To: JPR who wrote (12315 ) 6/23/2002 9:20:37 AM From: JPR Read Replies (2) | Respond to Kalam and Vajpayee, the Two Poets at the Helm Kalam is Indian first and Indian last and there is no need to inject religion or caste in this context.--JPR Presenting a contrast to that is much smaller Pakistan where, even when it is not ruled by the military, no non-Muslim can become the head of state or of government because of a constitutional bar, nor hold any other important public office because of prejudice or suspicion. India has tried to show to the world that whether it is the making of destructive missiles or safeguarding its constitution in a crisis, the religion of a person is irrelevant. In that scenario, the periodic massacres of Muslims and their continuing deprivation recede into the background. The unverified figure reported is that the share of the Indian Muslims in the national economy and services is just about one-fourth of what it should be in proportion to their numbers. Abdul Kalam is said to lead a reclusive life in a two-room apartment in Chennai (Madras) which he doesn't own. He alternately looks like a hermit and a bohemian. Books and musical instruments are his companions. When he is not engaged in scientific research he writes poetry in his mother tongue, Tamil. He is respected for his extreme simplicity and easy access. Our A.Q. Khan is the very opposite. The gossip could never agree on the number of houses he owns, but undisputed is his villa on the eastern edge of Islamabad's Margalla lake in the capital's green belt. A colony of houses grew around it. The CDA's demolition squad that went into action had to spare all the homes because Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif intervened to save AQK's. He was a toast of Islamabad's social circles and an icon in the countryside. At one stage his deputy, Dr Mubarik Mand, called him a hoax, a metallurgist masquerading as a nuclear expert. Removed from the Kahuta laboratories named after him, he has sunk unsung into near-oblivion, though he remains an adviser to the government. Dr Abdul Kalam is called "a 200 per cent Indian" who has made India proud in myriad ways. Dr Abdus Salam, a Pakistani by a larger percentage, made the world proud but not his own country. A professor at London's Imperial College at the age of 31 and at 33 the youngest member of that exclusive club of eminence, the Royal Society, he expounded his theory of unification of forces of nature in a mathematical equation which, on confirmation several years later in CERN experiments won him a Nobel Prize in 1979.
