A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam ( UB-duul kə-LAHM; 15 October 1931 – 27 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace engineer and science administrator who served as president of India from 2002 to 2007. The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan in 1981 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1990. In 1997, he was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, for his contribution to the scientific research and modernisation of defence technology in India.

Born and raised in a Muslim family in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, Kalam studied physics and aerospace engineering. He spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately involved in India's civilian space programme and military missile development efforts. He is popularly known as the "Missile Man of India" for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. He also played a pivotal organisational, technical, and political role in Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, India's second such test after the first test in 1974.

Kalam was elected as the president of India in 2002 with the support of both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the then-opposition Indian National Congress. He was widely referred to as the "People's President". He engaged in teaching, writing and public service after his presidency. Kalam is known as Missile Man of India. While delivering a lecture at IIM Shillong, Kalam collapsed and died from an apparent cardiac arrest on 27 July 2015, aged 83. Thousands attended the funeral ceremony held in his hometown of Rameswaram, where he was buried with full state honours. A memorial was inaugurated near his home town in 2017.

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam was born on 15 October 1931 to a Tamil Muslim family in the pilgrimage center of Rameswaram on Pamban Island, Madras Presidency (now in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu). His father, Jainulabdeen Marakayar, was a boat owner and imam of a local mosque, and his mother, Ashiamma, was a housewife. His father owned a boat that ferried Hindu pilgrims between Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi.

Kalam was the youngest of four brothers and a sister in the family. His ancestors had been wealthy Marakayar traders and landowners, with numerous properties and large tracts of land. Marakayar are a Muslim ethnic group found in coastal Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka who claim descent from Arab traders and local women. The family business had involved trading goods and transporting passengers between the Indian mainland and the Pamban Island and to and from Sri Lanka. With the opening of the Pamban Bridge connecting Pamban Island to mainland India in 1914, the businesses failed. As a result, apart from the ancestral home, the other family fortune and properties were lost by the 1920s, and the family was poverty-stricken by the time Kalam was born. As a young boy, he delivered newspapers to support the family's meager income.

In his school years, Kalam got average grades but was described by his teachers as a bright and hardworking student with a strong desire to learn. He spent hours learning Mathematics. He did his schooling at Schwartz Higher Secondary School in Ramanathapuram. He then graduated in Physics from St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli, in 1954.

Kalam moved to Madras in 1955 to study aerospace engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology. While he was working on a class project, the Dean of the institution was dissatisfied with his lack of progress and threatened to revoke his scholarship unless the project was finished within the next three days. Kalam met the deadline, impressing the Dean, who later said to him, "I was putting you under stress and asking you to meet a difficult deadline." Later, he narrowly missed out on his dream of becoming a fighter pilot, as he placed ninth in qualifiers, and only eight positions were available in the Indian Air Force.

After graduating from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1960, Kalam became a member of the Defence Research & Development Service and joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as a scientist. During his early career, he was involved in the design of small hovercraft, and remained unconvinced by his choice of a job at DRDO. Later, he joined the Indian National Committee for Space Research, working under renowned space scientist Vikram Sarabhai. He was interviewed and recruited into Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) by H. G. S. Murthy, the first director of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station.

In 1969, Kalam transferred to ISRO where he became the project director of India's first satellite launch vehicle (SLV) which successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near-earth orbit in July 1980. He had earlier started work on an expandable rocket project independently at DRDO in 1965. In 1969, Kalam received the approval from the Government of India to expand the programme to include more engineers. In 1963–64, he visited NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, and Wallops Flight Facility. Since the late 1970s, Kalam was part of the effort to develop the SLV-3 and Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), both of which were successful.

In May 1974, Kalam was invited by Raja Ramanna to witness the country's first nuclear test Smiling Buddha as the representative of Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory, even though he was officially not part of the project. In the 1970s, Kalam directed two projects, Project Devil and Project Valiant, which sought to develop ballistic missiles using the technology from the successful SLV programme. Despite the disapproval of the union cabinet, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi allotted funds for these aerospace projects under Kalam's directorship through her discretionary powers. Kalam also played a major role in convincing the cabinet to conceal the true nature of these classified projects. His research and leadership brought him recognition in the 1980s, which prompted the government to initiate an advanced missile programme under his directorship.

Kalam worked with metallurgist V. S. R. Arunachalam, who was then scientific adviser to the Defence Minister, on the suggestion by the then Defence Minister R. Venkataraman on the simultaneous development of a quiver of missiles instead of taking planned missiles one after another. Venkatraman was instrumental in getting the cabinet approval for allocating ₹3.88 billion (equivalent to ₹66 billion or US$680 million in 2023) for the project titled Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) and appointed Kalam as its chief executive. Kalam played a major role in the development of missiles including Agni, an intermediate range ballistic missile and Prithvi, the tactical surface-to-surface missile, despite inflated costs and time overruns. He was known as the "Missile Man of India" for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology.

On 10 June 2002, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which was in power at the time, expressed its intention to nominate Kalam for the post of the President of India. His candidature was backed by the opposition parties including the Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party. After the support for Kalam, incumbent president K. R. Narayanan chose not to seek a re-election. Kalam said of the announcement of his candidature:

I am really overwhelmed. Everywhere both in Internet and in other media, I have been asked for a message. I was thinking what message I can give to the people of the country at this juncture.

On 18 June, Kalam filed his nomination papers in the Indian Parliament. Three sets of nomination papers were filed, one accompanied by the NDA leaders including prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and senior cabinet members, the second accompanied by Congress including Sonia Gandhi, and the third with leaders from other supporting political parties. He faced off against Lakshmi Sahgal, and the polling for the presidential election was held on 15 July 2002, in the Indian parliament and the state assemblies, with the media predicting a win for Kalam. The counting was held on 18 July, and Kalam won the elections after securing 922,884 electoral votes as against the 107,366 votes won by Sahgal. He was sworn in as the 11th president of India on 25 July 2002. He was the first scientist and the first bachelor to occupy the top chair at Rashtrapati Bhawan.

During his term as president, he was affectionately known as the "People's President". He later stated that signing the Office of profit bill was the toughest decision he had taken during his tenure. In September 2003, during an interactive session at PGIMER in Chandigarh, Kalam asserted the need of Uniform Civil Code in India, keeping in view the population of the country. He also took a decision to impose President's rule in Bihar in 2005. However, during his tenure as president, he made no decision on 20 out of the 21 mercy petitions submitted to him to commute death penalties, including that of terrorist Afzal Guru, who was convicted of conspiracy in the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India in 2004. He acted only on a single plea, rejecting that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was later hanged.

After leaving office, Kalam returned to teaching, and became a visiting professor at various institutions. He became a visiting professor at IIM Shillong, an honorary professor at his alma mater Anna University in Chennai, and an honorary fellow of the Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru. In September 2007, he became the first chancellor of the newly established Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology at Thiruvananthapuram. He also conducted lectures for management students in India, and visited China twice at the invitation of the Chinese government to conduct sessions at the Peking University.

In 2011, Kalam voiced his support towards the establishment of the nuclear power plant at Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu, giving assurances for the safety of the facility. However, some of the locals were unconvinced by his statements on the safety of the plant, and were hostile to his visit. In May 2012, Kalam launched a programme called What Can I Give Movement aimed at the youth of India with a central theme of defeating corruption.

Following his death, the people of India paid tributes on social media. The Government of India declared a seven-day state mourning period as a mark of respect. Various leaders from India and abroad condoled the death of Kalam.

Kalam's body was flown to New Delhi on the morning of 28 July, where dignitaries including then president, vice president, and prime minister paid their last respects. His body was placed in his Delhi residence for public viewing. On 29 July, his body was flown to the town of Mandapam via Madurai, and was carried towards his home town of Rameswaram by road. His body was displayed in an open area to allow the public to pay their final respects until 8 p.m. that evening. On 30 July 2015, following an Islamic burial prayer performed by the local imam, he was laid to rest at Rameswaram's Pei Karumbu ground with full state honours with over 350,000 people in attendance.

Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Memorial was built in memory of Kalam by the DRDO in Pei Karumbu in Rameswaram. It was inaugurated by the prime minister Narendra Modi in July 2017. The memorial displays replicas of rockets and missiles which Kalam had worked with, and various acrylic paintings about his life. There is a large statue of Kalam in the entrance showing him playing the veena, and two other smaller statues in sitting and standing posture respectively.

Religion and spirituality were very important to Kalam throughout his life. He was a practising Sunni Muslim, and daily namaz and fasting during Ramadan were integral to his life. His father was an imam of a mosque, and had strictly instilled these Islamic customs in his children. His father had also impressed upon the young Kalam the value of interfaith respect and dialogue. As Kalam recalled: "Every evening, my father A. P. Jainulabdeen, an imam, Pakshi Lakshmana Sastry, the head priest of the Ramanathaswamy Hindu temple, and a church priest used to sit with hot tea and discuss the issues concerning the island." Such early exposure convinced Kalam that the answers to India's multitudinous issues lay in "dialogue and cooperation" among the country's religious, social, and political leaders. Moreover, since Kalam believed that "respect for other faiths" was one of the key cornerstones of Islam, and he remarked: "For great men, religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool."

One component of Kalam's widespread popularity among diverse groups in India, and an enduring aspect of his legacy, is the syncretism he embodied in appreciating various elements of the many spiritual and cultural traditions of India. In addition to his faith in the Quran and Islamic practice, Kalam was well-versed in Hindu traditions, learnt Sanskrit. and read the Bhagavad Gita. In 2002, in one of his early speeches to Parliament after becoming the president, he reiterated his desire for a more united India, stating that "During the last one year I met a number of spiritual leaders of all religions ... and I would like to endeavour to work for bringing about unity of minds among the divergent traditions of our country". Describing Kalam as a unifier of diverse traditions, Shashi Tharoor remarked, "Kalam was a complete Indian, an embodiment of the eclecticism of India's heritage of diversity". Former deputy prime minister L. K. Advani concurred that Kalam was "the best exemplar of the Idea of India, one who embodied the best of all the cultural and spiritual traditions that signify India's unity in immense diversity.

Kalam's desire to meet spiritual leaders led him to meet Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the Hindu guru of the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), who Kalam would come to consider his ultimate spiritual teacher and guru. Kalam and Pramukh Swami met eight times over a fourteen-year period and on his first meeting on 30 June 2001, Kalam described being immediately drawn to Pramukh Swami's simplicity and spiritual purity. Kalam stated that he was inspired by Pramukh Swami throughout their numerous interactions, and recalled being moved by Swami's equanimity and compassion, citing this incident as one of his motivations for writing his experiences as a book later. Summarising the effect that Pramukh Swami had on him, Kalam stated that "[Pramukh Swami] has indeed transformed me. He is the ultimate stage of the spiritual ascent in my life ... Pramukh Swamiji has put me in a God-synchronous orbit. No manoeuvres are required any more, as I am placed in my final position in eternity."