Invited ? So what was his contribution? It was Ramanna's achievement and had nothing to do with Kalam.
The SLV had already been developed by Satish Dhawan and his team over a grueling 10 year program with failures until the first successful launch in 1980. Once the launch vehicle was developed swapping the satellite with a warhead is a relatively minor effort.
Here are two parallel examples:
The Soviet R-7 Semyorka rocket was a dual purpose launch vehicle to launch both satellites and nuclear warheads, and was used to launch the first satellite Sputnik 1 . It was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile but became impractical once Soviet thermonuclear warheads became lighter ( brilliant work by Andre Sakharov ) and from the R-7 were developed the Vostock series of launch vehicles also used for manned space flights. It was Sergie Korelev and his team, which included Kerim Karimov who designed the R-7 putting the Soviet Union firmly into the lead in the design of launch vehicles in 1950s. The USA's Atlas missiles then were much smaller and imperfect. The USA only caught up and surpassed the Soviet Union by the mid 1960s when Von Braun's superb Saturn series of launch vehicles were developed.,
In both the USA and the Soviet Union the credit is given to Von Braun and Sergei Korelev though both initially had teams of former German Nazi scientists working for them. Sergei Korelev died in 1966 and didn't live to his efforts bloom into the Soviet Union's ( and now Russia's) successful space station development such as the Mir or the powerful Progress rockets that have served the International Space Station ferrying 121 cosmonauts.
Von Braun was the true pioneer of space flight and had designed the V2 rockets in the 1940s. Sergie Korelev and Karimovs rocket designs were unique and different from Von Braun's ( using multiple thruster motors in the first stage) but the basic principles adopted were the same and based off the pioneering work done by Tsiolokovsky and Goddard much earlier.
What Kalam actually did is unclear. He shuttled between the DRDO and ISRO more as political lackey cum
bureaucrat than a pioneering missile or launch vehicles designer.
There is not a SINGLE thesis or design published that is attributed to Kalam. His contribution to space flight and space technology is absolutely zero. Modern ground braking space launch technologies such as TR-106 engines ( developed by the brilliant Tom Mueller ) used in the reusable Space X vehicles are far beyond anything Kalam ever envisaged. After his retirement he couldn't even foresee where human space endeavors were heading and never wrote a single book or made a single lecture on the future of mankind's space travel. Unlike space engineers the world over ( including Pakistani engineers) who
acknowledge the achievements of Tsiolokovsky, Goddard, Braun, Korelev, Kerimov, and Mueller, Kalam has never once mentioned any of these men in any of his writings.
Ok, so what was Kalams achievement . He was a political lackey.
What is so great about that ? Obviously space technology has strategic implications. Every Indian space scientist has requested confidentiality from the time of Vikram Sarabhai.
Kalam was not a nuclear scientist
His claimed speciality was rocket technology. He had nothing to do with India's nuclear weapons programs.
The key word is "political " . The propaganda to the enemy is that we have a "scientist " of a particular community who is working against you. Shabby political propaganda with political lackey and a third rate bureaucrat.
Of course ! Santhanam being a true scientist and dedicated engineer knew better. How would a political lackey know what a real thermonuclear explosion is.
Scientists par excellence:
Sergei Korelev, Kurchatov and Keldysh
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I am sorry I have no reverence for your President and nor for that matter has anyone else in the rest of the world besides India.
). 
