Dr.

APJ Abdul Kalam's Speech: A Must Read

I have three visions for India. In 3000 years of our history people from all over
the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds.
From Alexander onwards. The Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese,
the British, the French, the Dutch, all of them came and looted us, took over
what was ours. Yet we have not done this to any other nation. We have not
conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history
and tried to enforce our way of life on them. Why? Because we respect the
freedom of others. That is why my first vision is that of FREEDOM. I believe that
India got its first vision of this in 1857, when we started the war of
independence. It is this freedom that we must protect and nurture and build on.
If we are not free, no one will respect us.

My second vision for India is DEVELOPMENT. For fifty years we have been a
developing nation. It is time we see ourselves as a developed nation. We are
among top 5 nations of the world in terms of GDP. We have 10 percent growth
rate in most areas. Our poverty levels are falling. Our achievements are being
globally recognized today. Yet we lack the self-confidence to see ourselves as a
developed nation, self-reliant and self-assured. Isn't this incorrect?

I have a THIRD vision. India must stand up to the world. Because I believe that
unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. Only strength
respects strength. We must be strong not only as a military power but also as an
economic power. Both must go hand-in-hand. My good fortune was to have
worked with three great minds. Dr. Vikram Sarabhai of the Dept. of space,
Professor Satish Dhawan, who succeeded him and Dr. Brahm Prakash, father of
nuclear material. I was lucky to have worked with all three of them closely and
consider this the great opportunity of my life.

I see four milestones in my career: ONE: Twenty years I spent in ISRO. I was
given the opportunity to be the project director for India's first satellite launch
vehicle, SLV3. The one that launched Rohini. These years played a very
important role in my life of Scientist.

TWO: After my ISRO years, I joined DRDO and got a chance to be the part of
India's missile program. It was my second bliss when Agni met its mission
requirements in 1994.

THREE: The Dept. of Atomic Energy and DRDO had this tremendous partnership
in the recent nuclear tests, on May 11 and 13. This was the third bliss. The joy
of participating with my team in these nuclear tests and proving to the world
that India can make it, that we are no longer a developing nation but one of
them. It made me feel very proud as an Indian. The fact that we have now
developed for Agni a re-entry structure, for which we have developed this new
material. A Very light material called carbon-carbon.

FOUR: One day an orthopedic surgeon from Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences
visited my laboratory. He lifted the material and found it so light that he took me
to his hospital and showed me his patients. There were these little girls and boys
with heavy metallic calipers weighing over three kg. each, dragging their feet
around. He said to me: Please remove the pain of my patients. In three weeks,
we made these Floor reaction Orthosis 300 gram calipers and took them to the

Page 1 of 10
orthopedic centre. The children didn't believe their eyes. From dragging around a
three kg. load on their legs, they could now move around! Their parents had
tears in their eyes. That was my fourth bliss!

Why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to

recognize our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We
have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them.
Why? We are the first in milk production. We are number one in Remote sensing
satellites. We are the second largest producer of wheat. We are the second
largest producer of rice. Look at Dr. Sudarshan, he has transferred the tribal
village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit. There are millions of such
achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and
disasters.

I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day
after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas
had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish
gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert land into an orchid and
a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory
details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried
among other news. In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism,
crime. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so
obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign TVs, we want foreign shirts. We
want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we
not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance?

I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my
autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is: She replied: I want to live in a
developed India. For her, you and I will have to build this developed India. You
must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed
nation.

Allow me to come back with vengeance. Got 10 minutes for your country?

YOU say that our government is inefficient. YOU say that our laws are too old.
YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage. YOU say that the
phones don't work, the railways are a joke, the airline is the worst in the world,
mails never reach their destination. YOU say that our country has been fed to
the dogs and is the absolute pits. YOU say, say and say.

What do YOU do about it? Take a person on his way to Singapore. Give him a
name - YOURS. Give him a face - YOURS. YOU walk out of the airport and you
are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on
the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground Links as
they are. You pay $5 (approx. Rs. 60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent
of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM.

YOU comeback to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over
stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity. In
Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public
during Ramadan, in Dubai. YOU would not dare to go out without your head
covered in Jeddah. YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone

Page 2 of 10
exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs. 650) a month to, "see to it that my STD
and ISD calls are billed to someone else." YOU would not dare to speed beyond
55 mph (88 kph) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, "Jaanta hai sala
main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two
bucks and get lost." YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other
than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand. Why don't
YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys
or buy fake certificates in Boston? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who
can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in
your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you
touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an
alien country why cannot you be the same here in India. Once in an interview,
the famous Ex-municipal commissioner of Bombay Mr.Tinaikar had a point to
make. "Rich people's dogs are walked on the streets to leave their affluent
droppings all over the place," he said. "And then the same people turn around to
criticize and blame the authorities for inefficiency and dirty pavements. What do
they expect the officers to do? Go down with a broom every time their dog feels
the pressure in his bowels? In America every dog owner has to clean up after his
pet has done the job. Same in Japan. Will the Indian citizen do that here?" He's
right. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all
responsibility. We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government
to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the
government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over
the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw
it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not
going to learn the proper use of bathrooms. We want Indian Airlines and Air
India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop
pilfering at the least opportunity. This applies even to the staff who is known not
to pass on the service to the public. When it comes to burning social issues like
those related to women, dowry, girl child and others, we make loud drawing
room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? "It's
the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my
sons' rights to a dowry." So who's going to change the system? What does a
system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbors, other
households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely
not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to
the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look
into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr. Clean to come along &
work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand. Or we leave the country
and run away. Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to
bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure
we run to England. When England experiences unemployment, we take the next
flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and
brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape
the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged
to money.

Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of
introspection and pricks one's conscience too....I am echoing J.F. Kennedy's
words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians.....

"ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE

Page 3 of 10
INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY"

Lets do what India needs from us.

Come on young India lets make it truly "incredible India"

JAI HIND

Page 4 of 10
APJ Abdul Kalam – Address At Madina
Public School
A reader of this blog, KM Raziuddin sent us this inspirational speech by President APJ Abdul
Kalam on the occasion of silver jubilee celebrations of Madina Public School in Hyderabad.
The address is titled “Indomitable Spirit”. Please visit his official website
www.AbdulKalam.com to keep updated with his recent activities.

INDOMITABLE SPIRIT

“It doesn’t matter who I am,

I will work, work and work,
All the forces of the universe
will also assist me,
I will achieve what I dream”.

I am delighted to interact with the students of Madina Public School, Hyderabad. I am very
happy that Madina Public School which started with a strength of 53 students has now
become a renowned institution where more than 2000 students are studying. As I browsed
through the website of your institution, I am extremely glad to note that a Library exclusively
for the tiny tots of the primary section has been established.

I would like to share with you one inspirational call from Hazrat Mohammad Sahib’s
Hadeeth (peace be upon him).

“When you speak, speak the truth.

Perform what you promise.
Discharge your trust.
Withhold your hand from striking and taking,
That which is unlawful and bad.”

Let us follow this path and lead a noble life.

I greet all the pioneers who have contributed in establishing and growing this School to its
present state. During the last 25 years, this school has produced many distinguished
personalities who are contributing in different disciplines in India and abroad. I would like to
talk on the topic “Indomitable Spirit”.

Knowledge

First let me talk about knowledge. Knowledge is = creativity + righteousness + courage +

indomitable spirit. The combination of these characteristics can generate enlightened citizens.

“Learning gives creativity

Creativity leads to thinking
Thinking provides knowledge
Knowledge makes you great”

Page 5 of 10
The next component of knowledge is righteousness. Righteousness is described in a divine
hymn.

Righteousness

“Where there is righteousness in the heart

There is beauty in the character.
When there is beauty in the character,
there is harmony in the home.
When there is harmony in the home.
There is an order in the nation.
When there is order in the nation,
There is peace in the world.”

Friends, when you are growing as a young person, in student life you have to acquire a
unique trait of righteousness in the heart. In our language we call it Dharma. This
Righteousness in the heart is built by parents and teachers of primary Schools. The student
life is very important. With righteous in the heart you will develop and evolve beauty in the
character. The beauty in the character in a young person brings harmony in the home to the
joy of the parents. Harmony in the home propagates to the society and the nation. Order in
the nation leads to peace in the world. Righteousness in the heart of the youth of the nation
finally leads to peace in the world.

The third component is courage, which is defined as follows:

Courage

“Courage to think different,

Courage to invent,
Courage to travel into an unexplored path,
Courage to discover the impossible,
Courage to combat the problems
And Succeed, Are the unique qualities of the youth.

As a youth of my nation, I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all the
missions.”

Where from you will acquire the knowledge upto the age of seventeen? Yes you can certainly
acquire from home, good books, teachers and teaching environment and coming into contact
with good human beings. When the knowledge acquired is used with righteousness and
courage in all the educational campuses, we will have empowered and enlightened citizens,
which is required for the growth of the individual and the growth of the nation. The fourth
component of knowledge is Indomitable spirit.

Indomitable Spirit

I would like to recall a great clarion call of indomitable spirit, which was given by Sir C V
Raman, at the age of 82. The message is still reverberating in my mind: “I would like to tell
the young men and women before me not to lose hope and courage. Success can only come to
you by courageous devotion to the task lying in front of you. I can assert without fear of

Page 6 of 10
contradiction that the quality of the Indian mind is equal to the quality of any Teutonic,
Nordic or Anglo-Saxon mind. What we lack is perhaps courage, what we lack is perhaps
driving force, which takes one anywhere. We have, I think, developed an inferiority complex.
I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit. We need a spirit
of victory, a spirit that will carry us to our rightful place under the sun, a spirit, which will
recognize that we, as inheritors of a proud civilization, are entitled to a rightful place on this
planet. If that indomitable spirit were to arise, nothing can hold us from achieving our rightful
destiny.” Hence friends, now you realize, knowledge is equal to the equation: Knowledge =
creativity + righteousness+ Courage+ indomitable spirit. Now the teachers and educators may
like to see how the real knowledge can be imparted to the students.

Now let me talk about the value of time.

Let not thy winged days, be spent in vain

Friends, based on the events in my school period, I would like to share with you a great
message given by my teacher from Kalidasa’s Shakuntalam 2000 years ago.

“Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities of your existence;
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendor of achievement,
For yesterday but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness;
And tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore to this day!
Such is the salutation to the dawn.”

The message my teacher explained through this great saying of Kalidasa, I would like to give
you. Every day, Dawn to night is very important in a student’s life. You do the best today,
you will harvest the best.

As you all know, the earth rotates on its own axis once in a day having 24 hours or 1440
minutes or 86400 seconds. Earth itself orbits around the sun. It takes nearly one year for an
orbit. With the completion of one rotation of earth around the sun, your age is added by one
year as you are living on planet earth. Seconds fly, minutes fly, hours fly, days fly and years
fly. We have no control over it. The only thing that we can do is, while the time flies, we can
navigate the time. “Let not thy winged days, be spent in vain”. Now let me talk to you about a
great mind Mario Capecchi who received the Noble prize in 2007.

Birth of Creativity in a difficult situation

Mario Capecchi had a difficult and challenging childhood. For nearly four years, Capecchi
lived with his mother in a chalet in the Italian Alps. When World War II broke out, his
mother, along with other Bohemians, was sent to Dachau as a political prisoner. Anticipating
her arrest by the Gestapo, she had sold all her possessions and given the money to friends to

Page 7 of 10
help raise her son on their farm. In the farm, he had to grow own wheat, harvest, take it to
miller to be ground. From the flour, he made bread dough, which he took to the baker to be
baked. He also remembers helping to make wine. Then, the money which his mother left for
him ran out. He began four years of wandering. He was four and a half years old.

He headed south, sometimes living in the streets, sometimes joining gangs of other homeless
children, sometimes living in orphanages and most of the time hungry. He spent the last year
in the city of Reggio Emelia, hospitalized for malnutrition that would never be cured, since
he, like the other children, was given only one cup of coffee and a small crust of bread every
day. He wanted desperately to escape. Scores of beds lined the rooms and corridors of the
hospital, one bed touching the next. No sheets, no blankets. That was where his mother found
him on his ninth birthday after a year of searching. Within weeks, the Capecchi and his
mother sailed to America to join his uncle and aunt. His mother had a psychological set back
due to her life in prison and her subsequent search for Capecchi. The day after he arrived, his
uncle and aunt sent him to the third grade, although he’d never before been to school. Nor did
he speak English. The teachers allowed him to play with paints and make murals, enabling
him to learn socialization and the language.

Capecchi became very active in sports, playing on four varsity teams: football, baseball,
soccer and wrestling, where he was team captain. Capecchi says that sports are important
from a psychological point of view which enables you to learn about human psychology,
things that you later transfer to relationships: perseverance, pushing yourself beyond certain
limits. The sense of social responsibility permeating the atmosphere at school also influenced
him. There was a cognizance of world problems. It wasn’t taught, but it was felt that one
should do something to make this a better world. This led Capecchi to take up the study of
political science. But after one political science class, Capecchi found there wasn’t anything
to bite on. There was little science in politics. He switched to science and math, graduating in
1961 with a double major in Physics and Chemistry.

Capecchi never took a Biology class; he learned about biology in the labs. For his practical
experience, he worked several terms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Once, he worked with Charles Pop Kettering, a very curious man who dismantled an
experimental machine Capecchi had worked three months to construct. Incredulous, Capecchi
watched, later admitting that it was fun watching Kettering and his excitement at seeing how
it worked. Although he really liked Physics its elegance and simplicity, Capecchi realized
from his lab experience that everything we learned [in Physics] was only up to the 1920s. It
was still classical education. Physics lacked the excitement in his time that Capecchi sensed
in a new science being developed: molecular biology. He knew he would switch to molecular
biology in graduate school, on the advice of James D Watson. Watson taught him that he
should not be bothered about small things, since such pursuits are likely to produce only
small answers.

After earning his doctorate in biophysics in 1967, Capecchi was a junior fellow at Harvard
for two years. The next four years, he spent on the Biochemistry faculty at the Harvard
School of Medicine, but realized that science was losing something. While in search for new
topics, Capecchi found University of Utah in Salt Lake City to provide the right atmosphere
to work on projects whose outcome may take 10 years. The main strength of Capecchi was
his focus in science. He also wanted to know where his work fits in.

Page 8 of 10
From then on, his objective was to do gene targeting. The experiments started in 1980,
despite NIH’s refusal to fund the work. By 1984, Capecchi had clear success. Three years
later, he applied the technology to mice. In 1989, he developed the first mice with targeted
mutations. The technology created by Doctor Capecchi allows researchers to create specific
gene mutations anywhere they choose in the genetic code of a mouse which was considered
not worthy of pursuit by National Institute of Health. It may seem like science fiction, but by
manipulating gene sequences in this way, researchers are able to mimic human disease
conditions on animal subjects. What the research of Mario Capecchi means for human health
is nothing short of amazing, his work with mice could lead to cures for Alzheimeras disease
or even Cancer. The innovations in genetics that Mario Capecchi achieved won him the
Nobel Prize. You see young friends, how Capecchi defeated the problem and succeeded
eventually in getting the Nobel prize? Now I would like to talk about the role of teachers in
shaping young minds.

Role of Teachers in shaping students

Friends, as a member of Madina Public School, I suggest to the teachers, parents to ensure
that the Students of this school have three unique characteristics of life. (1) Realising the
importance of present that is today (2) the confidence that I can do it and (3) building
righteousness in the heart.

Friends, India today have a mission of transforming itself into a developed nation with value
system. This is a great challenge. This can be achieved through our youth power. Youth has
got the power of ideas, ambition and ability. This resource of the youth is an important
building block for transforming India into a developed nation. No youth today need to fear
about the future. They will definitely be partners in building the India of their dreams.
Conclusion

Friends India today has a mission of transforming itself into a developed nation with value
system. This is a great challenge. This can be achieved through our youth power. Youth has
got the power of ideas, ambition, enthusiasm and ability. This resource of the youth is an
important building block for transforming India into a developed nation.

Friends I would like to assert that “No youth today need to fear about the future”. How? If
you have an aim in life, realize that spent time cannot be recovered hence the precious time
has to be used for achieving the goal, have confidence to win, have confidence to defeat the
problems and succeed and have a righteous heart, you will definitely succeed in all your
missions.

What the teachers can give to the students for their growth? In an integrated way it can be
said, that an enlightened human being can be created by the teacher through providing two
unique characteristics. One is building capacities among the students to inquire, to innovate,
be creative, and develop the qualities of entrepreneurship and moral leadership. Second is the
development of moral value system. The noble life practiced by the teacher indeed becomes a
beacon light to the students. Let us hear the tribute given by the great teacher Albert Einstein
to the teacher: “The ideals which have lighted my way, time after time, have given new
course to face life cheerfully have been kindness, beauty and truth”. This is the mission of a
teacher. It will be a God given gift to the student, to have great teachers who can give and
give the learning module and the way of beautiful life. I am sure teachers’ of Madina Public
School will be creating these capacities among its students.

Page 9 of 10
With these words let me once again greet the members of Madina School during their Silver
Jubilee Celebrations. My best wishes to all the members of Madina School family success in
their mission of promoting value based education among the youth.

Now I would like to administer a seven point oath to the Students.

Seven point Oath

1. Wherever I am, a thought will always come to my mind. That is “What can I give?”
2. Whatever the mission I will do, my motto will be “Work with integrity and succeed
with integrity”
3. I will always remember that “Let not my winged days, be spent in vain”.
4. I realize I have to set a great goal that will lead me to think high, work and realize the
goal.
5. My greatest friends will be great human beings, great teachers and great books.
6. I firmly believe that no problem can defeat me; I will become the captain of the
problem, defeat the problem and succeed.
7. My National Flag flies in my heart and I will work for removing the ignorance
wherever needed, freedom from poverty and freedom from injustice.

May God bless you.

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam

22nd February 2008

Page 10 of 10