Has APJ Abdul Kalam been turned into BJP Abdul Kalam? Controversy rages over his memorial

The controversy over an engraved wooden copy of the Bhagavad Gita, adorning the statue of late President APJ Abdul Kalam, has acquired a new twist with the addition of a copy of the Quran and the Bible next to it. A Rs 15-crore memorial built by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has thus acquired communal overtones with several parties in Tamil Nadu questioning the attempt to saffronise the late President.

The opposition would have it that, in effect, APJ Abdul Kalam has now been turned into a BJP Abdul Kalam. The large statue of Kalam, greeting a visitor to the museum, is startling as it shows him playing the veena. Not a comfortable image for some Muslims who could see the veena as a subtle Hindutva message since the veena is seen as an instrument identified with Goddess Saraswati. That Kalam had occasionally played the veena in his younger days had been used in the making of the statue. The placement of an engraved wooden copy of the Bhagavad Gita, accentuated the subtle Hindutva message, say Tamil Nadu’s opposition parties.

The DMK, MDMK and PMK, for instance, have questioned the placement of the Gita by the Centre, and said this was a clear Hindu card.

Stung by the controversy, a grandnephew of Kalam placed a copy of the Quran and the Bible to defuse the situation, and to give an appearance of secularism to the memorial. The opposition parties in Tamil Nadu question the motive behind these decisions, and said if at all any book had to be placed next to the Kalam statue, it should have been the Tirukkural by Tamil saint Thiruvalluvar who spoke of the universality of mankind and never projected any religion in his famous couplets.

The controversy hasn’t ended with the inclusion of some ‘secular’ additives. Hindu activists are up in arms over the attempt to ‘secularise’ Kalam and wondered how the Bible and Quran copies were added to the statue without official sanction.

A DMK spokesman T K S Elangovan, MP, has interpreted the act of Kalam’s grand-son to place copies of the Quran and the Bible near the statue as an expression of anger against the engraved wooden copy of Bhagavad Gita having been kept next to the statue in the first place.

Fundamentalist Muslims had never truly accepted Kalam as a serious Muslim in the first place. He was always seen as a soft Muslim, closer to the Hindutva camp or willing to be used by it. The attempt to show Kalam as a veena player with a Bhagavad Gita next to it has accentuated this image of Kalam.

The domination of the BJP ministers and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the ceremony to unveil the memorial, with the AIADMK government and its chief minister, Edappadi Palaniswamy, playing second fiddle to the BJP bigwigs, has ruffled a few political feathers too. The ruling AIADMK is unhappy over the party having a weak and emaciated look at public platforms. The absence of its matriarch, J Jayalalithaa, is clearly felt by the party cadres. Jayalalithaa would have never allowed the BJP to dominate functions and events in Tamil Nadu even if attended by the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues.

Even ardent Kalam supporters are aghast over the putting up of a Kalam statue at the memorial. They point out that Kalam was opposed to erection of statues and idol worship, and that it is ironical that he himself has been converted into an idol being deified.

The AIADMK cannot complain. There are too many skeletons in the cupboard, and it cannot afford to antagonise the Centre’s investigative agencies. The AIADMK has thus taken the back-seat and allowed the subtle Hindutva card to be played out without any murmur or dissent. Meanwhile, Kalam continues to be an instrument for the Hindutva and the rival ‘secular’ camps to take pot-shots at one another with an eye on respective vote-banks.