All communities loved and trusted him, but he rose to be the Muslim most loved by India’s Hindu majority in our entire history, possibly since Mughal Emperor Akbar. 

On his third death anniversary, it’s a reckless way to assess the life of one of India’s most loved public figures, but let’s list some of what former president APJ Abdul Kalam wasn’t.

He wasn’t really a scientist in the classical sense of the term. He didn’t have many peer-reviewed publications. He wasn’t the father of the Indian nuclear bomb. It had been put together collectively by two generations of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) scientists.

He didn’t quite have the gift of oratory and mostly repeated his platitudes. In a Raisina Hill mansion peopled before him by great men of letters, he wasn’t much of a writer either. He never got married, was not a family man. Nor was he a politician or public figure by upbringing or training. Most of his life was spent in the secretive world of weapon-designing. And, much as he loved to recite Sanskrit shlokas and play the rudra veena, he was a simple, God-loving Muslim.

Then think about what he ended up becoming.

He came to be hailed among our greatest scientists ever, in the class of C.V. Raman and Jagadish Chandra Bose, way above his mentors’ generation of Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai or his peers in DAE, ISRO and DRDO. He is immortalised in our collective memory as the man who gave us our nuclear deterrent. He became our most popular public speaker across generations, geographies and demographics in India, and never spoke at a hall less than bursting at the flanks with standees.

The books he wrote, India 2020, for example, were in the nature of pontifical DIYs but became the biggest non-fiction sellers in our history and shall remain so for a long time. He became the leader most loved by our children after Chacha Nehru, a benevolent Nana Kalam. His stature grew so phenomenally that he became our most political president, and in an entirely wise and non-partisan manner.

All communities loved and trusted him, but he rose to be the Muslim most loved by India’s Hindu majority in our entire history, possibly since Mughal Emperor Akbar. Way more than Maulana Azad or any other. The perfect detox to Jinnah.

And finally, a fact that even I, with my thick skin, was too scared to put in the list of what he wasn’t: He never had a real doctorate, a PhD. His doctorates were all honoris causa but “Dr” fitted him brilliantly, and not even his worst critics dared to highlight this.

So what did he have that lifted him to such love and respect?

He acquired moral authority that few Indians have had since Independence. It came from his humility, to begin with. You never heard him claim credit for any ISRO-DRDO achievements, never a boast, never heard him complain about anybody or anything. Surely, for somebody who worked all his life in a secretive tech establishment behind an iron curtain of bureaucracy, he had had his share of complaints. He never played to the gallery or used these as excuses for failure.

In April 2001, I wrote the first of my two National Interests deeply critical of him and the failures of DRDO under him (‘Kalam’s Banana Republic’), and the next time I ran into him, literally, jogging from the opposite direction in south Delhi’s Siri Fort Sports Complex, where he walked in the evenings (he lived in a DRDO guesthouse in the Asian Games Village next door), he noticed I was avoiding eye contact in fright. He stopped, with a big smile, and said he wanted to tell me how much he enjoyed that article and how he agreed with it entirely.

“I hope the authorities read it also. There are very serious challenges and shortcomings in DRDO. We need to do something,” he said, as I searched his face for sarcasm. But as anybody who got to know Kalam over time, he never spoke between the lines.

His nomination as president was a Vajpayee-Advani masterstroke. Theirs was India’s first BJP-led government and they were conscious of the need to look-feel inclusive. Someone already a national hero with a Muslim name was going to be an asset. But the way Kalam grew with the job surprised them as well.

His was a most reassuring presence during the stand-off with Pakistan (Operation Parakram) when, for at least a year, we remained a hair-trigger away from war. His was just the healing touch India needed after the Gujarat riots. He intervened with great circumspection and maturity, not sounding partisan in the least, and yet letting his mind be known. His was the most effective intervention of all and delivered in such a sophisticated manner that even the Hindus only ended up respecting him more.

The legacy of Kalam is more profound than just this, though. How profound was underlined by former prime minister Manmohan Singh in Karan Thapar’s fine interview with him for the India Today Group.

He reminded us that without Kalam’s intervention, there would have been no nuclear deal with the US. As the monsoon session of Parliament began in 2008, and Prakash Karat announced that he was withdrawing support to the UPA and would also vote with the BJP to bring down the government on the nuclear deal, the numbers were stacked against Manmohan Singh. He won his riskiest political battle with the defection of Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Originally, and particularly given his Muslim vote bank, Mulayam was strongly opposed to the nuclear deal. The Congress reached out to Mulayam for a backroom give-and-take. But Mulayam needed a fig leaf. This was provided by Kalam as he came out strongly in endorsement of the agreement. From that moment on, Mulayam and Amar Singh only parroted: If Dr Kalam says it’s fine, it must be so. In fact, if you go back to the parliamentary debate on that confidence motion, see the passion with which Asaduddin Owaisi defends the nuclear deal, turning his politics inside out. Kalam, the patriot, provided the cover there too.

Surprisingly, this still remains a relatively less remembered intervention and has not been noted prominently in countless obituaries and tributes written on him. But the fact is, until then, not just the “secular” parties but even the nuclear-scientific establishment had grave suspicions about the deal that would separate military from the civil and bring both out of the closet. Kalam settled these.

He could do it only because he always put the nation first. Just a year earlier, the Congress had humiliated him by denying him a second term that he had agreed to accept if there was unanimity. The Congress vetoed it. This was a perfect moment for Kalam to get even and also return the favour to the BJP, which had rewarded him with Bharat Ratna and the presidency.

So here are some other things Kalam wasn’t. He wasn’t petty, cynical, selfish, vengeful, unprincipled, egoistic. That’s why a billion-plus remember him as their most loved leader in decades.

Postscript: My favourite Kalam story is among my earliest. In 1994, India was hit by the so-called ISRO spy scandal. It was alleged — and widely believed — that two eminent ISRO scientists had been caught by Pakistani intelligence in a honey trap using two Maldives women, and had passed strategic rocket secrets to them. Investigating the story for India Today, I found the entire plot fishy and fictional. The story the magazine published demolished the Kerala Police and Intelligence Bureau case, the scientists were freed with full vindication and honour, cases withdrawn and ultimately the Supreme Court ordered cash compensation to those framed.

One of the scientists, Nambinarayanan, acknowledged as much in his recent autobiographical account. But early on, it was very stressful to go against the folklore that had already been built. And even in those pre-internet days we who busted the myth were subjected to enormous abuse.

Subsequently, at an Army Day (January 15) reception, Kalam, then head of DRDO, caught me for a couple of minutes’ chat. He poked me gently in my chest, to the left, and said, what you have done is like applying balm to the wounds on our hearts. I asked him what that was about. The ISRO story, he said. Those scientists are wonderful people and totally innocent, this false case would have destroyed my ISRO (where he had originally worked), he said. You can read that story on India Today’s website.