From mud house to Raisina Hill

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 20

The election of Ram Nath Kovind as the 14th President firmly establishes the changed political landscape in the country propelling a Dalit from Uttar Pradesh to the highest constitutional position of the country and the first from the ranks of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphatic triumph at the 2014 General Elections, the BJP and its supporters patiently waited for the day when it can have its own President. That moment arrived this evening with its nominee Kovind making it without breaking much sweat.

The closest the BJP came to having its candidate in office was when in 2002 the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government chose scientist APJ Abdul Kalam, whose candidature found larger support, including from the Congress, but then Kalam cannot be characterised as having been a practicing politician nor did he ever claim allegiance to any political party.

“It is our great privilege that 1st time BJP had an opportunity to nominate a President on its own, a member of Dalit community was chosen,” BJP chief Amit Shah said in his tweet seeking to underscore the political message inherit both in the choice of the candidate and the eventual result.

That he is the second Dalit after KR Narayanan who will occupy the post is well known. Other than the shared rugged childhood, the paths they treaded are different. Narayanan went to become a student of Harold Laski, served the country in Foreign Services first and as a minister later, while Kovind studied in the state, trained himself as a lawyer, became a lawmaker and occupied a gubernatorial post on the way.

From a childhood spent in a thatched straw-roofed mud house in rural Kanpur, President-elect Kovind will soon be the new tenant in one of the most prestigious addresses in Lutyens Delhi – the famed Bhawan atop the Raisina Hill.

While the political significance cannot be lost, by his own interpretation Kovind said, ‘’I never aspired to be the President. My win is a message to those discharging their duties with integrity. My election as the President is an evidence of the greatness of Indian democracy.’’

Reports published soon after his nomination spoke not just of his humility and commitment to the cause of the Dalits but also of his advice to members of the family to come up through dint of hard work.

What awaits the President-elect was perhaps best summed up by Opposition candidate Meira Kumar, who while congratulating the President-elect, said it had now fallen upon Kovind to uphold the Constitution in letter and spirit in ‘these challenging times’ culminating in the Dalit versus Dalit contest for the new Rashtrapati.