By Liz Mathew, IANS
Table tennis champion, lawyer, veteran politician, wife, mother and now India’s first woman president and supreme commander of its armed forces, Pratibha Devisingh Patil is the quintessential woman of substance reconciling her many facets with ease as she prepares to guide the Indian polity for the next five years.
The 72-year-old woman, who sports a bindi like many traditional married woman and keeps her head lightly covered with her sari, took over as the constitutional head of the country on July 25, becoming the 12th occupant in free India of the grand 340-room presidential palace, Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Declaring that she would be a “political president” and not “a rubber stamp” as her critics had stated, Patil has committed herself to working for the well-being of citizens and has set an agenda for the nation on issues such as women’s empowerment, modern education and inclusive growth.
“It should be our combined endeavour to sustain (economic) growth and ensure that it is socially inclusive. We must ensure that every section of our society – particularly the weak and the disadvantaged – are equal partners in, and beneficiaries of, the development process,” she said in her first speech after breaking a 60-year male monopoly on the presidency.
Patil, who had a long innings in politics and holds an enviable record as a community worker-cum-politician from the western state of Maharashtra, was India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA)’s surprise choice as presidential candidate . Congress president Sonia Gandhi called it an important milestone for women in the world’s largest democracy.
Many were surprised to find that she had not changed her maiden name – still unusual in India. Her explanation was simple and telling: “I had contested elections before I got married – people knew me as Pratibha Patil. So I kept the name. People accepted it; my husband accepted it.”
Although the first woman president was hailed as a symbol of progressive India, she has had to fight off critics who say she may not make much of a difference to society.
Patil has clarified in no uncertain terms that women’s empowerment and solving their problems would be her priorities. “We must banish malnutrition, social evils, infant mortality and female foeticide. I wish to express my full commitment to the protection of child rights.”
Patil’s remarkable rise from a humble home in a small town, her unconventional young days when she became a table tennis champion winning inter-college tournaments, her academic life and a long political career as a Congress leader have been her strong points.
Born in the town of Jalgaon in Maharashtra on Dec 19, 1934, she was an athletic 13-year-old when India became independent in 1947. Daughter of a police prosecutor, she studied in Jalgaon and Mumbai to earn postgraduate degrees in arts and law and practised as an advocate in Jalgaon.
She came from a family that did not claim any political connections, but from social work she jumped into Congress politics and was elected to the Maharashtra assembly in 1962 for the first time.
Three years later, Patil, a Rajput, married Devisingh Ransingh Shekhawat, a Maratha of Rajasthani origin. The couple have two children, a son and a daughter.
From 1972 to 1978, the soft-spoken, demure Patil was a cabinet minister in Maharashtra four times, holding such portfolios as social welfare, public health, prohibition, rehabilitation and cultural affairs, and education.
When the Congress was out of power in Maharashtra in 1979, she became the opposition leader in the assembly. Patil returned as cabinet minister in 1982, heading the urban development and housing ministry, and also held charge of civil supplies and social welfare.
She was elected to the Rajya Sabha, parliament’s upper house, in 1985 after nearly a quarter century in state politics.
She was deputy chairperson of the Rajya Sabha for two years from 1986. She was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1991 in a general election marred by the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Patil became governor of India’s desert state Rajasthan in November 2004, a quiet stint punctuated by firm stands on issues.
Displaying her nerves of steel was her action as governor in refusing to sign the Rajasthan Freedom of Religion Bill that banned religious conversions. She argued that it contained provisions that directly or indirectly affected fundamental rights related to religious freedom.
Four decades and more after she stepped into politics, Patil holds India’s highest office, capping a career that was remarkable because it was mostly low profile – except for the volatile home stretch of course.