India's first 'untouchable' to attain high office dies

India’s former President KR Narayanan, the first “untouchable” from the caste system to occupy the country’s highest office in a validation of its democratic roots, died today. He was 85.

The soft-spoken, scholarly Narayanan was admitted to an army hospital in the capital on October 29 with pneumonia and kidney failure. He had been on life support system since October 31, said Defence Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar.

Although the president’s post in India is largely ceremonial, it is also a symbolic pinnacle of public service.

Narayanan’s rise to the top was considered remarkable in a country where “untouchables,” now known as “Dalits,” are the lowest in society, having faced ridicule and hostility for centuries.

The Dalits – literally “broken people” – are outside the caste system, a 3,000-year-old hierarchy that divides Hindus into four categories of descending social importance. Because they are without caste, the Dalits, nearly a fourth of India’s billion-plus people, are considered unclean and therefore “untouchable".

Discrimination based on caste was outlawed in 1950 but centuries of entrenched habits have been hard to break, although much progress has been made in social equality in recent decades.

In his public statements, Narayanan never harped on the caste discrimination he faced as growing up, instead emphasising on the positive.

“In fact, if you can see one consistent tendency in India, one trend in India, from the time of the Buddha onwards, it is the slow, but steady movement of the lower classes among the scale of the class system,” Narayanan said in a 1998 interview with state television.

“But it has been very slow. It took 2,000 years. But it is something which is going on,” he said.

While most Dalits remain poor, uneducated and underemployed, Narayanan is a symbol of how crushing disadvantages can be overcome with luck and determination.

The son of a traditional “Ayurvedic” medicine physician, Narayanan was born in a poor household in the village of Uzhavoor in the southern state of Kerala on October 27, 1920.

With persistence he obtained education, earning a bachelor’s degree from the London School of Economics and working at various times as English teacher, journalist and diplomat.

He was once barred from primary school because he couldn’t afford the fees, but stubbornly stood outside the classroom to listen to lessons.

Narayanan did so well on his final high school exams that he was given a government scholarship to continue his education.

He also received help from a fund set up for oppressed Indians by independence leader and social reformer Mohandas Gandhi, and an Indian industrialist later paid for his studies in London.

He returned to India in 1948 with a letter of introduction from a prominent economist to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The prime minister personally recommended Narayanan for the Indian Foreign Service.

He served as India’s ambassador to China and the United States, two of the most important posts in the service.

His first posting as a diplomat was to Burma, also known as Burma, where he met his future wife, a Burmese woman who had studied social work in India.

They married in 1950, with special permission given by Nehru as Indian diplomats are not allowed to marry foreigners.

He turned to politics in 1980, winning a seat in Parliament on a Congress party ticket. A politician with a whistle-clean reputation, he served as vice president until he was elected the country’s 10th president in July 1997.

India’s government is run by a prime minister. The president’s role is largely ceremonial, but he is charged with approving a bid by a party or coalition of parties to run the government.