AP J Abdul Kalam ia a 200 percent Proud Indian. That's how colleagues of one of India's best-known scientists knew him even before his nomination for presidency. Today multi-faceted Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam is best known as the father of India's missile programme. Honoured with numerous awards by the Indian Government including the Bharat Ratna in 1997, Kalam has served the Indian Government in various capacities, including serving as Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India with the rank of a Union Cabinet Minister from November 1999 to November 2001. Abdul Kalam was born in a middle-class Tamil family at Dhanushkodi in Rameswaram district of Tamil Nadu on October 15, 1931. While his father Jainulabdeen Marakayar, who rented boats to fishermen for a living, did not have much formal education, Kalam says he inherited honesty and self-discipline from him. After a fairly secure childhood, during which he is said to have read as much as he could, he studied at the Madras Institute of Technology, where he specialised in Aero Engineering. He has worked in leading defence and space organisations in research and managerial capacities. He contributed in a major way to the development of the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) III, which put the Rohini Satellite into orbit. He has also been chairperson to Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC). A vegetarian, his interests include playing the veena and writing poetry. He has written two books, Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power Within India and India 2020: Vision for the New Millennium. Till now, Abdul Kalam has been best known for his key role in the nuclear tests at Pokharan in the Rajasthan desert on May 11 and 13, 1997. With most parties choosing him as their presidential candidate, he has become the 11th Indian to join a very select group.
Full Name: Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam
Date of Birth: October 15, 1931
Place of birth: Dhanushkodi,now in TamilNadu
Father: Jainulabdeen Marakayar
Mother: Ashiamma
School: Schwartz High School, Ramanathapuram
Date of Birth: October 15, 1931
Place of birth: Dhanushkodi,now in TamilNadu
Father: Jainulabdeen Marakayar
Mother: Ashiamma
School: Schwartz High School, Ramanathapuram
Career of APJ Abdul Kalam
College: St Joseph's College, Tiruchirapalli, MIT, Madras
1950: Joined St Joseph's College, Tiruchirapalli for a BSc degree
1954- 57: DMIT in Aeronautical Engineering at the MIT, Madras
1962: Posted at Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station
1963: Joined ISRO
1964: Joined DRDO as a technical assistant
1968: Formed the Indian rocket Society
1973: Appointed Project Director of SLV-3
1975: Shifted to DRDO
1979: Successful launch of SLV-3 launch on August 10 with Kalam as Mission Director
1980: Second mission of SLV-3 successful too
1981: Awarded Padma Bhushan
1982: Rejoined DRDO, conceived the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) for indigenous missiles
1982: Appointed Director DRDL
1983: Missile programme launched
1985: Trishul test-fired
1989: Agni test-fired
1992: Appointed Scientific Adviser to Defense Minister and Secretary, Department of Defense Research & Development
1997: Awarded Bharat Ratna
1998: Underground nuclear tests near Pokharan on May 11
1998: Appointed Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India
1998: Writes India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium with YS Rajan
1999: AGNI-II missile system successfully tested in April
1999: Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle launched on 26 May
1999: Kalam-Raju stent developed for maintaining the coronary blood flow after the angioplasty
2001: Retires as Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India
2001: Joined Anna University
2002: Writes Ignited Minds
2002: Elected President of India
Interviews and Famous speeches of APJ Abdul Kalam
"Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength"
As a devout Muslim, he prays twice a day. But he is also a Ram bhakt, plays the veena, loves the shri raga, writes poetry in Tamil and, like every proud Indian, swears by Pokhran II and self sufficiency in science and technology. At 67, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, is not just another Dr Strangelove having a torrid affair with the bomb. He is clever, sensitive, amazingly creative and, above all, a soft spoken patriot. India's answer to Western technological arrogance.
Q: What is your vision of India in the next millennium?
I have three. Three visions for India. But before that I speak about them, I have one question to ask of you, Mr Nandy. Can you tell me why, in 3000 years of our history, people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our land, conquered our minds? From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not invaded anyone. We have not conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because, I guess, we respected the freedom of others. Absolutely right. That is why my first vision is that of freedom. I believe that India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of independence. It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and build upon. If we are not free, no one will respect us.
My second vision for India is development. For fifty years we have been a developing nation. It is time we saw ourselves as a developed nation. We are among the top five nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have a 10 per cent growth rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being globally recognised today. Yet we lack the self confidence to see ourselves as a developed nation, self reliant and self assured. Tell me, Sir, is this right? Read the last chapter of my book, India 2020, A Vision for the Next Millennium and you will get what I mean.
I have a third vision. That India must stand up to the world. I have written 12 chapters on that. Because I believe that unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an economic power. Both must go hand in hand. These are visions.
What about the reality? What do you see as the most significant achievements of your rather distinguished career culminating in a Bharat Ratna in your lifetime?
My good fortune was to have worked with three great minds. Dr Vikram Sarabhai of the department of space. Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him. And Dr Brahm Prakash, father of nuclear material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and consider this the greatest opportunity of my life.
I see four milestones in my career.
One: The twenty years I spent in Indian Space Research Organisation. I was given the opportunity to be the project director for India's first satellite launch vehicle, SLV3. The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very important role in my life as a scientist.
Two: After my ISRO years, I joined the Defence Research and Development Organisation and got a chance to be part of India's guided missile programme. It was, you could call, my second bliss when Agni met its mission requirements in 1994.
Three: The department of atomic energy and the DRDO had this tremendous partnership in the recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was my third bliss. The joy of participating with my team in these nuclear tests and proving to the world that India can make it. That we are no longer a developing nation but one among them. It made me feel very proud as an Indian. And, finally,
four: The fact that we have now developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for which we have developed this new material. A very light material called carbon-carbon. One day an orthopaedic surgeon from the Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences (in Hyderabad) visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light that he took me to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were these little girls and boys with heavy metallic callipers weighing over 3 kg each, dragging their feet around. He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients. In three weeks, we made these Floor Reaction Orthosis 300 gram callipers and took them to the orthopaedic centre. The children could not believe their eyes! From dragging around a 3 kg load on their legs, they could now move around freely with these 300 gram callipers. They began running around! Their parents had tears in their eyes. That was my fourth bliss.
Q:Apart from science and technology, what else interests you?
Poetry and music. I have this big library at home and my favourite poets are Milton, Walt Whitman and Rabindranath Tagore. I write poetry too. My book of poems, Yenudaya Prayana, has now been translated into English. It is called My Journey. You must read it. I will send you a copy.
Q:Who are your favorite poets in Tamil, the language you write in?
Bharatidasana, who died in 1965. And Subramaniya Bharathiar, who died in 1939 at the age of 35, killed by an elephant while giving it a coconut. I also enjoy Carnatic music and play the veena.
Q:What is your favourite raga?
The shri raga. You know my favorite kirtan? It is the one that Swami Thyagaraja, a Ram bhakt like me, recited in the shri raga when he was called by this powerful Tanjore king to sing a poem in his sabha. He sang: "In this gathering whoever are great in front of God, I salute them." He never said: I salute the king. That is strength of conviction. That is courage.
You have asked me so many questions, Mr Nandy, may I ask you two? By all means. Tell me, why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why? We are the second largest producer of wheat in the world. We are the second largest producer of rice. We are the first in milk production. We are number one in remote sensing satellites. Look at Dr Sudarshan. He has transformed the tribal village into a self sustaining, self driving unit. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed with bad news and failures and disasters. I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading this Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had this picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert land into an orchard and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside the newspaper, buried among other news. In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime. Why are we so negative? I guess we grew up with the maxim that good news is no news. The right to publish bad news has become synonymous with freedom. That is why our press is so strong, so fiercely independent-if not always encouraging of success stories.
Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things?
Is it a legacy of our colonial years?
We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported? Do we not realise that self respect comes with self reliance? I guess that comes from repression. When you lock in your economy for years and leave it in the hands of local pirates and cheating banias, you are bound to get a backlash. Foreign things have indeed come in but they have also brought down prices, taught us quality, stopped us from cheating consumers with shoddy, overpriced local products. Like in cars, consumer electronics, fabrics, processed foods. Nationalism for too long has been a convenient cover for looting. Let us not forget that. But yes, I agree with you, it is time we started giving value to ourselves as a people, as a nation.
I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14-year-old girl came up and asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life was. She replied: I want to live in a developed India. For her, you and I will have to build this developed India. You must proclaim this through your writings, through your speeches in Parliament.
He is perhaps India's first people's President, more specifically a President who has made a unique connect with the children of this country. As the nation celebrates its 57th Republic Day, CNN-IBN got President APJ Abdul Kalam to interact with children from across the nation on the lawns of the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Senior Special Correspondent Anubha Bhonsle hosted the interaction.
Student: How would you assess the last four years of your Presidency?
President Kalam: I would say I targeted two things. Number one is that India becomes a developed nation, before 2021. This is the mission. I will say this process is going on in full swing. Definitely, I am happy about the outcome. Secondly, I had a mission to meet a lot of children. Up to yesterday, I have met a million children throughout the country. What you get out of meeting the children, always one can ask. And I got three things. One is that children believe that India can become a developed nation, that is, we can do it. That is number one. Number two is that they have a lesser bias towards the world. Since you are just growing, your bias factor is low. Number three, you have got enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is a big force for the growth of the nation.
Q: My question is how can a child like me remember the ethics in this unethical society?
President Kalam: We are a billion people, right? A billion people live in 200 million houses. Each house has a minimum of four to five people. Now, most of Indians are good guys, you know, corruption- free people. But there are some corrupt people also. Assume 50 million people are corrupt. Now, my suggestion is, the daughter or son of the house should go to the father or mother and tell them not to be corrupt, it's not good. My teacher teaches me, corruption is bad. My grandfather, grandmother also told me corruption is bad. Why do you do that? Now, I asked the children, will you tell your parents? Then, I asked the parents, if your children come and tell you - unfortunately, if you are corrupt - will you obey your children? Will you take the words of your children? What do you say, children? Will you be an instrument to remove the corruption? If you say yes, then lift your hand. How many of you, I want to see. (Nearly all the children raise their hands) Oh, fantastic, fantastic. Now, with a big revolution taking place, the corrupt fathers will be in danger, corrupt mothers will be in danger.
