Ram Nath Kovind

Ram Nath Kovind was born on October 1, 1945, in Paraunkh, a village in the region that later became the Kanpur Dehat district of Uttar Pradesh, at a time when India was still under British colonial rule ^[1]. His family belonged to the Koli community, a group classified among the Scheduled Castes, and his father Maiku Lal ran a small shop while also working the land. The family's means were slender. Accounts of his childhood describe a mud house with a thatched roof, and Kovind has recalled walking several kilometres each day to attend school in a neighbouring village ^[2].

Hardship marked his earliest years. His mother died of burn injuries when he was a young boy, an event he has spoken about publicly, and the family home offered little shelter from the extremes of the north Indian climate ^[2]. Despite these conditions he persisted with his studies, moving to Kanpur for higher education. He earned a degree in commerce and then a bachelor of laws from Kanpur University, choices that pointed him toward a professional career rather than the agricultural life most of his village contemporaries expected ^[1].

After completing his law degree, Kovind went to Delhi to prepare for the civil services examination. He passed on his third attempt, but the result qualified him for an allied service rather than the Indian Administrative Service he had aimed for. He declined the post and turned instead to the practice of law, a decision that would shape the rest of his working life ^[3].

Kovind enrolled as an advocate in 1971 with the Bar Council of Delhi and built his practice in the capital's courts. He served as an advocate for the central government in the Delhi High Court from 1977 to 1979, and later as standing counsel for the central government in the Supreme Court of India from 1980 to 1993 ^[1]. Over roughly sixteen years of practice in the High Court and the Supreme Court, he handled a steady stream of government litigation while also taking up work for clients of limited means.

A notable feature of this period was his pro bono work. Kovind provided free legal aid to weaker sections of society, including women and the poor, through the Free Legal Aid Society in Delhi ^[3]. Colleagues from those years describe a quiet, methodical lawyer rather than a courtroom showman. For a brief period in the late 1970s he also served as private secretary to Prime Minister Morarji Desai, an early brush with national politics that came well before his own entry into public life ^[2].

Kovind joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1991, shortly after ending his long stint as government counsel. His electoral debut was unpromising: he contested and lost assembly and parliamentary contests in Uttar Pradesh. The party nevertheless valued his legal background and his standing among Dalit communities, and in 1994 he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh. He was re-elected in 2000 and served two full six-year terms, remaining in the upper house until 2006 ^[1].

During his twelve years in Parliament, Kovind worked on committees dealing with subjects that reflected his interests and experience, including welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, home affairs, petroleum and natural gas, social justice and empowerment, and law and justice. He also served on the board of governors of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta and represented India at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2002 ^[3].

Within the BJP he led the party's Dalit Morcha, its Scheduled Caste wing, from 1998 to 2002, and served as president of the All India Koli Samaj ^[1]. These roles kept him prominent in the party's outreach to Dalit voters, a constituency the BJP was working hard to cultivate. Even so, he remained a low-profile figure by the standards of national politics, better known inside the party organisation than to the general public.

In August 2015, President Pranab Mukherjee appointed Kovind as Governor of Bihar ^[4]. The appointment drew initial objections from Bihar's chief minister Nitish Kumar, who complained that the state government had not been consulted, yet Kovind's conduct in office soon eased those tensions. He was widely regarded as a constitutional governor who stayed within the boundaries of the office during a politically charged period that included the 2015 Bihar assembly elections.

As governor he drew attention for setting up a judicial commission to investigate irregularities in the promotion of university teachers and for scrutiny of the management of undeserved funds in state universities ^[3]. When his name was announced for the presidency in 2017, Nitish Kumar, by then leading a government that included the BJP's opponents, praised his record and extended support, a measure of the reputation for fairness he had earned in Patna ^[4].

In June 2017 the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance named Kovind as its candidate for President of India. The choice surprised many observers, who had expected a better-known figure, but it carried clear significance: Kovind would be only the second Dalit to occupy Rashtrapati Bhavan, after K. R. Narayanan, who served from 1997 to 2002 ^[5]. In the July 2017 election he defeated the opposition's candidate Meira Kumar, herself a Dalit leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker, securing about 66 percent of the electoral college vote. He was sworn in as the fourteenth President of India on July 25, 2017 ^[4].

The Indian presidency is largely a ceremonial office, and Kovind performed its duties in a restrained, formal style. He gave assent to major legislation passed during his term, including the constitutional amendment providing reservation for economically weaker sections in 2019, the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, and the Citizenship Amendment Act later that year ^[5]. As president he was also supreme commander of the Indian armed forces and made state visits to dozens of countries across Africa, Europe, and Asia, often to destinations that had rarely featured on the itinerary of an Indian head of state ^[3].

His term coincided with turbulent episodes in Indian public life, including nationwide protests over the citizenship law and the Covid-19 pandemic. Kovind, in keeping with the conventions of the office, avoided public comment on partisan disputes. He completed his five-year term on July 25, 2022, and was succeeded by Droupadi Murmu, the first tribal woman to hold the post ^[5].

Kovind married Savita Kovind, who worked with the state-run telecommunications provider, on May 30, 1974. The couple have a son, Prashant Kumar, and a daughter, Swati, who has worked as a cabin crew member with Air India ^[1]. Those who have followed his career describe a man of austere personal habits, vegetarian, teetotal, and religious in a quiet way.

His attachment to Paraunkh has remained a constant. In 2016, before becoming president, he donated his ancestral house in the village for use as a community hall, saying the property should serve the people among whom he grew up ^[2]. As president he visited the village in 2021, travelling part of the way by train, and touched the soil of his birthplace on arrival, gestures that received wide coverage in the Indian press ^[2].

After leaving office in 2022, Kovind did not retreat entirely from public affairs. In September 2023 the Government of India appointed him chairman of a high-level committee to examine the feasibility of holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies, an idea known as "one nation, one election". The committee submitted its report to President Murmu in March 2024, recommending a framework for synchronised polls ^[6].

Any assessment of who was Ram Nath Kovind must begin with the distance he travelled. A Ram Nath Kovind biography is, at one level, a story about Indian democracy's capacity to elevate a man born in a mud hut in Kanpur Dehat to the grandest residence in the republic. Among the most cited Ram Nath Kovind facts is that he was only the second Dalit president and the first president to have risen through the BJP's own ranks ^[5]. Critics argued that his presidency was too quiet, that he rarely used the office's moral authority during contentious moments. Supporters counter that restraint is precisely what the Constitution asks of the office.

Ram Nath Kovind achievements include sixteen years of Supreme Court and High Court practice, two terms in the Rajya Sabha, a governorship remembered for probity, and a presidency completed without constitutional controversy ^[1]. For many Indians from marginalised communities, his career remains a reference point: proof, alongside the examples of Narayanan and Murmu, that the highest office in the land is not closed to those born furthest from power.