In all humility, I disagree with the scientist. The dangers to life on our planet are, of course, real. Also, humans’ ability to identify and reach habitable places in the outer space, at some point in the future, cannot be doubted. After all, as we have seen in the past, what man imagines, science delivers. But space settlements need not happen because we have failed to save our planet from a catastrophe. May they happen not as an act of escapism but as an extension of the positive chain of marvellous human accomplishments on this planet. And nothing can qualify as a greater accomplishment than to reliably ensure the survival of life on Earth. This is where the faith that Dr Kalam has expressed in India’s civilisational heritage assumes meaning.

Is there in our civilisational heritage—which is a combination of our spiritual, cultural, intellectual and material heritages—that which can help accomplish something as challenging as the answer to the question that Hawking has posed? Yes. At the root of this affirmation is the belief that man is not the master of this planet but a child of the Master Creator. Our planet is only one of His infinite creations. The same Creator has also created man with the gift of intellectual, emotional, imaginative, creative, self-knowing and self-transforming abilities. But the purpose of these abilities is not to dominate, fight and kill one another, destroy nature and, in the process, endanger our own future on Earth. No. Rather, it is to develop oneself in peace and harmony with the entire web of creation and reach those higher levels of consciousness that man is truly capable of.

... contd.