Interview Dr A P J Abdul Kalam - Pritish Nandy

The Rediff Interview/Dr A P J 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.
Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Pritish Nandy.

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.

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.

Who are your favourite 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. 

What is your favourite raga?

The shri raga. You know my favourite 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 recognise 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,