When the State Assembly stood up to pay tribute to former President APJ Abdul Kalam on August 18, the entire scientific community in the country was hopeful that the Government of Odisha may name the Wheeler Island in Bhadrak district after the name of the Missile Man.
Bihar has already named an agriculture college after Dr Kalam and many across the country hope that Odisha too would not hesitate to give its tribute to the Missile Man by naming the small island after him.
Dr Kalam tested scores of missiles. The quiet sea and its sylvan surroundings also gave him inspiration to write many poems for his book “My Journey”.
As India’s Missile Man loved this tiny island, demands are made to name the island as ‘Kalam Island’. Dr Kalam himself described the Wheeler Island as his ‘Theatre of action’.
The first successful land-to-land test of the Prithvi Missile was conducted from the mainland and it landed on the then uninhabited ‘Wheeler Island’ on November 30, 1993. The island is today named after an English commandant, lieutenant Wheeler.
“It is high time we needed to call it Kalam Island since it is a hi-tech facility in India and it was actually spotted and built from scratch by Kalam,” National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog) member V K Saraswat has been quoted saying.
Dr Saraswat was Dr Kalam’s associate for 35 years as a missile scientist and then become the Director General of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
In 1993, it was Dr Saraswat and SK Salwan who as scientists were the first to set foot on the ‘Wheeler Island’ when Dr Kalam instructed them to look for these uninhabited islands that he had initially spotted on the naval hydrographic maps.
Dr Saraswat remembers that in 1993 how he hired a boat for Rs250 and then got lost in the Bay of Bengal and had to spend the night on the Wheeler Island itself surviving on bananas. The islands were not visible from the mainland.
In his book “Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power Within India”, Dr Kalam writes “to their surprise they (Saraswat and Salwan) found a Bangladeshi flag flying atop a tree, as the island may have been frequented by fishermen from the neighbouring country. My friends quickly removed the flag”.
S K Salwan says that over the years, Dr Kalam may have visited the Wheeler Island more than a dozen of times and hence, this was truly his ‘playground’.
In 2012, Dr Kalam while attending a meeting said: “When we were progressing the missile programme and Prithvi had demonstrated successful performance, the Army came up with another important requirement. Army desired to have a confirmatory test, on a land range, to validate Circular Error Probability (CEP). Our efforts to conduct the tests in our desert range could not take off due to range safety and geo-political problems. To overcome this we were looking for an uninhabited island in the Eastern coast.
On the hydrographic map supplied by Navy, we saw a few islands in the Bay of Bengal off Dhamra indicating that there was some landmass. Our range team consisting of Dr SK Salwan and Dr VK Saraswat hired a boat from Dhamra and went in search of the island. On the map these islands were marked as ‘long wheeler’, ‘coconut wheeler’ and ‘small wheeler’. The team carried a directional compass and proceeded on the journey. They lost their way and could not locate the Wheeler Island.
Fortunately, they met few fishing boats and asked them for the route. The fisherman did not know about the Wheeler Island but they said there was an Island called ‘Chandrachood’. They thought that this could be the Wheeler Island. They approximately gave the direction for proceeding to Chandrachood. With this help the team could reach the Chandrachood Island, which was later confirmed as Small Wheeler Island, which had adequate width and length, required for range operations.
For getting the island, we went through the Odisha bureaucracy and at a particular point of time, we had to seek a political decision from the Chief Minister in (1993).
At that time, Biju Patnaik was the Chief Minister. The indications from the Chief Minister’s office were that the island cannot be parted with due to several reasons.
However, an appointment was arranged for meeting the Chief Minister and put my request. When we reached his office, the file was in front of him. Chief Minister Biju Patnaik ji said, Dr Kalam, I have decided to give all the five islands at no cost to you (DRDO), but I will sign the file of approval only when you give me a promise. Chief Minister held my hand and said I have an invitation to visit China. I will visit only when you promise that you will make a missile that will reach China. I said, Chief Minister Sir, definitely, we will work for it. I immediately informed our Defence Minister. Chief Minister signed the file and I got the island, particularly the small wheeler island.”
