People’s president

Dear Sir,

Tributes are pouring in for A P J Abdul Kalam who died  after collapsing while delivering a lecture on Monday. As a human being he was a very sincere and gentle person, as a scientist he was brilliant and as a technocrat he was among the best.
As India’s president, the formal head of the executive, legislature and judiciary  and  the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, he did a stellar job during his term but he did have limitations associated with the august office.
Criticism of him still exists in some quarters in India, even at this time of mourning. So I wish to add the following with my heartfelt tribute to Abdul Kalam, one of the great Indians to have lived in the post-independence era.
It was for nothing he was called the people’s president.
 Barely a month after becoming  president, Abdul Kalam had virtually overruled the then National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and visited the riot-hit Gujarat. Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister, was then the chief minister of Gujarat. The Gujarat riots, I believe, were some sort of ethnic cleansing, a development which a secular India had never witnessed.
When Abdul Kalam decided to tour Gujarat as his first major assignment after becoming  president, the then prime minister A B Vajpayee asked him: “Do you consider going to Gujarat at this time essential?”
Abdul Kalam told Vajpayee: “I consider it an important duty so that I can be of some use to remove the pain and also accelerate the relief activities, and bring about a unity of minds, which is my mission, as I stressed in my address during the swearing-in ceremony.”
The subject of his last deliberation at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) in Shillong was “Key to a Livable Planet Earth”. It highlights his true concerns and passion.

Abdul Kareem E T, (e-mail address supplied)


A source of inspiration
 
Dear Sir,

With the death of former Indian president Abdul Kalam, an era has comes to an end in India. He will always be remembered as a person of great spiritual values with a scientific approach towards life and for his immense contribution to the development of India’s rocket technology,
It will be more appropriate to call Kalam Sahib as “people’s president” whose approach to life had a rare combination of science, education and morality.
Abdul Kalam was bestowed with many national and international awards that included India’s highest civilian honour Bharat Ratna in 1997.
Abdul Kalam has left behind a great and a ever-lasting legacy which will be a source of inspiration for generations to come.
 
Ramesh G Jethwani/(Address supplied)

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