By all accounts, the elevation of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to the office of President of India originated in an apparently innocuous manner in the unofficial backroom parleys between political parties of both the ruling coalition and the opposition alliance. The emissaries shuffled around the old tired names of tenacious aspirants, none of whom truly inspired even his own promoters. The stage appeared set for more sterile wrangling when the gods decided to stage their own lila. Time aimed an inspirational moment with missile-like precision, and the rest as they say, is History.
It is truly once in a blue moon that a man refusing to fly an ordinary flight breaks through the barriers of human limitation and fulfills the Icarus agenda of flying close to the sun. As his wings are not made of wax, he can be expected to soar. Dr. Kalam’s rise from newspaper-hawking student, to brilliant scientist, to President, is the stuff of dream and legend. Only recently on retiring from government, he was subjected to the ignominy of being denied a faculty position in an eminent national institution on petty bureaucratic grounds – he didn’t have a Ph.D. degree! Now he has been yanked out of relative obscurity and bestowed with the nation’s top job.
The story defies all stereotypes and remains greater than the attempts to rationalize the unexpected by dissecting the man in a bid to fit him into a comfortable pigeon-hole. Mercifully the explanations have proved too inadequate to strip the event of its awesome mystique, so its inspirational quality endures. At the end of the day it remains a rare moment of beauty in the life of an otherwise star-crossed nation, and as the poet Emerson wisely stated, beauty is its own excuse for being.
Having said that, I would like to share my reasons for appreciating Dr. Kalam’s candidature, without I hope, falling into the trap of trying to diminish his stature. Much of the endorsement of his nomination has been of this genre, and I feel that there is a need to set the record straight. There is at present a tangible undercurrent of tension in media and political circles over the selection of Dr. Kalam on two counts. One is that because he is a Muslim, it would be politically incorrect to oppose his candidature, and the second is that he matches the RSS-BJP stereotype of what a ‘good Indian Muslim’ should be. A national daily has in fact lampooned Dr. Kalam on this count in an exceedingly crude manner.
Most comments are unfair to Dr. Kalam. As one engaged in the struggle to give the nation’s civilizational ethos its due place in public life, I must say that Hindus who applaud his scholarship of the Gita and Hindu philosophy are missing the wood for the trees. Indeed, this could prove counter-productive, as a man perceived to be deviating so sharply from the norms of his community could easily fail to inspire it to adopt him as a role model.
My point is that Dr. Kalam is not great because he has mastered the Gita, but because he has, out of his own intellectual and spiritual aspirations, embraced the whole of his country’s native genius. He has effortlessly rooted himself in its civilizational ethos, and has broken ranks with his co-religionists in the sense that he recognizes and appreciates his pre-Islamic past. Having drawn the waters of this limitless reservoir to enrich his personal endeavours in his chosen field, he has done himself and his nation proud.
The critical issue, therefore, is reverence for a living tradition that goes back to the hoary past, not the accident of being a scholar of the Gita. This means that Muslims who are able to rise above the doctrine that all that is pre-Islamic is an age of darkness, will free themselves from the fears and biases that make them disdain the autochthonous culture and drive them to live in mental and physical ghettos. Dr. Kalam’s erudition is something for Muslims to ponder over with maturity and wisdom, but it is nothing for Hindus to gloat over. Dr. Kalam is not a crude advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity or dialogue or any other cliché; he is one of those unique eminences whose life holds some lesson for each one of us.
Had the Congress Party had not become so alienated from the Indian ethos as it has under its Northern Italian leadership, it would not have gone into a blue funk on hearing of Dr. Kalam’s nomination. While the savvy Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh endorsed the scientist instantly – he in fact conceived the idea, though he did not pursue it – the Congress took two whole days before offering a graceless acquiescence. As for the Left, it’s a case of the blues, though I doubt if even Harkishen Singh Surjeet quite knows why. Nor can I fathom why Capt. Lakshmi Sahgal has agreed to needle the nation by contesting against a far superior candidate.
I must add that I am absolutely dismayed at the conduct of the outgoing President. Mr. Narayanan’s desire for a second term was unreasonable in view of his tense relationship with the ruling coalition and the embarrassing moments he gave it on a number of sensitive issues. His attempt to foist Mrs. Sonia Gandhi on an unwilling nation by twice giving her time to rustle up a parliamentary majority through horse-trading was reprehensible, and unlikely to be forgotten. While it is hardly surprising that the Congress should feel that only a ‘committed’ President could help it in a crisis, Mr. Narayanan should have noted the arithmetic of the electoral college and accepted the hints about his advanced age and poor health.
As it happens, he did the exact opposite. He allowed the Congress to project him as its sole candidate for so long that the party gave no serious thought to any other name. Then, he received the various Left leaders and allowed them to persuade (sic) him to stand for another term. But what is truly breathtaking is that even after the Prime Minister personally informed him that the NDA would not support him, he gave appointments to Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and other Left leaders to discuss the presidential election. It was only when Dr. Kalam’s nomination sent a wave of euphoria around the country that Prof. Harold Laski’s protégé finally understood the grammar of politics.
As for the ruling party, the Prime Minister must realize that he cannot possibly ask the nation to move from the sublime to the ridiculous – which is what the choice of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat as Vice President would amount to. Has-been politicians who never delivered anything to the party or the people during their tenure, and obstructed the rise of a new generation of leaders so that the party itself remained stunted in state after state, should be kept in the closet, not honoured with high office. Mr. Vajpayee must be aware that Dr. Kalam’s appointment has generated so much excitement among the people because he is a man who dreams big – of a self-confident, highly developed, and great India. His deputy should be able to match up to his vision.
The Pioneer, 18 June 2002