His Rashtrapati reward

Adulation for Kalam as President will be short-lived. The rest of us will soon learn to treat him like a mortal instead of worshipping him.

File photo of late Indian President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam | Commons

My favourite nuke story of all times goes back to 1987. Bundled up deep into the anonymity of the wide-bodied economy class on a transatlantic flight, I had for a neighbour a young Pakistani, garrulous as a carpet-seller anywhere should be. The Reliance Cup had just ended and we were commiserating with each other for both India and Pakistan losing in the semi-finals. Then he launched forth with his views, inevitably, on the Kashmir issue.

‘‘Now you will have to give us Kashmir,’’ he said, ‘‘because we have the nuclear bomb.’’

‘‘How can you be so sure?’’ I asked.

‘‘Because I run a big carpet shop,’’ he said.

‘‘Now what is the connection between your carpet shop and the nuclear bomb?’’ I asked.

Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan had visited his shop the previous year, he said. It seems also that he liked, quite obviously, the most expensive carpet there. Then he said he couldn’t afford it on his government scientist’s salary. The carpet-seller had evidently told him, ‘Don’t worry, doctor sahib, when you complete the bomb come back to me and I will give it to you for free.’

‘‘What happened then?’’ I asked.

‘‘Doctor saab came to my shop last month,’’ said the carpet-seller, smiling meaningfully, ‘‘And said, my friend, you remember that carpet? Can you please pack it and send it to my residence?’’

It wouldn’t be fair now to say that our own Dr Kalam has come to collect his carpet as well. He is no A.Q. Khan. He is far too modest, simple and frugal to match the flamboyance of the so-called Father of the Islamic bomb. He never stole anything from any foreign lab. He is unlikely to ever need a carpet for his home and the home he is now about to inherit already packs a viceroy’s ransom in fancy knitwear.

The presidency of India, no matter how ceremonial, how farcical and how diminished after last month’s paan-shop shenanigans, is worth more than any carpet. And Kalam did not even ask for it. Yet, there are similarities in the way the Pakistani packed away the carpet at a mere hint from A.Q. Khan that the bomb was finally ready, and our unquestioning celebration of Kalam’s candidature.

We have rarely had such breathtaking consensus. Even after Pokharan II and during the Kargil war, questions were raised as they must be in any democracy. But if the BJP’s unsheathing of this nuclear option for the president has worked as such a spectacular political deterrent it is a tribute as much to the adroitness of its brains trust as to the intellectual and political bankruptcy of the Opposition, particularly the Congress.

You can’t quibble with the RSS for calling Kalam a national jewel, that’s why he got the Bharat Ratna. But does that have to be supplemented with the presidency? Then why not give all governorships to scientists who worked on the same projects? At least the Raj Bhavans will be less embarrassing. One reason the entire political class and the media have joined the herd is Kalam’s well-deserved nice guy, nationalist, financially spotless, frugal, saintly, scholarly image, backed by cult popularity. So different from all politicians, and thereby rendering it awkward for fellow politicians to raise questions about him, or his qualifications for the presidency. Neither the Opposition politicians nor the media know enough science to question his scholarship. But they could have at least asked how any scientific achievement qualifies one to become the president of India.

The media, similarly, was too bedazzled to ask the most obvious questions. These would not have demolished the case for a Kalam presidency, but would have at least generated a debate. The blind, illiterate and obsequious deification that we in the media have indulged in the space of a fortnight speaks poorly for our intellect as well as our spine or even professionalism. Valid questions must be raised in a democracy even about an individual raised to beatification and more. Why, for example, is nobody asking what justifies Kalam continuing to use the honorific ‘Dr’ with his name when he never earned a doctorate apart from a couple of honoris causa awards? It is a set convention that honorary doctorates are not used as honorifics by people other than the Jayalalithaa’s, MGRs, and Zail Singhs. Why has nobody dared to ask how many papers — published in independently refereed scientific journals — Kalam has to his credit?

I know Kalam too well, personally as well as professionally, not to know that even he must be embarrassed by this deification. For years I jogged past his hunched figure at Delhi’s Siri Fort sports complex, stopping occasionally for a brief chat, even to complain to him that just one policeman was too little security for somebody of his stature. I have raised nasty questions about his record at the DRDO in the past (‘Kalam’s banana republic’, National Interest, April 28, 2001) only to be rewarded with the friendliest, warmest, and most honest chat over coffee at his Vigyan Bhavan office, where he raised no question about my questions. He only said that I had asked some valid questions, and went on to give his own, earnest explanations. Then, he said, because he found me so straightforward and patriotic, he invited me to join his India Vision 2020 project team. Even on Wednesday, at his first press conference, he wouldn’t have minded answering a tough question or two.

How come all his showpiece missile projects are stuck? Why has the DRDO failed to develop even a basic rifle? Why are its labs so wastefully unproductive? Valid questions we were too missile-struck to ask. But the adulation won’t last, even Kalam knows that as he sits atop the political pyramid How come three of the key components of his crowning glory, the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP), are still so far from being available for production and use? Nag, the anti-tank missile, is at least 12 years adrift and even if it ever comes into service its seeker head would be nothing like what was promised. Aakash, the Kalam answer to the Patriot, is not even on the horizon. Trishul, the fast reaction anti-aircraft and anti-missile missile, is so far behind schedule that the navy, which needed it desperately for its surface-ship defence, has now been forced to go to the Israelis and the Russians for the Barak and Kashmir systems, respectively. The MBT Arjun is 15 years behind schedule and nowhere beyond the technology demonstrator stage and that too with a foreign engine and more. On the LCA, the less said the better. His DRDO has failed to even develop a proper indigenous, basic rifle for the army. The army rejected the American Armalite in 1957 because they were promised a home-made rifle. Now it is importing the Kalashnikov of the same vintage.

Why does the DRDO not attract the brightest of our science and engineering graduates? Why are its labs so politicised, so faction-ridden and so wastefully unproductive? Why do the defence forces have such poor opinion of them? These are perfectly valid questions which we were too missile-struck to raise with him even when he was a mere scientist. Asking these now, when he is being hailed, besides his scientific brilliance, for such unusual qualities as vegetarianism and scholarship of the Bhagavad Gita, must be dangerous. The pity is Kalam himself is too decent a man to mind being asked these. He will have some answers and he is generous enough to accept his failures. Except we are too awed to ask.

But questions will be raised as they already have been since this Wednesday, when he made his first boo-boo, endorsing Musharraf’s line that the nukes had ensured deterrence in the region and which our own government had dismissed as the usual loose Pakistani nuke talk.

This adulation will be short-lived and even Kalam knows that now that he sits on top of the political pyramid, the rest of us will soon learn to treat him like a mortal instead of worshipping him as a man-made addition to our already sizeable pantheon. The presidency, and the deification seen today, is our equivalent of packing and delivering the carpet as unquestioningly as my co-passenger from Lahore did in 1987.

But democracies have a habit of recovering rather rapidly from moments of romantic madness. When that happens, Kalam will face his real test in the profession of politics he has chosen, or that he has been trapped in, so late in his remarkable life.

This article was originally published on June 22, 2002.