Roots of Kalam’s charisma

Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen (APJ) Abdul Kalam, the personification of People’s President, aged 83, died on July 27 while doing what he loved best - addressing students:

by B.C. Sharma

The widespread outpouring of grief which followed the sudden death of former Indian President and scientist A. P. J. Abdul Kalam on July 27 was unprecedented in India’s history since the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, in 1948.

The passing away of Indian leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi also triggered widespread grief across India. But the machinery of the State or a political party had a major role to play in organizing and directing the expression of grief. In the case of Kalam, however, the outburst was unorganized, spontaneous, and natural. It cut across political, regional, linguistic, communal and generational divides.

And for all this, Kalam was only an ex-President, who had demitted office long ago, in 2007, and was almost 84 when the end came.

Kalam was perhaps the only ex-Indian President or Indian ‘leader’ who continued be in the minds and hearts of the people after retirement. He continued to write and speak on a variety of issues of people’s concern.

Stood For India’s Aspirations

He was very contemporary in his concerns and urged his listeners and readers to look to the future instead of dwelling in the past. His aim was to reach out to all, which made him speak and write in a simple, easily understandable way. He wrote as many as 17 books, which though not profound or scholarly, went straight to the hearts and minds of the reader, ‘igniting’ them to work vigorously for a better tomorrow for all, especially the underprivileged.

Kalam became popular because in his person, life and achievements, he stood for India’s aspirations, its youth’s aspirations. Dilip D’Souza writing in the website Scroll.in described it thus:

“This man, remember, was a boatman’s son from Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu; from there, he grew up to be a scientist and engineer. His is a nation, after all, in which generations of parents have sought to turn their children into engineers (to be fair, doctors too).

“It remains a profession revered like few others. Only its practitioners, we believe, can and will transform India into that promised land so many yearn for: powerful, developed, filled with skyscrapers and expressways and gleaming airports. And president Kalam was one such practitioner. In a long line of politicians who have occupied the Presidency, this man of science stood out. Simply by doing so, he stood for a nation’s aspirations.”

Swimming against the anti-nuclear and anti-military current coursing through a vocal section of the Indian intelligentsia, Kalam was an outspoken advocate of the acquisition of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies right through. In this area too, he voiced the feelings of the younger generation of Indians and the middle classes which wanted India to be a major generator of power and militarily strong. Though a man of peace, he was practical in these matters. “When the neighbourhood is nuclear, we in India cannot be doing tapas (meditation)” he told an interviewer.

Youth Icon

Unlike many others, Kalam did not go hunting for audiences or canvass for invitations to speak. Invitations to talk kept pouring in from every nook and corner of India, and audiences eagerly flocked to his lectures in great numbers. True to form, he was lecturing to students of the Indian Institution of Management in Shillong in North Eastern India when a cardiac arrest claimed his life.

Kalam’s target audience was the youth, especially, university and school students, aspiring entrants into a challenging new world. And he won them over lock, stock and barrel. As former Indian Minister Shashi Tharoor noted: “With his long silvery hair unfashionably combed back and his thick Tamilian accent, Kalam was an unlikely pop culture idol, but that was what he became.”

Kalam set much store by children and youth because they were the citizens of a morrow which could be shaped as per his grand scheme. He even assigned to the youth a contemporary role, that of correcting the distortions characterizing contemporary society. He appealed to children to question and correct their wayward and corrupt parents.

Kalam started the “What I Can Give Movement” which was meant to get the citizens of India to find out what they can do for social and national betterment, especially for alleviation of poverty, instead of asking what others, the state and society can do for them. Not surprisingly, Kalam was declared the “MTV Youth Icon” twice, in 2003 and 2006.

Explaining Kalam’s appeal, a Sri Lankan sociologist said: “At times he was simplistic or banal, but he gave the impression of being a sincere and good man, qualities which made audiences lap up what he said as a profound message from a Messiah.” And Dilip D’Souza said: “Here was a President who actually wanted to mingle with us, to remain one among us, rather than an unapproachable exaltation on a pedestal. Who would not respond to that?”

Kalam had always lived simply. When he was a scientist in the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, he would commute by public bus and eat in the Guruvayurappan Saivar Kade with the hoi polloi, remembers Shashi Tharoor who represents Thiruvnanthapuram in the Indian Parliament. In a fitting recognition of Kalam’s status as a ‘Man of the Masses’ the Government of India decided to bury Kalam, not in Imperial Delhi, but in the tiny town of Rameswaram, where he was born and raised.

Kalam genuinely cared for his staff, ensured their welfare and protected them in times of trouble. Former ISRO chief, G. Madhavan Nair, recalled that when he botched up a rocket launch, Kalam, as head of the project, took the rap instead of exposing the subordinate’s fault. On his way to his last lecture in Shillong, Kalam found a soldier standing on his escort jeep all through the 2.5 hour journey to the hill station. On reaching the destination Kalam apologized to the man for the inconvenience he had caused. But the smiling soldier unhesitatingly replied: “For you Sir, I will stand for six hours if need be!”

Social Focus

Equitable social development had been one of Kalam’s principal concerns. In 2003, while being President of India, he proposed a scheme designed to prevent the overcrowding of cities by ‘Providing Urban Amenities to Rural Areas’ or PURA as Kalam christened it. The PURA scheme was accepted by the Central Indian government in 2004 and implemented in some areas. But government later drastically toned down its scope to cover only sanitation and water supply to make it more implementable. Kalam however continued to advocate his idea of PURA till his death.

Hope for the underprivileged

In a developing country where millions are underprivileged and poor, Kalam had been a beacon of hope, as he had risen from very humble beginnings to become a distinguished scientist and the President of India.

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born in 1931 in a Maraikkar boatman cum boat maker’s family of Rameswaram, a coastal fishing cum Hindu pilgrimage town in Tamil Nadu. Since the family was large and hard up, Kalam had to supplement its income by doing a part time job as a newspaper vendor from the age of eight. But being good in Mathematics, he was able to enter St. Joseph’s College in Tiruchi to do his Bachelor’s in Physics. Given his passion for planes and flying, he joined Madras Institute of Technology to do a course in aeronautical engineering. When he failed to qualify to enter the Air Force as a trainee pilot, Kalam joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADL) of the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) of the Government of India as a junior scientist.

In 1969, Kalam was transferred to the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) where he became Director of India’s first Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-III) project which successfully deployed the ‘Rohini”’ satellite in near-earth orbit in July 1980. In the 1970s and 1990s, Kalam developed the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). In the 1970s, he directed two projects, ‘Project Devil’ and ‘Project Valiant’, which developed ballistic missiles from the technology of the successful SLV program. 

Despite disapproval of the Cabinet, the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, allotted secret funds for these projects. Kalam and Dr. V. S. Arunachalam, a metallurgist and Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister, worked on a suggestion by the then Defence Minister, R. Venkataraman to simultaneously develop a group of missiles instead of developing them one after another. This was the beginning of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program. Kalam played a major role in developing many missiles under the mission including ‘Agni’, an intermediate range ballistic missile, and ‘Prithvi’ a tactical surface-to-surface missile.

Kalam served as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister and Secretary of the DRDO. It was during his tenure that India conducted its second nuclear test (a thermo-nuclear test) at Pokhran, a desert area in Rajasthan, in 1998. He was the Chief Coordinator in this project.

The 1998 nuclear test made the United States take India seriously as pointed by Rajiv Sikri, former Indian Foreign Secretary in his book: Challenges and Strategy: Rethinking India’s Foreign Policy. S. Gurumurthi, writing in The New Indian Express says Kalam’s work on ballistic missiles and the nuclear bomb played a major role in getting the US to want India’s friendship. The USD had previously cold shouldered India because it was militarily weak, according to Gurumurthi.

Kalam did not restrict himself to nuclear and space technology. In 1998, along with cardiologist Dr. Soma Raju, he developed a low cost coronary stent called ‘Kalam-Raju Stent’, which brought down the price of a stent from INR 2.5 lakh to INR.10, 000. 

In 2012, Kalam and Raju designed a rugged tablet computer for health care in rural areas, named the ‘Kalam-Raju Tablet’.

Much honoured in scientific circles, Kalam also got top Indian State awards like Padma Vibhushan and Bharat Ratna. In July 2002, he was unanimously elected as the President of India, a post he occupied till July 2007. As he constantly interacted with all sections of society particularly the hoi polloi, students and youth, he earned the epithet ‘People’s President’.

Some Muslims like Dr. Rafiq Zakaria had criticized Kalam (Asian Age, June 19, 2002), for living the life of a Hindu ‘Brahmin’, avoiding non-vegetarian food, quoting from the Hindu scripture the Bhagvad Gita and playing the stringed instrument Veena.

He was also accused of not ‘identifying himself as a Muslim’. But Najid Hussain (Outlook July 18, 2002) defended Kalam saying that he was one of those intellectuals who had “crossed the boundary of religions and entered a zone where one recognized and revered the laws and principles of nature by freeing oneself from the bonds of traditions.” In his own article in Outlook Kalam mentions that he used to attend a Madrasa in Rameswaram daily to study the Quran Sharif.