Rajendra
Prasad, who passed away on 28 February 1963, at the age of 78, was the
first Indian politician, lawyer, and journalist who was the first president of
the Republic of India (1950–62). He also was a comrade of Mahatma
Gandhi early in the non-cooperation movement for independence and was
president of the Indian National Congress (1934, 1939, and 1947).
Raised in a landowning
family of modest means, Prasad was a graduate of the Calcutta Law College. He
practiced at the Calcutta High Court and in 1916 transferred to the Patna High
Court and founded the Bihar Law Weekly. In 1917 he was recruited by
Gandhi to help in a campaign to improve conditions for peasants exploited by
British indigo planters in Bihar. He gave up his law practice in 1920 to join
the noncooperation movement. Becoming an active journalist in the nationalist
interest, he wrote for Searchlight in English, founded and
edited the Hindi weekly Desh (“Country”), and started his
lifelong campaign to establish Hindi as the national language. Imprisoned several times by the British for
noncooperation activities, he served nearly three years (August 1942–June 1945)
in jail with the Congress Party’s Working Committee.
In September 1946 Prasad was
sworn in as minister for food and agriculture in the interim government preceding full independence. From
1946 to 1949 he presided over the Indian Constituent Assembly and helped to shape the
constitution. He was unanimously elected president in 1950 and, after the first
general election (1952), was chosen by an overwhelming majority of the new
electoral college; in 1957 he was elected to a third term.
Prasad retired from public life in 1962
because of his deteriorating health. That same year he was honoured with
the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian
award. His autobiography, Atmakatha, was published in 1946. He is
also the author of India Divided (1946), Mahatma
Gandhi and Bihar, Some Reminiscences (1949), and other books.
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