A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (15 October 1931 – 27 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace scientist and statesman who served as the eleventh President of India from 2002 to 2007, known as the "Missile Man of India" for his work on ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology, and as the "People's President" for his wide popularity. ^{1 2}

Kalam spent four decades as a scientist and science administrator at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), played a pivotal organisational, technical and political role in the Pokhran-II nuclear tests of 1998, and received the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 1997. ¹

Kalam was born on 15 October 1931 in Rameswaram on Pamban Island, then in the Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu), to a Tamil Muslim family; his father, Jainulabdeen Marakayar, was a boat owner and the imam of a local mosque, whose boat ferried Hindu pilgrims between Rameswaram and Dhanushkodi, and his mother, Ashiamma, was a housewife; he was the youngest of five siblings. ^{1 2}

His Marakayar ancestors had been wealthy traders and landowners, but the family business failed after the Pamban Bridge opened in 1914 and the family was poverty-stricken by the time Kalam was born, so as a young boy he delivered newspapers to support the family's meagre income. ^{1 2}

His teachers described him as a bright and hardworking student with a strong desire to learn who spent hours on mathematics; he did his schooling at Schwartz Higher Secondary School in Ramanathapuram and graduated in physics from St. Joseph's College, Tiruchirappalli, in 1954. ^{1 2}

In 1955 he moved to Madras to study aerospace engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology, where the Dean threatened to revoke his scholarship unless a class project was finished within three days — Kalam met the deadline and impressed him; he narrowly missed his dream of becoming a fighter pilot, placing ninth in qualifiers where only eight positions were available in the Indian Air Force. ¹

After graduating from the Madras Institute of Technology in 1960, Kalam joined the Aeronautical Development Establishment of the DRDO as a scientist, designed a small hovercraft in his early career, and remained unconvinced by his choice of job; he joined the Indian National Committee for Space Research, working under Vikram Sarabhai, and was interviewed and recruited into ISRO by H. G. S. Murthy, the first director of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station. ¹

In 1963–64 he visited NASA's Langley Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center and Wallops Flight Facility, and in 1969 he transferred to ISRO, where he became project director of India's first satellite launch vehicle (SLV), which successfully deployed the Rohini satellite in near-earth orbit in July 1980, and he was part of the effort to develop the SLV-3 and the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). ^{1 2}

In May 1974 he was invited by Raja Ramanna to witness India's first nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, as the representative of the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory, though he was officially not part of the project; in the 1970s he directed Project Devil and Project Valiant, which sought to develop ballistic missiles from SLV technology with funds allotted by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi through her discretionary powers despite the cabinet's disapproval. ¹

In the 1980s he became chief executive of the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, for which Defence Minister R. Venkataraman obtained cabinet approval of ₹3.88 billion, and played a major role in developing the Agni intermediate-range ballistic missile and the Prithvi tactical surface-to-surface missile, becoming known as the "Missile Man of India". ¹

He served as chief scientific adviser to the prime minister and secretary of the DRDO from July 1992 to December 1999, and played a key organisational, political and technical role in the Pokhran-II nuclear tests of May 1998, serving with Rajagopala Chidambaram as chief project coordinator, which made him the country's best-known nuclear scientist. ¹

In 1998, with cardiologist Bhupathiraju Somaraju, he developed a low-cost coronary stent named the "Kalam-Raju stent", and in 2012 the two designed the "Kalam-Raju tablet" computer for healthcare workers in rural areas. ¹

On 10 June 2002 the ruling National Democratic Alliance announced its intention to nominate Kalam for President of India; his candidature was backed by opposition parties including the Indian National Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party, and the incumbent, K. R. Narayanan, chose not to seek re-election; Kalam won the election of 15 July 2002 against Lakshmi Sahgal with 922,884 electoral votes to her 107,366, and was sworn in on 25 July 2002 as the eleventh president — the first scientist and the first bachelor to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan. ¹

During his term he was affectionately known as the "People's President"; he later said that signing the Office of Profit bill was the toughest decision of his tenure, asserted in September 2003 the need for a Uniform Civil Code in India, and imposed President's rule in Bihar in 2005. ¹

On 20 June 2007 he expressed willingness to consider a second term provided his victory was certain, but two days later decided not to contest, saying he wanted to avoid involving Rashtrapati Bhavan in political processes; despite media reports and popular campaigns in 2012, he again declined to contest on 18 June 2012. ¹

After leaving office Kalam returned to teaching, becoming a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Management Shillong and other institutions, an honorary professor at Anna University in Chennai, an honorary fellow of the Indian Institute of Science at Bengaluru, and in September 2007 the first chancellor of the newly established Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology at Thiruvananthapuram; he also visited China twice at its government's invitation to lecture at Peking University. ¹

In May 2012 he launched the What Can I Give Movement, aimed at the youth of India with the central theme of defeating corruption. ¹

This section presents Kalam's views as the sources describe them, without the museum adopting an evaluation of them.

The English article describes Kalam as a practising Sunni Muslim, for whom daily prayer (namaz) and fasting during Ramadan were integral to his life, and whose father, an imam, had strictly instilled these Islamic customs in his children; Wikidata likewise records his religion as Sunni Islam. ^{1 3}

The article also recounts his father's impressing on him the value of interfaith respect and dialogue: every evening his father the imam, Pakshi Lakshmana Sastry, the head priest of the Ramanathaswamy Hindu temple, and a church priest would sit with hot tea and discuss the island's issues, and this early exposure convinced Kalam that India's multitudinous issues lay in "dialogue and cooperation" among its religious, social and political leaders. ¹

He is quoted as holding that "respect for other faiths" was one of the key cornerstones of Islam, and as remarking: "For great men, religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool"; alongside his Islamic faith he was well-versed in Hindu traditions, learned Sanskrit and read the Bhagavad Gita, and spoke as president of "unity of minds" among the country's divergent traditions — Shashi Tharoor described him as "a complete Indian, an embodiment of the eclecticism of India's heritage of diversity". ¹

Kalam came to consider Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the Hindu guru of the BAPS Swaminarayan order, his ultimate spiritual teacher; they met eight times over fourteen years, and Kalam wrote that Pramukh Swami "has indeed transformed me" and had put him "in a God-synchronous orbit", documenting the experience in his book Transcendence: My Spiritual Experiences with Pramukh Swamiji (2015). ¹

This section should be read as a presentation of positions reported by the sources, not as the museum's verdict on them.

K. Santhanam, the director of the Pokhran-II test site, said that the thermonuclear bomb had been a "fizzle" and criticised Kalam for issuing an incorrect report; the claim was refuted and rejected by Kalam and Chidambaram. ¹

On mercy petitions, the article records that Kalam decided on only one of the twenty-one petitions to commute death sentences submitted to him — rejecting that of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was later hanged — and made no decision on twenty, including that of Afzal Guru, convicted of conspiracy in the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. ¹

In 2011 he voiced support for the nuclear power plant at Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu, giving assurances of its safety; some local residents were unconvinced by his statements and were hostile to his visit, according to the article. ¹

Kalam authored many books, including India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium (1998, with Y. S. Rajan), advocating an action plan to develop India into a "knowledge superpower" through five areas of core competence — agriculture and food processing, education and healthcare, information and communication technology, infrastructure, and self-reliance in critical technologies; Wings of Fire (1999), his autobiography with Arun Tiwari; Ignited Minds (2002); Turning Points (2012); My Journey (2013); and Transcendence (2015). ¹

The Government of India honoured Kalam with the Padma Bhushan in 1981 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1990, and in 1997 with India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, for his contribution to scientific research and the modernisation of defence technology; he also received the Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration (1997), the Hoover Medal (2008), the Von Braun Award of the National Space Society (2013), and honorary doctorates from many universities. ¹

On 27 July 2015 Kalam travelled to Shillong to deliver a lecture on "Creating a Livable Planet Earth" at IIM Shillong; five minutes into the lecture he collapsed, was rushed to Bethany Hospital, and was confirmed dead of a sudden cardiac arrest, aged 83; his purported last words to his aide Srijan Pal Singh were reported by the article. ^{1 2}

The Government of India declared seven days of state mourning; his body was flown to New Delhi, where dignitaries paid their last respects and it lay in his Delhi residence for public viewing, then flown via Madurai to Mandapam and carried to Rameswaram, where on 30 July 2015, following an Islamic burial prayer performed by the local imam, he was laid to rest at the Pei Karumbu ground with full state honours before over 350,000 people; a DRDO-built memorial was inaugurated there by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2017, displaying replicas of the rockets and missiles he had worked with. ¹

His birthday, 15 October, is celebrated as World Students' Day in India, and Tamil Nadu observes it as "Youth Renaissance Day" and instituted an annual Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Award; a road in New Delhi and the missile test site on Wheeler Island were renamed for him in 2015, and in 2017 NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers named a newly discovered bacterium Solibacillus kalamii in his honour. ¹

Kalam remained a lifelong bachelor and was noted for his integrity and simple lifestyle: he was a teetotaler and a vegetarian, wrote Tamil poetry, played the veena and listened to Carnatic devotional music daily, never owned a television, and his personal possessions amounted to a few books, a veena, clothing, a CD player and a laptop; he left no will, his possessions went to his eldest brother, and he regularly sent small sums of money to his older siblings. ¹

After resigning as scientific adviser in 1999 he set a target of interacting with 100,000 students in two years, saying he felt comfortable in the company of young people, particularly high school students. ¹

• The defined sources cited above, registered in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.