Source : The President of India is nobody’s man and everybody’s. He or she has no affiliation, no disaffiliation; reflects neutrality and in that sense, has no religion, no caste, no region. The person is the country’s First Citizen who belongs to all. He or she is a “sanyasi” who will be partial to none for the period of five years in office.
Having said that, we will always refer to Ram Nath Kovind as the country’s second Dalit president! And inevitably compare him with the first Dalit President, the late KR Narayanan. Kovind should get ready to survive this competition till he demits office.
There are similarities in the two gentlemen and the circumstances that made them President. However, these similarities are as diverse as they can be.
Narayanan was elected President in the same year India celebrated the 50th year of its independence. Kovind is President in the 70th year after independence. Both are Dalits and came from humble backgrounds, in case we didn’t know already. The politicians of the day gave more marks to their social identity than their achievements while selecting them as presidential candidates. The Congress in 1997 thought Narayanan’s election might stem the Dalit disenchantment with the ruling party; in the event, it did not. The BJP in 2017 thinks Kovind’s election would be the salve on the Dalit polity which is angry since the death of the student, Rohith Vemula. In both cases, the electoral objective was to weaken the Bahujan Samaj Party.
All major parties other than Shiv Sena supported Narayanan’s candidature. Former bureaucrat TN Seshan contested against him and so dazed was he by his brutal defeat that he blurted out that Narayanan won only because “he is a Dalit”. Seshan was a Brahman, unlike Meira Kumar who happens to be a dalit. Unlike in Narayanan’s time, the 2017 election saw a contest not between disparate social structures of inequality, but one between two opposing forces trying to out-do the other in Dalit appeasement.
After taking oath of office in 1997, Narayanan said: “That the nation has found a consensus for its highest office in some on who has sprung from the grass-roots of our society and grown up in the dust and heat of this sacred land is symbolic of the fact that the concerns of the common man have now moved to the centre stage of our social and political life. It is this larger significance of my election rather than any personal sense of honour that makes me rejoice on this occasion.” Kovind’s words 20 years later are a bit biographical though as poignant:” I have grown in a mud hut in a small village. My journey has been a long one. But it (the journey) is not mine alone. The same is the story of our country, our society.”
Narayanan like Kovind referred to India’s struggle for independence, her ancient culture and creed, but took names of no political leaders other than Gandhi and Nehru. Kovind too recalled the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi and, in keeping with his ideological persuasion as a former BJP leader, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. The past will be forcibly weighted on Kovind, ever reminding him that he took the name of four of his illustrious predecessors in his speech but omitted that of Narayanan.
Where Narayanan indicated he had a mind of his own and would not hesitate to call a spade a spade, Kovind gave the impression that he would rather evolve a consensus on contentious issues. This is what Narayanan said: ''Excessive obsession with the pursuit of pure politics has often overshadowed the social, economic and developmental needs of our people. Can we not sink our differences, as we have done on critical occasions in our history, and devote our undivided attention, for a time, to the development of the economy and the welfare of the people?'' Kovind’s contention was: In the same Central Hall, I had often discussed issues with many of you. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we disagreed. But we always respected one another’s views. This is the beauty of democracy.”
Narayanan, influenced by the Congress as ventured through diplomacy and politics, iterated a secular approach to things: “Indian civilization has had the unique honour of demonstrating to the world that man does not live by bread alone. Cultural, moral and spiritual values have always formed the fundamental underpinning of our society. To-day there are signs of the weakening of the moral and spiritual fibre in our public life with evils of communalism, casteism, violence and corruption bedevilling our society. India had entertained throughout its history a world vision. Our sages and seers had thought in terms of the happiness of the whole of humanity. And Jawaharlal Nehru had designed a foreign policy for India with a world outlook. We have a role to play in the world and a message to give to the world. We can do that effectively only if we are united and strong and in peace and friendship with our neighbours.”
Kovind, considering he is the first ever leader of the BJP and RSS backgrounds to hold the high office, needed to. He said in Hindi: “...pracheen Bharat ke gyan aur samkaleen Bharat ke vigyan ko saath lekar chalna hai. {…(the objective) is to take along both the knowledge of ancient Bharat and the science of contemporary Bharat.}”
Narayanan, lived up to the content of his speech, even though it is another matter that during his tenure he was never seen as a Dalit ‘face’. He dismissed criticisms of being an interventionist just as derisively he ignored criticisms of being a ‘Brahmin Dalit”. He kept a cool head while the country witnessed the National Front upheavals; he brooked no favouritism as he questioned two Union governments about imposition of President’s Rule. He even took on the judiciary, becoming the first President to put on record his dismay over non-representational selection of judges. He questioned the criteria for selecting certain judges and chief justices and followed up in 1998 with his controversial note: , "I would like to record my views that while recommending the appointment of Supreme Court judges, it would be consonant with constitutional principles and the nation's social objectives if persons belonging to weaker sections of society like SCs and STs, who comprise 25 per cent of the population, and women are given due consideration…..Eligible persons from these categories are available and their underrepresentation or non-representation would not be justifiable. Keeping vacancies unfilled is also not desirable given the need for representation of different sections of society and the volume of work which the Supreme Court is required to handle." The then Chief Justice of India had to come on record to deny there was any bias against SC or S candidates.
The attention is on Kovind now and till 2022. The next general elections will be held in 2019, under his gaze. Elections to politically critical states like Karnataka and Gujarat apart from Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Tripura are round the corner. His mettle would be tested as governance in Jammu and Kashmir looks untenable and the confrontation in Kerala and West Bengal sometimes spills into violence. The sense of insecurity hoisted upon the people over issues merely bovine and the new-found need to re-write medieval and modern Indian history are but a few of the many ideological tussles that will catch his attention in case they are sought to be resolved through new laws.