A Question About Dr APJ Abdul Kalam

Who was Dr APJ Abdul Kalam – a scientist or a technocrat? Was he involved in the militarization of India? Why didn’t Kalam join the international arms research industry, why did he chose to stay back in India? Here’s an attempt to find answers to many such questions about the ‘Rocket Man’ of India

Dear Jeyamohan,

After his death, the memorial messages and notes about Dr Kalam are certainly growing by the day in all the social media platforms.

We hear some contrarian voices too. One of my friends started by asking “what did he really do for Government-run schools?”. Other people were making fun of Kalam’s praising of poet Vairamuthu and actor Vivek; or his support for the Euro during the Greek crisis. I could answer some of these, but I am a bit confused by the ‘Schools’ question now.

Kalam was certainly a great scientist. He brought us respect in the international arena with his achievements in Space and Defense. Despite his stature, he maintained his exemplary simplicity even after being awarded the Bharat Ratna and becoming the President of this country.

People who knew him say that he never even raised his voice. Even after he got involved in politics and rose to the position of the leader of people, there was not a single complaint against him and yet he achieved more than what any of his predecessors could in his position.

After the imposition of international sanctions, he made us dream of being a superpower and contributed most to the uplifting of people’s flagging patriotism (particularly among students) – we must bow to him for that.

His simplicity, knowledge and vision made him a folk hero, and so the media started holding him aloft. He became a role model. After all, parents would rather prefer their kids be a technocrat like Kalam than be a Gandhi or a Kamaraj, wouldn’t they?

All the universities, colleges and schools in the education business understood this quickly. They exploited his love for students and fondness to reach out to them. They made him the star of their convocations and annual days. Surely they had their payoffs in the form of publicity and fees from parents in the next year.

As a result, today we see advertisements for engineering colleges during TV serials, most of them have his picture on their posters.

Did Kalam get exploited by the greed of the commercialized education industry and parents without himself realizing it? He was the face of Modernism in India – so maybe the Post-Modernists hate him for that?

If you look at it, even Rajnikanth maintains a simple image. Vivek and Vairamuthu praise him profusely for that. He too is a role model for many. Yet Rajnikanth’s name is big business today, and it’s almost impossible for him to act in small budget movie productions. Similarly I suspect whether Kalam too got into a helpless state where he could not do anything for the State run schools?

I have always been an admirer of Kalam – so this question has been disturbing me for the past two days. At least I have been able to express it out, that much is a relief.

Regards

Kaliprasadh R

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Dear Kaliprasadh

What you have sent is an essay. And your ‘questions’ are not really questions. They are just a series of confusions. If expressed in one line, you are asking why Kalam does not reflect your thoughts.

This is how I generally group such questions about Kalam. It’s not my job to answer these, yet I do so now because I understand your intentions.

1. “Kalam was never a scientist, he was only an engineer. He never invented anything of significance and he never had much of a standing among the international science community”

2. “Kalam never joined the debate on socio-political issues. He was always a pro-Establishment man”

3. “Kalam never opposed the privatization of education. He was always an invited guest at events of the Education Industry”

4. “Kalam did not possess any sensibility in art or literature. Whatever understanding he had about them was rather flat”

5. “Kalam was involved in the militarization of India. His chosen areas of missile and rocket technologies were inherently hawkish. He could have used his brain in peaceful initiatives. The money spent on missile and rocket technology could have been better used for improving the roads”.

6. “Kalam did not carry his Muslim identity and he did not use it spread Islam and its values. He participated in Hindu religious functions, he paid respects to Hindu religious saints. So he was just a Muslim in name”

Isn’t this all?

1. Kalam never projected himself as a scientific genius. He was not one of the foremost inventors nor did he put forward scientific theories. No one ever called him so.

But he learnt science, did his research in science and emerged out with quite a few scientific achievements. If Kalam is not a ‘Scientist’, then who else is? What is the credibility of those who seek to deny him that place?

A ‘Technocrat’ is just one who is good at deploying scientific technology in business and management. But Kalam conducted scientific research for half a century, made inventions, and demonstrated the results and their impact. All of his research and their documentation are available on record. The only reason someone refuses to accept Kalam as a scientist or calls him a technocrat would be to just slander him.

The domain and the research methods that Kalam adopted were completely unconventional. Who knows, he might even have won the Nobel if he had gone out of India and joined the rich research establishments of the international arms industry, and took part in their secret weapons programs. And maybe then, we would have praised him eloquently.

Instead Kalam chose to put his efforts towards nourishing the scrawny baby of Indian rocket science and technology. Taking its specific needs into account and working within whatever funding was available, he put in years of toil. He achieved what he worked for through constant and continuous effort.

India’s science-technology requirements were not predicated on inventing new things all the time. It was more about inventing what was refused to us and was hidden from us. And it was definitely not ‘reverse-engineering’ as some idiots implicate. There was nothing available for us to look at and engineer back. It is instead the process of imagining it, guessing its possibilities and literally ‘reinventing’ it.

And it is Science anyway you look at it. But it lacks the aura that comes with original scientific inventions. It does not fetch the inventors any glory.

That way, people like Kalam are martyrs and saints. Whatever they do is great scientific research, but they are not celebrated as great scientists. And on top of it, they will be denigrated by Western media. Kalam is disrespected simply because he did it out of his dedication to his country.

Many of Kalam’s predecessors, pioneers in this field, have been killed. We all know the unexplained cases of Dr Homi Bhabha, Homi Chetna and Vikram Sarabhai. Kalam worked in the shadow of death. He remained unmarried for this very reason. He remained a Karma Yogi and eschewed the foreign trips, seminars and media fame. What else does one need to do to attract attention of slanderers?

So many of his inventions could never even be discussed openly. But he still managed to write a lot about how we were able to reinvent many of those things successfully. Our so-called intellectuals lack the capability to even read and understand them.

2. Kalam knew his place and he only put forward what he was. He was a scientist, and technology was his domain. He wasn’t one who wasted time involving himself in things outside his scope. He kept repeating that one should not look outside one’s objectives. He did not enter politics, and was not involved in any sort of political activities. So he did not express political opinion.

His area of work required massive funding and infrastructure. If his work was to succeed, he could do nothing except be aligned with the government. This rule applied to Einstein too. So Kalam was cordial to all governments and achieved his objectives through their support. He never proffered socio-political comments.

But even to that, he brought his own individual approach. We can see that he avoided all negativity. He only identified the positive affirmative elements in any idea and nourished their roots. That was the approach chosen by a man of action, the personality of a Karma Veer. In an article written by ‘Sujatha’ Rangarajan, we can see that Kalam took care never to reprimand his subordinates even when they failed their duties. Instead he only focused on positive reinforcement.

In my interactions with him, Kalam advised me to never write anything negative and avoid criticism. It was at a time when my views and opinions were creating heated discussion. I chose to sidestep Kalam’s advice simply because it was not my way, that’s all.

What would have happened if Kalam had chosen to express his socio-political views? We would have made a joker of him on Facebook. We would have restrained him from carrying out his activities that he pursued tirelessly until his last breath. All the ‘keyboard warriors’ of today are exhibiting false righteousness to make us believe that they are a step above Kalam.

3. In his final years, Kalam wanted to meet as many young students as possible. His life ended among them. So he never refused any invitation from an educational institution. He wanted to leave behind a message of hope and belief with the younger generations.

Nothing is more absurd than expecting him to have instead criticized the educational institutions. He was neither an educationist nor did he profess any theories on education.

4. Kalam’s appreciation of art and literature was very limited. He was only a scientist. Our Indian education system only creates such uni-dimensional personalities. But does that undermine his achievements in any way? Even Gandhi’s taste in literature was not all that great. He was praising Bhajan composers as great poets. Let us forget Kalam for a moment. Who among our shining cast of politicians and intellectuals can say that they possess literary sensibilities?

5. The rocket technology that Kalam developed was not just war machinery. It is the very foundation of modern telecommunications.

I first met Kalam in one of the early Indian telecom conferences. He gave a lecture on how to launch satellites using rocket technology and how it would help in communication, emergence of cellphones and a resultant increase in overall employment. As he read out his paper, the Leftists in the audience like me were laughing it all off.

Today, a big part of our wealth comes from communication technologies. Our rocket technologies are the most cost-effective in the world. We earned back our investments many times over through gains in information technology. Now we sell it to African countries.

Technology investments never go waste. Most of the Arabian oil wealth today is sucked out by America and Europe that supply technology. Today, it’s only those countries without technological prowess that get exploited and pushed towards poverty.

Moreover, a nation’s economy is dictated by its military power. Our missiles and nuclear capabilities are our trump cards in any negotiation in the international arena. A simple question – why did America destroy Iraq but sits at the negotiation table with Iran? Isn’t it because of Iran’s missile and nuclear power? And here we are, sitting and passing snide comments on those men who gave us that respectability and power, calling them technicians and weapon manufacturers.

6. Kalam always felt himself a Muslim. One of my relatives who knew him said that Kalam even avoided bank deposits as he considered receiving interest payment as un-Islamic. He lived and died as a Muslim. But his Islam was not one of hatred. He did not disparage or vilify other religions, their books or their leaders. He is hated by Islamic fundamentalists for this equanimity.

I have many criticisms about Kalam. Especially his poetry. He gave me ten of what he called his ‘poems’. It took me so many days to come out of that ‘experience’.

His total faith in science was not acceptable to me. He was a Nehruvian, one who religiously believed in empirical science. He felt with all his heart that technology could save the world. His faith on things like atomic power ran very deep. I may not accept those kinds of things, but he was a pioneer who put forth what he sincerely believed in.

Many of my ideas would contradict his. Because, after all, he belonged to a previous generation. But it would be silly of me to not look beyond such differences and try to evaluate him in the light of his true achievements.

Kalam was not a mere dreamer. His vision and plans may still be able guide our nation in various fields. Some of his ideas, like the ones on reducing petroleum consumption and diverting the resultant surplus to infrastructure building, are still available for us to consider.

All said, one thing is obvious. He did not live for himself. He loved this country and dreamed for the well-being of its people. He dedicated his life towards that mission and never took anything for himself. Such examples of dedication are rare today.

In a country where self-serving politicians are being glorified as great leaders, the younger generation do not have many icons to look up to. This is why Kalam is being celebrated. This is a proof that there is still huge respect in this country for such idealism.

There is a section of media who have always tried to slander the icons of India. Vivekananda, Gandhi, Nehru, Aurobindo, J.Krishnamurti – none have been spared. So we can expect Kalam’s reputation to be attacked more and more by these mercenaries in the coming years.

But Kalam will live beyond all that. I was on an auto-rickshaw in my town of Nagercoil and the driver was losing his way around. He seemed to be new so I asked him what happened to the regular driver. He said that the regular driver had gone to Rameswaram to pay his last respects to Kalam. It seems that, from just that one auto-stand, sixteen such drivers had gone all the way to Rameswaram on their own money – just to be part of Kalam’s last journey.

Today Nagercoil is full of posters and eulogies for Kalam. All put up by common people on their own. None of them were sponsored by big institutions or political parties. Such affection is a repayment of the love that a man named Kalam had for his countrymen.

(Translated by Madhusudhanan Sampath)