By Avik Chattopadhyay
Yesterday was eight full years since he left us. There was hardly a requiem for Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam on national media or even social media. We have conveniently forgotten a President who most gallantly displayed the ethos that Brand India is.
Like millions in the country, I too was inspired by ‘The Missile Man’ without needing to meet him. His words and action were enough to light a spark in any progressive and liberal Indian. And to typecast him as a missile man would be the gravest injustice to a citizen who demonstrated every value that is expected of an Indian as visualised by those who fought for our freedom and those who created our Constitution. Dr Kalam was a living embodiment of all the chapters and articles of the holy book of our nationhood.
Most of us do not know that along with cardiologist Soma Raju, he developed a low-cost coronary stent in 1998 called the ‘Kalam-Raju Stent’. They got together again in 2012 to develop a rugged healthcare tablet computer called the ‘Kalam-Raju Tablet’. This was much beyond his syllabus of designing missiles and rockets for the country.
In the early 1970s, he was a key member of Project Devil and Project Valiant where the then Prime Minister Mrs. Gandhi had secretly allocated funds to develop missiles from the SLV systems.
In spite of all visible opposition and public outcry, he vehemently supported the Kudankulam nuclear power plant proposal even if it meant becoming unpopular with a large section of activists and common people. He believed that nuclear energy was the best solution for our country, given the on-ground realities, and stood his ground against popular opinion.
He knew the Quran as well as he knew the Bhagavad Gita. His spiritual guru was Pramukh Swami, the head of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sampradaya and he went on to write a book on this unique relationship, making him no less a devout Muslim.
Dr Kalam stood for all that India was supposed to stand for, when envisaged in 1947 by our founding fathers. He stood for inclusiveness in diversity. He stood for courage of conviction against all odds. He embodied the spirit of enterprise and experimentation that defined the 1960s and 1970s of our nation. He embodied the spirit of ‘karma’ in the right essence of living life to the fullest without amassing objects that would be of no rational use. However, he played the veena and write poetry in Tamil as they possibly helped him become a more culturally complete human being.
His sheer sincerity in making hundreds of youth take his famous oath at every lecture of his will remain etched in the memory of both those who were there as well as watched on television and social media. Never before has a President of this country ever endeared himself to one and all. While Babu Rajendra Prasad and Dr Radhakrishnan were hugely popular, they were part of the freedom struggle and thereby had their draw. Since 1967, there was not one another who was a crowd-puller and inspiration for the citizen.
And his ending could not have been more fitting, dying of a cardiac arrest while addressing yet another bunch of students, this time in IIM Shillong on 27 July 2015. Sadly, we do not have his memorial in the national capital. It should have been a pilgrimage for every young Indian to soak in the spirit of the man and be inspired by his idea of India.
As a tribute to the man, the government should have popularised the “Kalam-Raju Tablet” beyond healthcare and taken it to the world as a demonstration of the Indian way to social justice.
In his book ‘India 2020’, Dr Kalam writes: “I have identified five areas where India has a core competence for integrated action:
1. agriculture and food processing
2. education and healthcare
3. information and communication technology
4. infrastructure, reliable and quality electric power, surface transport and infrastructure for all parts of the country, and
5. self-reliance in critical technologies
These five areas are closely inter-related and if advanced in a coordinated way, will lead to food, economic and national security.” The sequence of the five areas could not have been more apt for a nation like ours.
I end with the first four lines from an iconic Bengali poem ‘Adorsho Chhele’ [Ideal Boy] by Kusumkumari Das as my tribute to the ‘People’s [Forgotten] President’…
আমাদের দেশে হবে সেই ছেলে কবে
কথায় না বড় হয়ে কাজে বড় হবে?
মুখে হাসি বুকে বল, তেজে ভরা মন
“মানুষ হইতে হবে”এই যার পণ !!
When in our country will that boy be born
Who will grow strong by deeds and not by words?
With a smile on his face, courage in his heart and energy in his mind
Resolves to become “a true human being”.