Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed

Fifth President of India

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed : (13 May 1905 – 11 February 1977) was the Fifth President of India from 1974 to 1977. 

Early life and background

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was born on 13 May 1905, at the Hauz Qazi area of Old Delhi, India. His father was Col. Zalnur Ali Ahmed was the first Assamese person to have an M.D. (Master of Doctor) degree and also the first one from North-East India. His mother was a daughter of the Nawab of Loharu. Ahmed's grandfather, Khaliluddin Ali Ahmed, was from Kacharighat near Golaghat, Assam and hailed from a well known Assamese Muslim family. 

Ahmed was educated at the Government High School in Gonda district, Uttar Pradesh and matriculated from the Delhi Government High School. He attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple of London and began legal practice in the Lahore High Court in 1928. 

Political years 

He met Jawaharlal Nehru in England in 1925. He joined the Indian National Congress and actively participated in the Indian freedom movement. In 1942 he was arrested in the Quit India movement and sentenced to 3 1/2 years' imprisonment. He was a member of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee from 1936 and of AICC from 1947 to 74, and remained the Minister of Finance, Revenue and labour in the 1938 Gopinath BordoloiMinistry.

After Independence he was elected to the Rajya Sabha (1952–1953) and thereafter became Advocate-General of the Government of Assam. He was elected on Congress ticket to the Assam Legislative Assembly on two terms (1957–1962) and (1962–1967).

Subsequently, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Barpeta constituency, Assam in 1967 and again in 1971. In the Central Cabinet he was given important portfolios relating to Food and Agriculture, Cooperation, Education, Industrial Development and Company Laws.

Picked for the presidency by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1974, and on 20 August 1974, he became the second Muslim to be elected President. He is known to have issued the proclamation of emergency by signing the papers at midnight after a meeting with Indira Gandhi the same day. He used his constitutional authority as head of state to allow her to rule by decree once Emergency in India was proclaimed in 1975. He is well known among Indian diplomats for his visit to Sudan in 1975 where the whole town showed up to see him. He was the second Indian president to die in office, on 11 February 1977. Today his grave lies right across Parliament of India, next to Sunhari Masjid, at Sansas chowk, in New Delhi.

Honors

He was Awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Pristina, in Kosovo in 1975, during his visit to Yugoslavia.

He was elected President of the Assam Football Association and the Assam Cricket Association for several terms; he was also the Vice-President of the Assam Sports Council.

In April 1967, he was elected President of the All India Cricket Association. He was a member of the Delhi Golf Club and the Delhi Gymkhana Club from 1961. In 1942 he was arrested in the Quit India movement and sentenced to 3 1/2 years' imprisonment. He was a member of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee from 1936 and of AICC from 1947 to 74, and remained the Minister of Finance, Revenue and labour in the 1938 Gopinath Bordoloi Ministr.

Pratibha Devisingh Patil

Twelfth President of India

Pratibha Devisingh Patil : (born 19 December 1934) is an Indian politician who served as the 12th President of India from 2007 to 2012; she was the First Woman to hold the office. She was sworn in as President on 25 July 2007, succeeding Abdul Kalam, after defeating her rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. She retired from the office in July 2012. She was succeeded as President by Pranab Mukherjee.

Patil is a member of the Indian National Congress (INC) and was nominated for the presidency by the governing United Progressive Alliance and Indian Left.

Early life

Pratibha Devisingh Patil is the daughter of Narayan Rao Patil. She was born on 19 December 1934 in the village of Nadgaon, in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra, India. She was educated initially at RR Vidyalaya, Jalgaon and subsequently was awarded a Masters degree in Political Science and Economics by Mooljee Jetha College, Jalgaon, and then a Bachelor of Law degree by Government Law College, Mumbai. Patil then began to practice law at the Jalgaon District Court, while also taking interest in social issues such as improving the conditions faced by Indian women.

Patil married Devisingh Ransingh Shekhawat on 7 July 1965. The couple have a son and a daughter.

Political career

The BBC has described Patil's political career prior to assuming Presidential office as "long and largely low-key". In 1962, at the age of 27, she was elected to the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for the Jalgaon constituency. Thereafter she won in the Muktainagar (formerly Edlabad) constituency on four consecutive occasions between 1967 and 1985, before becoming a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha between 1985 and 1990. In the 1991 elections for the 10th Lok Sabha, she was elected as a Member of Parliament representing the Amravati constituency. A period of retirement from politics followed later in that decade.

Patil had held various Cabinet portfolios during her period in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly and she had also held official positions while in both the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. In addition, she had been for some years the president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee and also held office as Director of the National Federation of Urban Co-operative Banks and Credit Societies and as a Member of the Governing Council of the National Co-operative Union of India.

On 8 November 2004 she was appointed as the 24th Governor of Rajasthan and she was the first woman to hold that office, and, according to the BBC, was "a low-profile" incumbent.

Philanthropy

Along with her husband, she set up Vidya Bharati Shikshan Prasarak Mandal, an educational institute which runs a chain of schools and colleges in Amravati, Jalgaon and Mumbai. She also set up Shram Sadhana Trust, which runs hostels for working women in New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune; and an engineering college in Jalgaon. She also founded a cooperative sugar factory known as Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana at Muktainagar[citation needed] and an eponymous cooperative bank, Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank, that ceased trading in February 2003.

Controversies

Pratibha Patil's term as the President of India has seen various controversies.

During her term as president, Patil has commuted the death sentences of 35 petitioners to life, a record — among them are those convicted of mass murder, kidnapping, rape and killing of children. Presidential office, however, defended this by saying that the President had granted clemency to the petitioners after due consideration and examining the advice of the Home Ministry.

Positions held

Patil has held various official offices during her career. These are:

Pratibha Patil in Northeast India.

Period	Position
1991–1996	Chairman, House Committee, Lok Sabha
8 November 2004 – 23 June 2007	Governor of Rajasthan
25 July 2007 – 25 July 2012	President of India

Dr. Zakir Hussain

Third President of India

Dr. Zakir Hussain : (February 1897 – 3 May 1969) was the 3rd President of India, from 13 May 1967 until his death on 3 May 1969. An educationist and intellectual, Hussain was the country's first Muslim president. He previously served as Governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962 and as Vice President of India from 1962 to 1967.

Zakir Hussain was also co-founder of Jamia Milia Islamia, serving as its Vice Chancellor from 1928. Under Hussain, Jamia became closely associated with the Indian freedom movement. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest national honour, in 1963.

Early life

Zakir Hussain was born in Hyderabad, India. His family migrated from Hyderabad to Kaimganj, where Hussain grew up. Hussain's father, Fida Hussain Khan, died when he was ten years old; his mother dying in 1911 when he was fourteen. He attended Islamia High School, Etawah, and was then educated at the Anglo-Muhammadan Oriental College, now Aligarh Muslim University, where he was a prominent student leader. He received his doctorate in economics from the University of Berlin in 1926. 

Family

Zakir Hussain was born the third of seven children, all boys, to Fida Hussain Khan, a lawyer, and Naznin Begum. In 1915, at the age of 18, he married Shah Jahan Begum. Zakir Hussain's relatives have also been active in politics and education. His grandsonSalman Khurshid, a Congress politician, is the current Foreign Minister of India. Among Hussain's relatives that migrated after Partition include his brother Dr. Mahmud Hussain, who was Pakistan's Minister for Education and Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University, and nephew Anwar Hussain who was the eldest son Dr. Mahmud Hussain. He was the famous TV anchor in Pakistan.He was also the Managing Director of the state media of Pakistan. And his close relative General Rahimuddin Khan, Pakistan's Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. 

Career

Hussain, then only 23, was among the small group of students and teachers who founded a National Muslim University, first founded in Aligarh on Friday 29 October 1920 then shifted to Karol Bagh, New Delhi in 1925, then after shifted again on 1 March 1935 in Jamia Nagar, New Delhi and named it Jamia Millia Islamia (a central university). He subsequently went to Germany to obtain a PhD from the Frederick William University of Berlin in Economics. While in Germany, Hussain was instrumental in bringing out the anthology of arguably the greatest Urdu poet Mirza Assadullah Khan "Ghalib" (1797–1868). 

He returned to India to head the Jamia Millia Islamia which was facing closure in 1927. He continued in that position for the next twenty-one years providing academic and managerial leadership to an institution that was intimately involved with India's struggle for freedom from the British Rule and experimented with value-based education on the lines advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and Hakim Ajmal Khan. During this period he continued to engage himself with movements for educational reforms in India and was particularly active in the affairs of his old alma mater the MAO College, now the Aligarh Muslim University. During this period Hussain emerged as one of the most prominent educational thinkers and practitioners of modern India. His personal sacrifice and untiring efforts to keep the Jamia afloat in very adverse circumstances won him appreciation of even his arch political rivals like Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Soon after India attained independence, Hussain agreed to be the Vice chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University which was facing trying times in post partition India because of active involvement of a section of its teachers and students in the movement for creation of Pakistan. Dr Hussain, again, provided leadership during a critical phase of the history of the University at Aligarh from 1948–1956. Soon after completing his term as Vice Chancellor he was nominated as a member of the Upper House of Indian Parliament in 1956, a position he vacated in 1957 to become Governor of the State of Bihar.

After serving as the Governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962, and as the second Vice President of India from 1962 to 1967, Hussain was elected President of India on 13 May 1967. In his inaugural speech he said that the whole of India was his home and all its people were his family. During his last days, the issue of nationalization of banks was being hotly debated. The bill, in the end, received presidential consent from Sh M Hidayatullah, (acting president) on 9 Aug 1969. 

Hussain died on 3 May 1969, the first Indian President to die in office. He is buried on the campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia (or Central University) in New Delhi.

Our Baapu

Mahatma Gandhi

 

Born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, Mahatma Gandhi studied law and came to advocate for the rights of Indians, both at home and in South Africa. Gandhi became a leader of India's independence movement, organizing boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil disobedience. He was killed by a fanatic in 1948.

Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India. He studied law in London, England, but in 1893 went to South Africa, where he spent 20 years opposing discriminatory legislation against Indians. As a pioneer of Satyagraha, or resistance through mass non-violent civil disobedience, he became one of the major political and spiritual leaders of his time. Satyagraha remains one of the most potent philosophies in freedom struggles throughout the world today.

In 1914, Gandhi returned to India, where he supported the Home Rule movement, and became leader of the Indian National Congress, advocating a policy of non-violent non-co-operation to achieve independence. His goal was to help poor farmers and laborers protest oppressive taxation and discrimination. He struggled to alleviate poverty, liberate women and put an end to caste discrimination, with the ultimate objective being self-rule for India.

Following his civil disobedience campaign (1919-22), he was jailed for conspiracy (1922-24). In 1930, he led a landmark 320 km/200 mi march to the sea to collect salt in symbolic defiance of the government monopoly. On his release from prison (1931), he attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform. In 1946, he negotiated with the Cabinet Mission which recommended the new constitutional structure. After independence (1947), he tried to stop the Hindu-Muslim conflict in Bengal, a policy which led to his assassination in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic.

Death and Legacy

Even after his death, Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and his belief in simple living--making his own clothes, eating a vegetarian diet, and using fasts for self-purification as well as a means of protest -- have been a beacon of hope for oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world.