Volume 5, No. 1, January 2004

 

Grothendieck : The Other Name Of Struggle

(On the occasion of WSF we print here an obituary on Grothendieck to introduce to the audience to a real anti-imperialist fighter, who, though not a revolutionary, was a principled fighter for justice and against the imperialist system. He is an example for all intellectuals who profess to be against imperialist globalisation and war, in as much as he did not compromise on principles that he stood for. This is particularly important today when we find the modern intellectual selling their souls to NGOs and ruling class social-democrats, in order to buy peaceful opposition and careerism, together with their dabbling in anti-globalisation rhetoric. We do hope this article will inspire at least some intellectuals to stand by principles even it costs them a lucrative career and some fame and ‘respectability’ of the establishment. — Editor)

— Joy

 

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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