Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (5 September 1888 – 17 April 1975) was an Indian philosopher and statesman who served as the second president of India from 1962 to 1967.Radhakrishnan was a great teacher, a remarkable philosopher, and a leader.
One of the most distinguished twentieth-century scholars of comparative religion and philosophy, Radhakrishnan held the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta from 1921 to 1932 and Spalding Chair of Eastern Religion and Ethics at University of Oxford from 1936 to 1952.
Radhakrishnan's philosophy was grounded in Advaita Vedanta, reinterpreting this tradition for a contemporary understanding. He defended Hinduism against what he called "uninformed Western criticism", contributing to the formation of contemporary Hindu identity. He has been influential in shaping the understanding of Hinduism, in both India and the west, and earned a reputation as a bridge-builder between India and the West.
Radhakrishnan was awarded several high awards during his life, including a knighthood in 1931, the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in India, in 1954, and honorary membership of the British Royal Order of Merit in 1963. He was also one of the founders of Helpage India, a non profit organisation for elderly underprivileged in India. Radhakrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". Since 1962, his birthday has been celebrated in India as Teachers' Day on 5 September every year.
Zakir Husain Khan (8 February 1897 – 3 May 1969) was an Indian economist and politician who served as the third president of India, from 13 May 1967 until his death on 3 May 1969.
He previously served as the governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962 and as the second vice president of India from 1962 to 1967. He was also the co-founder of Jamia Milia Islamia, serving as its vice-chancellor from 1928. Under Husain, Jamia became closely associated with the Indian freedom movement. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, in 1963.
He was the first Muslim president of India and the first Indian president to die in office.
V. V. Giri
Varahagiri Venkata Giri, (born Aug. 10, 1894, Berhampore [now Brahmapur], India—died June 24, 1980, Madras [now Chennai]), statesman, president of India from 1969 to 1974.
Giri began his education at Khallikote College, Berhampore, and then went to Dublin to study law. There he became engaged in the Sinn Féin (Irish political party) movement and was expelled from Ireland in 1916. Upon his return to India, he joined the nascent labour movement. He became general secretary and then president of the All-India Railwaymen’s Federation and was twice president of the All-India Trade Union Congress, an organization closely linked with the Indian National Congress (Congress Party).
When the Congress Party formed a government in Madras state (now Tamil Nadu) in 1937, Giri became minister of labour and industries. With the resignation of the Congress governments and the launching of the anti-British “quit India” movement in 1942, he returned to the labour movement and was subsequently imprisoned with his colleagues.
After India became independent, he was appointed high commissioner in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and in 1952 was elected to the Lok Sabha, one of the two chambers of the Indian Parliament. He was made minister of labour in the central Indian government but resigned in 1954. After this Giri was appointed successively to the largely ceremonial governorships of Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, and Mysore (now Karnataka). In 1967 he was elected vice president of India.
On the death of President Zakir Husain in 1969, Giri became acting president and announced his intention to stand for the presidency. By that time the office, until then largely ceremonial, had become a prize in the developing factional struggle within the Congress Party. The party’s nomination went to another candidate. Indira Gandhi, the prime minister, supported Giri, however, and he was elected by a narrow majority. In 1974 he was succeeded in office by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed.
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed
The son of an army doctor from Assam, Ahmed was educated in India and studied history at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 1927. After returning to India, he was elected to the Assam legislature (1935). As Assam’s minister of finance and revenue in 1938, he was responsible for some radical taxation measures. On the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Indian National Congress party had a confrontation with British power, and Ahmed was jailed for a year. Soon after release he was again imprisoned for another three and a half years, being released in April 1945. In 1946 he was appointed advocate general of Assam and held the post for six years.
After a term in the national Parliament, he returned to Assam politics until Prime Minister Indira Gandhi included him in her first cabinet in January 1966. He held a variety of portfolios—irrigation and power, education, industrial development, and agriculture. Ahmed became India’s fifth president in 1974. He died of a heart attack in February 1977.
Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
pronunciation (help·info) (19 May 1913 – 1 June 1996) was an Indian politician who served as the seventh president of India, serving from 1977 to 1982. Beginning a long political career with the Indian National Congress Party in the independence movement, he went on to hold several key offices in independent India—as the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, a two-time Speaker of the Lok Sabha and a Union Minister—before becoming the youngest-ever Indian president.[1]Born in present-day Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, Reddy completed his schooling at Adayar and joined the Government Arts College at Anantapur. He quit to become an Indian independence activist and was jailed for participating in the Quit India Movement. He was elected to the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1946 as a Congress party representative. Reddy became the deputy chief minister of Andhra State in 1953 and the first Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. He was a union cabinet minister under Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi from 1964 to 1967 and Lok Sabha Speaker from 1967 to 1969. He later retired from active politics but returned in 1975, responding to Jayaprakash Narayan's call for "Total Revolution" against the Indira Gandhi Government.
Elected to Parliament in 1977 as a candidate of the Janata Party, Reddy was unanimously elected Speaker of the Sixth Lok Sabha and three months later was elected unopposed as President of India. As president, Reddy worked with Prime Ministers Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Indira Gandhi. Reddy was succeeded by Giani Zail Singh in 1982 and he retired to his farm in Anantapur. He died in 1996 and his samadhi is at Kalpally Burial Ground, Bangalore. In 2013, the Government of Andhra Pradesh commemorated Reddy's birth centenary.
Giani Zail Singh
Zail Singh, also called Giani Zail Singh, original name Jarnail Singh, (born May 5, 1916, Sandhwan, India—died December 25, 1994, Chandigarh), Indian politician who was the first Sikh to serve as president of India (1982–87). He was an impotent bystander in 1984 when government troops stormed the complex of the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, in an effort to apprehend militants who had been demanding autonomy for the northwestern Indian state of Punjab.
Singh was raised in a village near Ludhiana, in what is now Punjab state India. When he was barely 15 years old, he became active in the politics of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Supreme Akali Party), the principal political organization that championed Sikh causes and that had joined with the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) in opposing British rule in India. He pursued traditional studies in Sikh holy books and earned the title Giani (“Learned Man”) for his scholarly mastery of the scriptures. In 1938 he established the Praja Mandal, a political organization allied to the Congress Party, in his home district of Faridkot. That insurrectionary act earned him a five-year jail sentence. During his incarceration he took the name Zail Singh.
After India became independent in 1947, Singh served in the Rajya Sabha (upper chamber of the Indian parliament) in 1956–62 and was chief minister (head of government) of Punjab in 1972–77. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was voted out of power in 1977, Singh continued to support her. Singh won a seat in the 1980 elections to the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the parliament), as did Gandhi, who again became prime minister. She acknowledged Singh’s loyalty to her by naming him minister of home affairs. He held the post until 1982, when he became the Congress (I) Party’s presidential candidate.
Singh overwhelmingly won election to the largely ceremonial office. There was much speculation, however, that Gandhi had selected him in order to mollify Sikh extremists in Punjab, who had since mid-1982 become increasingly militant in that state. The June 1984 assault on the Harmandir Sahib complex by government troops, which killed hundreds, put Singh in a difficult situation with the Sikh community—made worse by the violence against Sikhs that erupted following Gandhi’s assassination by her Sikh bodyguards four months later. Singh named Gandhi’s son, Rajiv, to succeed her, but he soon fell out of favour with the new prime minister. Singh further inflamed the government by refusing to sign into law a 1987 bill permitting official censorship of private mail. Singh died in late 1994 following a car crash.
Ramaswamy Venkataraman
Ramaswamy Venkataraman, (born Dec. 4, 1910, Rajamadam, Madras [now Tamil Nadu], India—died Jan. 27, 2009, New Delhi), Indian politician, government official, and lawyer who was president of India from 1987 to 1992.
Venkataraman studied law at the University of Madras and began his legal practice in 1935. He became involved in India’s independence struggle and was consequently jailed by the British (1942–44). After his release he continued to practice law and helped draft India’s constitution, which was adopted in 1950. Venkataraman was elected to independent India’s Provisional Parliament in 1950 as a member of the Indian National Congress party. He subsequently was a member of the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian parliament) from 1952 to 1957 and from 1977 onward. From 1957 to 1967 he was minister of industry and labour for the state of Madras (now Tamil Nadu). Venkataraman eventually joined the central government, serving as minister of finance and industry (1980–82) and minister of defense (1982–84).
After serving as vice president of India in 1984–87, he was elected to the largely ceremonial post of president in July 1987.
Shankar Dayal Sharma
Shankar Dayal Sharma, (born August 19, 1918, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India—died December 26, 1999, New Delhi), Indian lawyer and politician who was president of India from 1992 to 1997.
Sharma pursued his higher education at Agra and Lucknow universities. After earning a doctorate in law at the University of Cambridge, he attended Lincoln’s Inn in London and Harvard University. In 1940 he began his legal practice in Lucknow and soon after joined the Indian National Congress. Sharma’s involvement in the national movement for independence led to his arrest, and he was imprisoned for eight months.
After 1947 Sharma became active in independent India’s political setup and held numerous political offices at the state and national levels. He served as president of the Bhopal State Congress Committee (1950–52) and chief minister of Bhopal state (1952–56). From 1956 to 1971 Sharma was a member of the Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly. He made his debut in national politics in 1971 when he was elected to the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian parliament). In 1972 he was elected president of the Congress Party and served in that position for two years. He was minister of communications (1974–77) in the Congress Party government led by Indira Gandhi.
Sharma was appointed governor of Andhra Pradesh (1984), Punjab (1985), and Maharashtra (1986) before becoming the vice president of India in 1987 and president in 1992.
K R Narayan
Kocheril Raman Narayanan, (born October 27, 1920, Uzhavoor, India—died November 9, 2005, New Delhi), Indian politician and diplomat, who was the president of India from 1997 to 2002. He was the first Dalit, a member of the country’s lowest social castes, to occupy the office.
Despite his family’s poverty and social status, Narayanan’s intellect won him a government-sponsored scholarship. After graduating from the University of Travancore (now the University of Kerala), he worked as a journalist for the Hindu (1944–45) and the Times of India (1945). He soon won another scholarship and left India to attend the London School of Economics, where he received top academic honours. While in England Narayanan also served as a foreign correspondent for Social Welfare Weekly.
Narayanan returned to India in 1948 and soon after entered the foreign service, despite opposition from upper-caste officials. During a long and distinguished career as a diplomat (1949–83), he held posts in numerous countries but was especially effective while serving in China (1976–78), where he helped mend relations following a 15-year rift. He was also ambassador to the United States (1980–83) at a time of strained relations between the two countries. In 1979 Narayanan was named vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University. An intellectual and a scholar, Narayanan was the author or coauthor of several works on Indian politics and international relations, notably India and America: Essays in Understanding (1984) and Non-Alignment in Contemporary International Relations (1981).
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam (15 October 1931 – 27 July 2015) was an Indian aerospace scientist who served as the 11th president of India from 2002 to 2007. He was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu and studied physics and aerospace engineering. He spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately involved in India's civilian space programme and military missile development efforts. He thus came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology.[2][3][4] He also played a pivotal organisational, technical, and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.
Kalam was elected as the 11th president of India in 2002 with the support of both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the then-opposition Indian National Congress. Widely referred to as the "People's President", he returned to his civilian life of education, writing and public service after a single term. He was a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour.
While delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management Shillong, Kalam collapsed and died from an apparent cardiac arrest on 27 July 2015, aged 83.[7] Thousands, including national-level dignitaries, attended the funeral ceremony held in his hometown of Rameswaram, where he was buried with full state honours.
Pratibha Devisingh Patil
Pratibha Patil, (born December 19, 1934, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India), Indian lawyer and politician who was the first woman to serve as president of India (2007–12).
Patil earned a master’s degree in political science and economics at Moolji Jaitha College, Jalgaon, and later received a law degree from Government Law College, Mumbai (Bombay). She joined the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) and entered politics in 1962 as a member of the Maharashtra legislative assembly. While there, she held the portfolio of public health and social welfare and distinguished herself for her loyalty to her party. In 1985 she won a seat in the Rajya Sabha (upper chamber of the Indian parliament), and she served as deputy chairman of that body from 1986 to 1988. Patil left the upper house in 1990 and was elected to represent Amravati in the Lok Sabha (lower house) in 1991. She briefly retired from politics after completing her five-year term but returned to public service in 2004 when she was appointed governor of the northwestern state of Rajasthan.
Her longtime association with the Gandhi family made her a favourite of Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi, and Patil’s name was brought forward as a candidate for the largely ceremonial role of president in 2007. While previous candidates had been struck down by partners in Congress’s coalition government, Patil’s status as a relative unknown worked to her advantage. She took office in July 2007 and was succeeded five years later by former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Patil’s presidency was relatively quiet, but it was not without controversy, especially for her use of government funds. She was criticized for the large number of trips she took overseas, often accompanied by relatives. She also faced much opposition for her acquisition of land in Pune, Maharashtra state, to construct her retirement home. The land was owned by the Indian military and was intended for use by the widows of servicemen. Patil eventually abandoned that project and moved into a renovated house in Pune. In addition, she came under fire for commuting sentences of death to life in prison for a large number of inmates convicted of particularly violent crimes.
Pranab Kumar Mukherjee
Pranab Mukherjee, in full Shri Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, (born December 11, 1935, Mirati, Bengal [now in West Bengal], India—died August 31, 2020, Delhi), Indian politician and government official who served as president of India (2012–17). He succeeded Pratibha Patil (served 2007–12), India’s first woman president.
Mukherjee’s father, Kamada Kinkar Mukherjee, was deeply involved in India’s struggle for independence from Great Britain in the first half of the 20th century. A longtime member of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party), the elder Mukherjee spent several years in prison as a result of his activities opposing British rule and, after Indian independence, held a seat in the state legislature of West Bengal (1952–64). Pranab was educated at the Suri Vidyasagar College (then affiliated with the University of Calcutta), and he later earned an advanced degree in history and political science as well as a law degree from the university. In 1963 he accepted a teaching position at a small college near Calcutta (now Kolkata) that was associated with the university. He also became editor of a Bengali-language monthly periodical and, later, worked for a weekly publication.
Mukherjee first ran for public office in 1969, when he won a seat in the Rajya Sabha (upper house) of the Indian parliament as a member of the Bangla Congress, which soon merged with the Congress Party. He served an additional four terms, although he left that chamber in 2004 and contested and won a seat in the Lok Sabha (lower house). He served there until mid-2012, when he ran for president of India.
Early on in his career in the legislature, Mukherjee became a protégé of Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India in 1966–77 and 1980–84. Under her tutelage, he began in 1973 to fill administrative positions of increasing responsibility in the cabinet, and in 1982 he was named to the important post of minister of finance. Following the assassination of Gandhi in 1984, however, Mukherjee had a falling out with Rajiv Gandhi, her son and successor (1984–89) as prime minister, and was relegated to the political backwater. He subsequently left the Congress Party in 1986 and by early 1987 had formed his own small political party. By 1989, however, the two men had been reconciled, and Mukherjee had merged his group back into Congress.
Mukherjee’s fortunes improved in 1991 when, after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, P.V. Narasimha Rao took leadership of Congress and, after the party’s success in parliamentary elections, was named prime minister. Under Rao (who served until 1996) and the party’s Manmohan Singh (who became prime minister in 2004), Mukherjee held most of the major ministerial portfolios in the cabinet: commerce (1993–95), external affairs (1995–96 and 2006–09), defense (2004–06), and finally back to finance (2009–12). He also occupied several important legislative posts, including leader of the Rajya Sabha (1980–84), Congress Party whip in the upper house (1996–2004), and leader of the Lok Sabha (2004–12). In addition to his government activities in India, Mukherjee was involved with a number of prominent international organizations, most notably occupying seats on the boards of governors of the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank during his two stints as finance minister.
Ram Nath Kovind
Ram Nath Kovind, (born October 1, 1945, Paraukh, Uttar Pradesh state, India), Indian lawyer and politician who served as president of India (2017– ). He was the second person from the Dalit caste, after Kocheril Raman Narayanan, and the first member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to hold the office.
Kovind grew up in humble circumstances in a small agrarian village where his father farmed and ran a small grocery store. His mother died when he was a young child. After earning degrees in commerce and law from Kanpur University, he moved to Delhi in order to take the civil services examination. Although he passed, Kovind chose to begin practicing law and was admitted to the bar in 1971.
Kovind worked in the Delhi Free Legal Aid Society, and he also served (1971–75, 1981) as general secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Koli Samaj, an organization serving the interests of the Koli community, a Dalit subcaste. From 1977 to 1979 he was a union government advocate in the Delhi High Court, and in 1978 he became an advocate-on-record of India’s Supreme Court. In 1980 Kovind advanced to the position of union government standing counsel in the Supreme Court, and he practiced there until 1993. In addition, he served (1977–78) as the executive assistant to Prime Minister Morarji Desai.
In 1991 Kovind joined the BJP, and three years later he was elected to the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of India’s parliament) from Uttar Pradesh. During his 12 years in that body, he served on various committees, including those on law and justice, social justice and empowerment, and welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. He was part of the Indian delegation to the United Nations and spoke before the General Assembly in 2002. In 2015 Kovind was appointed governor of the state of Bihar. His nonconfrontational approach to political problems earned him praise across the political spectrum. Among his notable achievements as governor was the creation of a judicial commission to investigate corruption in universities. Kovind was sworn in as India’s 14th president in July 2017. Through the promulgation of presidential orders in August 2019, he was instrumental in the revocation of the autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir state (now Jammu and Kashmir union territory and Ladakh union territory).
