Dont accept gifts given with a purpose: Kalam to students

Ambur, Tamil Nadu, Sep 4 (UNI) Recalling the beating he got from his father because he accepted a gift, President A P J Abdul Kalam advised students not to accept gifts that come with a purpose.

'Gifts are always accompanied with some purpose. Such gifts are dangerous and are like touching a poisonous snake,' he said while inaugurating the centenary celebration of the Ambur Muslim Educational Society here yesterday.

Narrating an anecdote, he said 'I was five years old when my father was elected Rameswaram Panchayat Board President. One day, a stranger came to my house carrying a parcel and asked for my father.

As my parents were out for namaz, I asked him to leave the parcel on the cot and leave.' 'When he returned, he was upset and angry on seeing the parcel which contained an ''angavasthram'', sweets and fruits. He beat me for the first time in my life. As I became frightened and started weeping, he advised me not to receive any gift without his permission. The thought became deeply embedded in me,' he said.

He quoted from the Manu Smriti: 'By accepting gifts, the divine light in a person gets extinguished.' 'Do not be carried away by gifts that come with a purpose as it can make you lose your identity and personality,' he said and urged students to take up politics as a career and make India a corruption-free society.

Stressing the importance of education, he said a drop of ink used by a student was more sacred than a drop of blood of a martyr.

Prophet Mohammad had said education and acquisition of knowledge were needed both for men and women, he pointed out.

Dr Kalam said three of his teachers had played an important role in his life and shaped his future. 'A good teacher will become a role model for students. A student roughly spends 27,000 hrs in the school campus. It should be a divine campus,' he added.

Recalling how his fifth standard teacher Sivasubramaniam Aiyer taught him about the flight of birds, motivating him to study aeronautical engineering, Dr Kalam called upon students to be brave and tell their teachers if they did not understand something.

His high school teacher Aiyyadurai Solomon taught him the desire to achieve. 'If we all desire to develop India, we can achieve it.' The President exhorted students to excel in education, teach at least five illiterate people to read and write and plant at least five saplings. He donated a picture of the Milky Way and some science books to the school library on the occasion.

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