Exactly a year ago, on July 25, 2022, President Droupadi Murmu took the oath of her office. Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted shortly after the ceremony: “Her assuming the Presidency is a watershed moment for India especially for the poor, marginalised and downtrodden.”
Days prior to this, he asserted on the same social media platform that President Murmu’s ascendance to the high office coincided with the celebration of his coinage – ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’. He exclaimed: “A daughter from a tribal community born in a remote part of eastern India has been elected our President!”
Throughout the past year, various Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, including party president J.P. Nadda, publicised that “Narendra Modi made Droupadi Murmu the first tribal president of India” even while various leaders of opposition parties “shed crocodile tears and claim that they will do this and that for the tribals.”
In April 2023, West Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar wrote to President Murmu when four tribal women were allegedly forced to do a dandi parikrama (prostrate over a distance of one km) to ‘atone’ for joining the saffron party.
These instances draw attention to the fact that while Modi and the entire rank and file of the ruling party never miss an opportunity to take credit, they shy away from taking responsibility. Hearts that were beating fast while cheering another instance of Modi’s political tokenism, remain silent at the turn of events in Manipur over almost three months.
BJP Presidential candidate Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: pmindia.gov.in
Modi downward, every BJP leader could only be expected to act the way they have – that is of looking at every issue from a majoritarian and electoral perspective.
However, one expected President Murmu would have been truer to her office than she has been by her silence. In the absence of any other reaction from her, this can only be taken as tacit endorsement of violent events in the northeastern border state.
Paradoxically, her office does not limit the Rashtrapati’s powers nor dictates that she acts only at the direction of the government and within it, the all-powerful Prime Minister’s Office.
The president is in fact, not just an all-abiding titular head, but has the capacity to act on her own. The decision to act or not is however the president’s.
It is President Murmu’s choice if she wants to be recalled as a ‘rubber stamp’ president like many who preceded her, including immediate predecessor Ram Nath Kovind, or if she wishes to follow in the footsteps of more independent-minded presidents like K.R. Narayanan and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
The similarities between Murmu and Abdul Kalam
Of the two, it is more contextual now to recall the independent and all-inclusive nature of the president’s office as underscored by Kalam. There are at least two counts on which there are obvious parallels between his tenure and President Murmu’s stay in this office.
Firstly, like President Murmu, Kalam too was a nominee of the BJP – although the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government secured the support of several parties in the opposition for Kalam’s candidature. Despite this, there is no denying that the scientist turned first citizen was principally the BJP’s choice because it previously shot down the proposal of elevating vice president Krishna Kant as the president after considering his candidature.
The second similarity between Kalam’s time in office and that of President Murmu’s is of greater relevance in the current context. Kalam, it needs to be recalled, assumed office on the same date but in 2002.
When Kalam assumed office, it had not even been six months since the morbid Gujarat riots. At that time, the country was rife with accusations of the state government, headed by Modi as chief minister, being complicit in the violence.
Demands for Modi’s resignation still rent the air even though Vajpayee, who wanted him to quit, had been isolated within the party by the group led by home minister Lal Krishna Advani.
In that surcharged atmosphere, Kalam decided to make Gujarat the first port of call after assuming office. The day-long visit was scheduled for August 12, barely two days prior to his first address to the nation on the eve of Independence Day.
The visit was important for two more reasons. One, that in the run-up to the presidential election, he had been queried about his position on communal violence, the central domestic issue in the country at that time.
Two, the Modi government had dissolved the state assembly on July 19 and was demanding early elections against the opinion of the opposition – and more importantly, the Election Commission headed by J.M. Lyngdoh, who was targeted by Modi for his religious identity.
Without a doubt, Kalam’s visit at the time was upsetting for the Vajpayee government. Yet he went ahead with his plans. In his memoirs of the presidency, Turning Points: A Journey Through Challenges, he mentioned that “at the ministry and bureaucratic level, it was suggested that I should not venture into Gujarat at that point of time.”
Further, he wrote:
“PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was discomfited by my decision. He asked me, ‘Do you consider going to Gujarat at this time essential’? I replied, ‘I must go and talk to the people as a President. I consider this my first major task’.”
Talk to the people, Kalam indeed did, almost as a curtain-raiser to his acts through the tenure which gave conferred on him the moniker of ‘People’s President’. He toured the suburb of Naroda Patia on the outskirts of Ahmedabad and the site of the worst carnage targeting Muslim residents during the riots.
Photographs of an anguished First Citizen listening to a young survivor in the locality abound the Internet, underscoring that the president can act on her or his own volition and need not limit to merely for-the-record events.
APJ Abdul Kalam listens to a young survivor at Naroda Patiya, Ahmedabad, the site of one of the worst incidents during the 2002 Gujarat riots, during his visit to the state in August 2002. Photo: PTI
Kalam’s visit forced Modi to go to the site of one of the most horrific carnages for the first time. However, even though the chief minister accompanied Kalam, the state administration ‘sanitised’ the city and removed every visible sign of destruction.
Burnt vehicles and rubble of destroyed houses were removed while charred homes were painted afresh and roads were hastily paved. Kalam as president did not politicise his visit and did not deliver a sermon to Modi like Vajpayee in April 2002 – when he made the famous “Raj Dharma” statement.
However, president Kalam’s visit underscored that all was not yet well with Gujarat. The visit added to the Election Commission’s ‘courage’ to not hold elections before October, as demanded by Modi and his government. Eventually, the matter reached the Supreme Court after a Presidential Reference was made to it.
President Kalam was no troublemaker, although he disagreed with the UPA government too on the Office of Profit issue. He clearly followed his own conscience while abiding by the oath of his office (and that of the governor too), which is different from that of the prime minister and others holding elected posts.
K.R. Narayanan and ‘indirect influence’
In fact, it was President Narayanan who on assuming office, comprehended the weight of the oath and realised that a president could do a lot if he opted to follow his pledge in letter and spirit.
Its operative part, “I will devote myself to the service and well-being of the people of India” was interpreted by Narayanan as words that gave him the right to act like a ‘working’ president. According to him, the post could be “used with a philosophy of indirect approach” adding that there were “one or two things” that could be done directly “in very critical times”.
Narayanan was of the view that the president could exert “indirect influence” on state affairs and that this was “the most important role he can play.” He believed that “there must be some equation between the people and the President.”
K.R. Narayanan. Photo: Government of India, Portrait of President of India, CC BY-SA 4.0
Even the first Head of State, Rajendra Prasad, observed that “people do look upon” the president as someone with “authority in the governance of the country”. This influence could be justified only “by tendering such advice and giving such suggestions as he considers necessary.”
Like Narayanan, President Murmu would do the Republic’s cause a lot of good by remembering at every stage that she pledged to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law”. She had taken this vow as governor too. In contrast, the prime minister and numerous others are only committed to “bear true faith and allegiance” to the constitution.
Never too late is an idiomatic phrase that is almost a cliché. One hopes that President Murmu is true to her responsibilities and uses the powers of her office. Nothing prevents her from visiting Manipur and commiserating with ‘her people’.
President Murmu must recall the words of India’s first president that people look up to the president. Only she can decide what kind of president she wishes to be for the remaining years of her tenure.
Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s latest book is The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfigure India. His other books include The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right and Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times. He tweets at @NilanjanUdwin.
