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The landslide victory of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam over his Leftist rival Captain Lakshmi Sehgal has brought under focus two stark realities of the present day Indian public life. One, on an issue of national importance, the Leftist cabal is isolated. Second, the only reliable allies they are left with are the rank Muslim communalists.
That the Communists and the Muslim communalists are on the same side of the fence on the issue of presidential election has to be seen in historical perspective. When the Muslim League in British India was agitating for Pakistan, all the intellectual arguments to justify the vivisection of the country were provided to Jinnah by the Communist leadership. The Communists and the communalists are two sides of the same coin and have been out of tune with the rest of the country on all major national issues — 1942 Quit India Movement, 1962 Chinese aggression or the Emergency in 1975.
The Communist-communalist combine finds Dr Kalam an “unsuitable” candidate for the office of President since he helped India become self-sufficient in nuclear weapons. Perhaps in their communal mindset, a Muslim should not have helped India become a nuclear or missile power. It is all right when Pakistan borrows (or steals) nuclear know-how and uses it as its own. The Left celebrates when Red China acquires atomic arsenal. And it is bad when India develops its own nuclear weapons!
Interestingly, apart from the Left, murmurs against Dr Kalam are heard from the so-called leaders of the Muslim community with claims to scholarship. The President-elect has received support from as wide a political and regional spectrum as could be imagined. In the South, both factions of the Dravida Kazhagam movement voted for him. In Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa, Dr Kalam got almost unanimous support. The Muslim League did not go by the protesters; it supported Dr Kalam. That alone should be bitter for the so-called spokesmen of the minority community. In Andhra the two major political formations, the TDP and the Congress, lined up behind him. In fractious Bihar, the ruling and Opposition parties were together in supporting him with only the Leftists dissenting. The same happened in UP, in Punjab, J&K and elsewhere.
Dr Kalam’s critics, however, find, as Syed Shahabuddin, former MP and convenor of Babri Masjid Coordination Committee, has said in a recent article in an English daily, his qualifications are not “adequate for the presidency”. The Left has also been repeating the same charge. If criterion for an “adequate President” is to be applied, Dr Radhakrishnan and Dr Zakir Husain should never have been Presidents. The former’s acquaintance with politics was his years spent as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, otherwise, throughout his life he was basically a teacher of philosophy. Dr Hussain was Gandhi’s choice for his Nai Talim educational programme that never took off in independent India. As for the knowledge of the Constitution, Zail Singh had never seen the inside of a college, let alone understand the Constitution.
The Communists and the likes of Shahabuddin also find Kalam’s philosophy of development “shallow and flat”. Will they explain to us the Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi’s philosophy of development or that of Jayalalitha who has become the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for the second time? It is surprising that the self appointed leaders of Muslims and the Leftist detractors of Dr Kalam have not read Kalam’s works, especially his India: Vision 2020 or the latest, Ignited Minds.
If Shahabuddin and the fellow travellers of Left find this vision “shallow and flat” then there is something wrong with their understanding of what science could do to change society. I suspect that what they are objecting to is Kalam’s refusal to talk in terms of communal advancement. Had Kalam said that Muslim students are being discriminated against, the editor of Muslim India and the Left would have hailed him as dynamic. Dr Kalam does not talk in terms of Hindus and Muslims; he talks in terms of Indians. This obviously irritates people like Shahabuddin and members of the Leftist cabal, for ages brought up on a communal diet.
However, the anti-Kalam gang appears to lose all sense of proportion when it assumes he would be a “pliable” President for Vajpayee or the Sangh Parivar to carry out its so-called programme of destroying Muslims. Will they consider President Fakruddin Ali Ahmed as a “pliable President” when Indira Gandhi turned against the members of his own community during the Emergency and got the Turkman Gate area demolished? In 1984 Giani Zail Singh as President signed the order for the Army to march on the most sacred shrine of the Sikhs when some militants holed themselves up in the Golden Temple. What happened to the political experience of the Giani? Was he “pliable”? Yet, under his presidency, several thousand members of his own community were massacred in a Congress regime. One must know enough of the Constitution to realise that no President can defy an elected Prime Minister having a majority in Parliament. India is not Pakistan where a President can dismiss the Prime Minister.
This whole idea that someone is being chosen for some position because he belongs to a certain community, is reprehensible. Was Narayanan chosen for the presidentship in 1997 because he is a Dalit? Or in his own way for his services to the country and his intellectual eminence? Narayanan was the right choice then. Dr Kalam is the right choice, today. But both Narayanan’s choice and that of Dr Kalam underline the basic concept of our Constitution — that every office under the Constitution is open to anyone who qualifies for it and that no one shall be denied that job because he belongs to a certain community, caste or language group or region. It would therefore be ridiculous to say that Dr Kalam was chosen by the NDA and endorsed by others because he is a Muslim.
It had also been alleged that Dr Kalam is not a full-blown Muslim, and that he does not represent the Muslim community. The other allegation is that he was chosen because he fitted the BJP’s idea of a Muslim as one who respects Hindu Gods, scriptures and traditions. The insinuation in it is so insidious, one cannot but examine the mindset of those who make such communal classifications. Was poet Rahim a “bad Muslim” because he was a self confessed admirer of Rama? Were the Dagar brothers “bad Muslims” because they took bhakti bhava to the heights in Hindustani classical music? But such fine understanding of India is beyond the communalists and the Communists.
However, we cannot but recall that in the past Muslim orthodoxy has been seeking to disown several brilliant Muslims who did not tow the conservative line. That applies to Maulana Azad, one of the greatest scholars of Islam who was conservative in his interpretation of Islam but nationalist in his political faith, and down the line to Rafi Ahmed Kidwai and others. Later the same thing happened to Dr Zakir Hussain who too had learned at the feet of Gandhi lessons in non-violence.
It may be people like Shahabuddin will not gel with a situation wherein their co-religionists are finding all opportunities open to them if they are otherwise qualified, in a state where they are in a minority. Their leadership of the community depends entirely on the refrain that “Islam is in danger in India” more so after the BJP’s rise. If the BJP proves otherwise, the carpet would be pulled from under their feet. In the process the Marxist demonisation of the Sangh Parivar stands exposed.
That remains their main grouse when they find that a highly qualified person who has served the country well for 40 years is chosen to be the President of India irrespective of the fact that by religion he does not belong to the majority community. If they do not prove that he is not a good Muslim, their entire political edifice will come crumbling down. That is the real purport of the charge that Kalam does not “connect” himself with the Muslim community despite his birth in that section. How could a Muslim be chosen for such high position when he has no communal history? Worse, how could that choice be endorsed by 90 per cent of the political establishment when the self-appointed leaders of the community are denouncing it? In the Kalam story communal politicians like Shahabuddin perceive a serious threat to their job. And the Leftist cabal finds its paradigm crashing down in a heap.
Fortunately for us, the country as a whole, cutting across many historic and even violent political divides, has given the likes of Shahabuddin and the Leftist cabal a thumbs down sign while it has hailed this achiever against odds as the right Indian to be its 12th President. The election has put the Left versus the Rest.
(Balbir K. Punj is a BJP MP and
can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
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