Two young Pakistanis are battling all odds to make the first-ever documentary on the country's only Nobel laureate Abdus Salam though the going has not been easy so far because he was an Ahmedi.
Ahmedis, who are in minority in Pakistan, are not considered to be Muslims.
Omar Vandal and Zakir Thaver chose to document Salam's life because "he overcame humble beginnings, a modest formative education and religious intolerance to become one of the leading physicists of the 20th century".
Thaver, who was working for a production company in New York, came up with the idea three years ago but producers were not interested in making a film on a dead scientist from Pakistan at that time.
Later, he set up Kailoola Productions with his colleague Vandal in New York to bring science to the developing world and bridge the knowledge divide via TV.
Vandal and Thaver did not contact any government institutions for the project because Salam was an Ahmedi and they did not think the authorities would have supported them.
"The word Muslim has been whitened out from Salam's epitaph, so why would the government bother funding our project? For officialdom, Salam is too much of a political risk to celebrate," Thaver said in an interview posted on the duo's website.
{{/usCountry}}"The word Muslim has been whitened out from Salam's epitaph, so why would the government bother funding our project? For officialdom, Salam is too much of a political risk to celebrate," Thaver said in an interview posted on the duo's website.
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