{"id":2179,"date":"2002-07-18T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-07-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/07\/18\/2002-07-18-india-s-new-president\/"},"modified":"2002-07-18T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2002-07-18T12:00:00","slug":"2002-07-18-india-s-new-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2002\/07\/18\/2002-07-18-india-s-new-president\/","title":{"rendered":"India&#8217;s New President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/aponline\/international\/AP-India-New-President.html\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>NEW DELHI, INDIA, July 17, 2002: A. P. J. Kalam, the father of India&#8217;s missile program, is a far cry from the somber men who have occupied the sandstone presidential palace during India&#8217;s past 55 years. The man expected to be named the new president on Thursday is a scientist who believes that fear of nuclear conflict averted war with Pakistan last month. He&#8217;s the son of a minority Muslim family who has embraced the Hindu beliefs of its majority. Kalam, with gray, shoulder-length hair, would also bring a wardrobe that includes short-sleeved shirts and flip-flop sandals to the 340-room palace. Although born to Muslim parents, Kalam does not describe himself as Muslim. He reads Hindu scriptures each day and is a vegetarian. When asked about who would act as his first lady, the unmarried Kalam waved his hands and said, &#8220;No, no, I&#8217;m a brahmacharya.&#8221; The Sanskrit word means someone who has chosen not to marry but to live a celibate life style.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE NEW DELHI, INDIA, July 17, 2002: A. P. J. Kalam, the father of India&#8217;s missile program, is,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}