Patriotism Beyond Politics and Religion --- Chapter of Ignited Mind by Abdul Kalam

 I do not care for liberation, I would rather go to a hundred thousand hells, ‘doing good to others (silently) like the spring’, this is my religion.

                                                ---Swami Vivekananda

Walking has been an essential part of my life. Wherever I go I make it a point to walk five kilometers in the morning. I am particularly attached to seeing the beauty of the sunrise, the light that precedes its arrival and my ears are tuned to the songs that birds sing to welcome the dawning of a new day on this planet. Each time I experience these phenomena --- the cool breeze, the singing of the birds and the arrival of the sun --- I am filled with awe at how nature brings together all the elements that go into making this moment possible and feel thankful to God.

I have been fortunate in that my work has taken me to very many beautiful places that opened up my mind to cosmic reality. One such was Chandipur in Orissa.

From Kolkata, the distance to Balasore is around 234 km and Chandipur is 16 km from the town. The name means the abode of the Goddess Chandi or Durga. The beach here is surely among the finest in India. At low tide the water recedes three kilometers as the tides follow their rhythmic cycle.

The lonely beach, the whispering of tamarisk trees and the cool breeze create a feeling of extraordinary calm. I used to walk on the beach to the mouth of the river Suwarnarkha. The river’s vast spread and the bewitching, ceaseless ripples of its water  were hypnotic in their effect. It was a feeling as close to bliss as I have ever felt.

We stared test-firing our missiles from the Sriharikota Range of ISRO but needed our own missile test range. The Interim Test Range (ITR) was established in 1989 as a dedicated range for launching missiles, rockets and flight test vehicles. A number of missiles of different class including the multirole Trishul, multi-target capable Akash, the anti-tank nag missile, the surface-to-surface missile Prithvi, and the long-range technology demonstrator Agni have been test-fired from the ITR. BrahMos, the Indo-Russian joint venture set up to develop supersonic cruise missile has also been tested aat this range. The ITR has also supported a number of other missions such as testing of the multi-barrel rocket launcher Pinaka and the pilotless aircraft Lakshya.

The ITR has also been made capable for testing airborne weapons and systems with the help of sophisticated instrumentation. Thrust areas include tracking long-range missiles, air defence missile systems, weapons systems delivered by the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), multi-target weapon systems and high-acceleration maneuverable missiles.

The ITR extends 17 km along the seacoast where a number of tracking instruments have been deployed along the flight path of the test vehicles. Some of the significant test facilities at the ITR are a mobile and fixed electro-optical tracking system, mobile S-band tracking radar, fixed C-band tracking radar, fixed and mobile telemetry system, range computer, photo processing system, meteorological system and range safety systems,.  An expert system has been developed for aiding safety decisions during launch. The ITR is slowly but surely growing into a world-class range.

It was a hot and humid midnight sometime in July 1995. We were going through the results of the fourth consecutive successful flight of Prithvi. People’s faces of celebration. More than thirty of us, representing 1,200 hard-working team members, were pondering over the question—what next? Lt. Gen Ramesh Khosla, Director General Artillery, suggested that Army needed a flight test on a land range with accuracy of impact at the final destination within 150 meters. This is called Circular Error Probability (CEP) in technical terms.

We opened a geographical map of India. There were five tiny dots at a distance of 70 to 80 km from ITR. These are the Wheeler Islands. We could not go to the Rajasthan desert for obvious reasons. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are far away. At 2.00 a.m. we decide that Wheeler Islands were the right choice for the missile impact test. Now the search for a suitable island started. A helicopter was used to survey the area. Someone proposed asking the fishermen to guide us to the islands.

My two colleagues, Saraswat and Salwan, drove to a place called Dhamra. From Dhamra, they hired a boat for the day for Rs.250. by the time they reached the island it was almost dark. Salwan had carried fruits for eating during the journey but these eventually became their dinner. There was no option but to stay on the island. It was a beautiful night but my friends, neither familiar with the sea nor used to being marooned on a deserted island, spent it rather fearfully—thought they won’t confess it and claim instead that they enjoyed it. Early the next morning, they began their survey of the island, which is about 3 km long and 800 meters wide. To their surprise, they saw on the eastern side of the island a Bagladesh flag flying atop a tree with huts nearby. The island was probably frequented by fishermen from the neightbouring country. My friends quickly removed the flag.

Things moved fast thereafter. The district authorities, including forest and environment officers, visited the island. Soon after, I got the Defence Minister’s clearance to acquire the islands. The formalities were gone through with the Orissa government and the forest department ot transfer the land. I personally met the concerned senior officials to make the file move to the desk of the Chief Minister. I also wrote a detailed letter to the Chief Minister explaining why we needed the islands for DRDO work, specially for use as a range for experimental purposes.

We had already done preparatory work before moving the application. There are typical questions about fishing activity in the vicinity, the disturbance that might be caused to turtle migration and above all the cost of the islands. Within ten days we got an appointment from the Chief Minister, I had heard a lot about Chief Minister Biju Patnaik, particularly about his days as a pilot and his friendship with President Sukarno. When I entered the Chief minister’s chambers with Maj. Gen. K. N. Singh and Salwan, he welcome us warmly.  To me he exclaimed, ‘Oh my friend Kalam, I have followed your work from the time of Dr Sarabhai to now, whatever you ask, I will give.’ In my presence he signed the Orissa government’s decision said, ‘Kalam, I have given the approval you asked for, I know you will use is well. Your mission—the missile programme—is very important to the country. Anything needed from Orissa will be yours.’ Then, suddenly, he held me and gave me a very affectionate hug. He said in a demanding tone, ‘Kalam, you have to give me a promise and assurance to the nation. The day India makes its own ICBM I shall be stronger as an Indian.’ There was silence. I had to respond immediately. Biju Patnaik was a man with a tremendous personality and deeply impressive as a leader too, one whose love for the nation transcended politics. I looked straight into his eyes and said, ‘ Sir, we will work for your mission. I will discuss your thought in Delhi.’

Some forty years ago, the daredevil Biju Parnaik piloted his Kalinga Airways plane into Jakarta to find Indonesian president Sukarno in the first flush of fatherhood. Sukarno‘s wife delivered a baby, and the family was searching for a name for the newborn girl when Bijuda called on them.

Sukarno explained the problem on hand to the visitor from India. Biju Patnaik cast him mind back to the clouds that had greeted the baby’s arrival and suggested the Sanskrit equivalent for them. Sukarno’s daughter was promptly christened Megawati and thus the daughter of the leader of the world’s largest Muslim nation got a Hindu name. For great men, religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool.

Many years later, after several political upheavals, Megawati Sukarnoputri would become first the Vice President and then the President of Indonesia.

Lament, my friend, at the passing away of a generation of politicians with a voice, vision and reach that went far beyond our borders. Lament at our State-sponsored, abnormal and paranoid fixation with a particular country that has blinded us to the rest of the world, including the Third World, which we used to head not so long ago. And weep softly at what we have reduced ourselves to in the comity of nations. For a large county with a billion people, a country with a thriving industry and a large pool of scientific talent , a county moreover, that is a nuclear power, India does not count for as much as it should. In terms of our influence in world affairs, probably no other country is so far below its potential as we are.

After Pokhran II, the west speaks about India and Pakistan in the same breath. Is it not in our national interest to demonstrate to the world that we can think of a world beyond Pakistan, that we are a qualitatively better, more mature and secular county with a greater commitment to the values of democracy and freedom?

During march 2002, I was teaching about 200 final year students of engineering at Anna University and I gave a series of ten lectures on ‘Technology and Its Dimensions’. On the final day of the interaction, there was a discussion on Dual Use Technologies. One of the students raised a question.

Sir, I have recently come across Dr Amartya Sen’s statement that the nuclear weapon test conducted in May 1998 by India was ill conceived. Dr Amartya Sen is a great economist and a Nobel laureate who is much respected for his ideas on development. A comment from such a personality can’t be ignored. What is your view on his comments?’

‘I acknowledge the greatness of Dr Amartya Sen in the field of economic development and admire his suggestion, such as that thrust should be given to primary education’. I said ‘At the same time , it seemed to me that Dr Sen looked at India from a Western perspective. In his view, India should have a friendly relationship with all countries to enhance its economic prosperity. I agree, but we must also bear in mind India’s experience in the past. Pandit Nehru spoke in the United Nations against nuclear proliferation and advocated zero nuclear weapons in all the countries. we know the result. One should note that there are more than 10,000 nuclear warheads on American soil, another 10,000 nuclear warheads are on Russian soil and there are number of them in the UK, China, France, Pakistan and some other countries. The START II and the recent agreements between the USA and Russia only talk about the reducing the number of nuclear warheads to 2,000 each and even these agreements are limping. Nobody takes the reduction of warheads in serious terms. There should be a movement by those who are against the May1998 test in America and Russia or other Western countries to achieve zero nuclear weapons status. It is essential to remember that two of our neighboring countries are armed with nuclear weapons and missiles. Can India be a silent spectator?'

India has been invaded in the last 3,000 years by a succession of conquerors, including the British, French, Dutch and Portuguese, either to enlarge their territory or to spread a religion or to steal the wealth of our country. Why is it India never invaded other countries . is it because our kings were not brave enough? The truth is Indians were tolerant and never understood the true implications of being ruled by others for generations. But after the long independence struggle when we got united and has physical economic prosperity as the only goal? The only way to show the strength of the country is the might to defend it. Strength  respects strength and not weakness. Strength means military might and economic prosperity. The decisions and policies of the United Nations Security Council are dictated by the countries who possess nuclear weapons. How is it we did not get a seat in the Security Council so far but now other nations are recommending that India be made a member?

In this regard, there is another incident I would like to narrate. My friend, Admiral L. Ramdas, who retired as the naval chief, told me that he and a group of people would hold a demonstration before Parliament protesting against the nuclear test carried out in May 1998. I replied to my friend that he and his group should first demonstrate in front of the White House and Kremlin against the large quantity of nuclear warheads and ICBMs there.

I call to my people to rise to greatness. It is a call to all Indians to rise to their highest capabilities. What are the forces which lead to the rise or fall of nations? And what are the factors which go to make a nation strong? Three factors are invariably found in a strong nation; a collective pride in its achievements, unity and the ability for combined action.

For a people and a nation to rise to the highest, they must have a common memory of great heroes and exploits, of great adventures and triumphs in the past. If the British rose to great heights it is because they had great heroes to admire, men like Lord Nelson, say, or a the Duke of Wellington. Japan represents a fine example of national pride. The Japanese are proud of being one people, having one culture, and because of that they could transform a humiliating military defeat into a triumphant economic victory.

All nations which have risen to greatness have been characterized by a sense of mission. The Japanese have it in large measure. So do the Germans. In the course of three decades, Germans. In the course of three decades, Germany was twice all but destroyed. And yet its people’s sense of destiny never dimmed. From the ashes of the Second World War, it has emerged a nation economically powerful and politically assertive. If Germany can be a great nation, why can’t India?

Unfortunately for India, historic forces have not given a common memory to all communities by taking them back to their roots a millennium down the ages. Not enough effort has been made in the last fifty years to foster that memory.

I had the fortune of learning many of our religions in the country from my childhood, in high school and then onwards for nearly seventy years. One aspect I realize is that the central theme of any religion is spiritual well-being. Indeed it should be understood that the foundation of secularism in India has to be derived from spirituality.

It is because our sense of mission has weakened that we have ceased to be true to our culture and ourselves. If we come to look upon ourselves as a divided people with no pride in our past and no faith in the future, what else can we look forward to except frustration, disappointment and despair?

In India, the core culture goes beyond time. It precedes the arrival of Islam; it precedes the arrival of Christianity. The early Christians, like the Syrian Christians of Kerala, have retained their Indianness with admirable determination. Are they less Christian because their married women wear the mangalsutra or their menfolk wear the dhoti in the Kerala style? Kerala’ Chief Minister, A. K. Antony, is not a heretic because he and his people are part of Kerala’s culture. Being a Christian does not make him an alien. On the contrary, it gives an added dimension to his Indianness. A. R. Rahman may be a Muslim but his voice echoes in the soul of all Indians, of whatever faith, when he sings Vande Matram.

The greatest danger to our sense of unity and our sense of purpose comes from those ideologists who seek to divide the people. The Indian Constitution bestows on all the citizens total equality under its protective umbrella. What is now cause for concern is the trend towards putting religious form over religious sentiments. Why can’t we develop a cultural—not religious—context for our heritage that serves to make Indians of us all? The time has come for us to stop differentiating. What we need today is a vision for the nation which can bring unity.

It is when we accept India in all its splendid glory that, with a shared past as a base, we can look forward to a shared future of peace and prosperity, of creation and abundance. Our past is there with use forever. It has to be nurtured in good faith, not destroyed in exercises of political one-upmanship.

The developed India will not be a nation of cities. It will be a network of prosperous villages empowered by telemedicine, tele-education and e-commerce. the new India will emerge out of the combination of biotechnology, biosciences and agriculture sciences and industrial development. The political leaders would be working with the zeal born of the knowledge that the nation is bigger than individual interests and political parties. This attitude will lead to minimizing the rural-urban divide as progress takes place in the countryside and urbanites move to rural areas to absorb the best of what nature can give in the form of products and wealth.

The most important and urgent task before our leadership is to get all the forces for constructive change together and deploy them in a mission mode. India is a country of one billion people with numerous religions and communities. It offers a wide spectrum of ideologies, besides its geographic diversity. This is our greatest strength. However, fragmented thinking, compartmentalized planning and isolated efforts are not yielding results. The people have to come together to create a harmonious India.

The second vision of the nation will bring about a renaissance to the nation. The task of casting a strong India is in the hands of a visionary political leadership.