far off place and unearth the talent and nurture it, is something rare, if not altogether absent. Would RKN have made it, if he had sent to an author in India? Would an Indian Professor, cared to go thro’ the ‘smudgy’ papers and then helped to the extent as Prof. Hardy did? At least one has not heard of such deeds all these years. If anybody has a story contrary to this, please let me know. I would love to hear the same.
First, one correction. William Butler Yeats was not English but Irish living in London at that time. Like Bernard Shaw, he did not like English who were ruling his country, but was contended in living in Englandand criticising English!! Later ,when (Southern) Ireland became independent in 1922 he went back to Dublin and was for a time member of parliament there. Second, Graham Greene belonged to a small group of writers who were at that time against British as rulers overseas, and hated Britain holding on to colonies. He was also influenced by Rudyard Kipling, about Indians and India. These two triggered his interest to look at what an Indian- RKN sent him. It was not by accident W.B. Yeats ( pronounced Yates) and Greene became supporters of RKN and Tagore respectively. The politics previaling at that time was a powerful factor. If it were not their politics, who knows what would have happened.
About Indian professors. There were instances but very few I should add.
Just to add: Much was written about Prof Hardy's support to Ramanujan. It was his collegue Prof Littlewood's strong support Hardy required to bring Ramanujan to Cambridge.
At a time when another Indian student called Chadrasekhar (who later won nobel Prize for his contribution to Astrophysics) was interested in doing work in an area not many were interested in India at that time, he was encouraged by Dirac ( Fermi-Dirac fame and a Nobel Prize winner later) who later became his PhD supervisor.
On a different note: recently the Booker Prize literary award went to Kiran Desai, when all critics here in England were interested in a few others and critical reviews in NY Times for her book was pretty scathing. It was really a courageous act on the part of Booker prize judges to give an award to someone like Miss Desai ( perhaps the fact that her mother was short listed 3 times and failed to win was a factor, but the judges denied this).
