explain the patronage of A.P.J Abdul Kalam
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Answer:
Bharat Ratna Dr. Abdul Kalam, India’s 11th President passed away yesterday. Ramananda Sengupta on how he saw India’s missile man.
When his term as President of India ended in July 2007, Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam left the palatial Rashtrapati Bhavan, his home for five years, with just two small suitcases. And a lot of books, all his own.
I met him very briefly on three or four occasions, twice in Delhi and once in Chennai.
After each meeting, I recall being somewhat puzzled by the huge gap between the perception about him and the soft-spoken man I actually met.
After all he was India’s Missile Man, and someone who was nominated for MTV’s Youth Icon of the year not once but twice, in 2003 (industrialist Anil Ambani won) and in 2006 (cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni won). A youth icon at 70.
What was I missing?
Obviously a lot.
Mumbai, January 2005. President Abdul Kalam, was to give away the Pravasi Sammans at the end of the third Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, an annual three-day event aimed at celebrating the great Indian Diaspora.
In his power point address, Dr Kalam addressed a key perception issue troubling the organisers. While the richer Indians abroad either resented or boasted about being wooed for their money, the poor and oppressed in regions ranging from Fiji, Mauritius, the Caribbean and the Gulf believed they were being ignored.
A P J Abdul Kalam delivering a speech (Photo: Pushkarv)
Titled ‘your prosperity is our happiness’, Dr Kalam’s slideshow made it amply clear that India was not looking for handouts, but keen to share the wealth of knowledge accumulated by the thousands of people who had left its shores, recently or many generations ago.
But while the presentation was so-so, the ovation he received from the Diaspora literally shook the rafters of the venerable National Centre for Performing Arts.
Handouts, or gifts, seem to have been a bug-bear with the man.
Two years later, a week before he left Rashtrapati Bhavan in July 2007, Dr Kalam addressed a packed auditorium at Delhi’s India Islamic Cultural Centre.
After briefly recalling his five ‘glorious years’ at Rashtrapati Bhavan, he said would leave behind all the gifts he had received (including personal ones) as part of an art gallery. He then went on to urge the audience to shun gifts, because they were ‘dangerous things.’ He recalled how his father, Janab Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen, who had been elected president of the Rameswaram Panchayat Board soon after independence, had thrashed him for letting some people leave a gift at their home to celebrate the win.’ A gift is a dangerous thing as it is always accompanied by some purpose,’ warned the elder Kalam.
”Yesterday, a well-known person gave me a gift of two pens. I had to return them with unhappiness,” rued the good President, who then went on quote from the Manusmriti, the ancient Hindu book of law, which apparently says that accepting gifts ‘extinguishes the divine light in a human’
”I am sharing this thought with all of you since no one should get carried away by any gift which comes with a purpose and through which one loses his personality greatly,” asserted Dr Kalam.
Thus spoke a man who sold newspapers to fund his education, who received honorary doctorates from 40 universities, and India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1997. Thus spoke a man who during his tenure as President met and addressed over 100,000 students across the country, urging them to transform India. And to dream: “You have to dream before your dreams can come true.”
Answer:
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, in full Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, (born October 15, 1931, Rameswaram, India—died July 27, 2015, Shillong), Indian scientist and politician who played a leading role in the development of India’s missile and nuclear weapons programs. He was president of India from 2002 to 2007.
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
QUICK FACTS
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, 2008.
BORN
October 15, 1931
Rameswaram, India
DIED
July 27, 2015 (aged 83)
Shillong, India
TITLE / OFFICE
President, India (2002-2007)
POLITICAL AFFILIATION
National Democratic Alliance
Kalam earned a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology and in 1958 joined the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). He soon moved to the Indian Space Research Organisation, where he was project director of the SLV-III, India’s first indigenously designed and produced satellite launch vehicle. Rejoining DRDO in 1982, Kalam planned the program that produced a number of successful missiles, which helped earned him the nickname “Missile Man.”
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From 1992 to 1997 Kalam was scientific adviser to the defense minister, and he later served as principal scientific adviser (1999–2001) to the government with the rank of cabinet minister. His prominent role in the country’s 1998 nuclear weapons tests established Kalam as a national hero, although the tests caused great concern in the international community. In 1998 Kalam put forward a countrywide plan called Technology Vision 2020, which he described as a road map for transforming India from a less-developed to a developed society in 20 years. The plan called for, among other measures, increasing agricultural productivity, emphasizing technology as a vehicle for economic growth, and widening access to health care and education.
In 2002 India’s ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) put forward Kalam to succeed outgoing President Kocheril Raman Narayanan. Kalam was nominated by the Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) NDA even though he was Muslim, and his stature and popular appeal were such that even the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, also proposed his candidacy. Kalam easily won the election and was sworn in as India’s 11th president, a largely ceremonial post, in July 2002. He remained committed to using science and technology to transform India into a developed country. In 2007 Kalam left office and was succeeded by Pratibha Patil, the country’s first woman president.
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Kalam wrote several books, including an autobiography, Wings of Fire (1999). Among his numerous awards were two of the country’s highest honours, the Padma Vibhushan (1990) and the Bharat Ratna (1997).