Rajendra Prasad

Biography

Rajendra Prasad was born in 1884 in Ziradei in Bihar, then part of the Bengal Presidency, into a Kayastha family. He topped the entrance examination of the University of Calcutta, studied at Presidency College from 1902 and took a master's degree in economics in 1907. He taught at Langat Singh College in Muzaffarpur, where he became principal, and lectured in economics in Calcutta while studying law. After a master's in law in 1915 and a doctorate from Allahabad University, he practised at the High Court of Bihar and Orissa from 1916.

He joined the Indian National Congress formally in 1911 and met Mahatma Gandhi in 1916. Gandhi enlisted him during the Champaran campaign of 1917, and in 1920 he gave up his legal career to support the non-cooperation movement, helping to found the Bihar Vidyapeeth. He organised relief after the 1934 Bihar earthquake, was elected Congress president in 1934 and again in 1939, and was imprisoned for nearly three years after the Quit India resolution of 1942.

In 1946 he took charge of food and agriculture in the interim government, and on 11 December 1946 he was elected president of the Constituent Assembly, which drafted the Constitution of India. He also served a third term as Congress president from November 1947.

When India became a republic on 26 January 1950 he became its first President, having been chosen two days earlier. He was elected in 1952 and re-elected in 1957, the only president to serve two full terms, and he set a precedent of non-partisan conduct in the office, though he took a more active part in debates over the Hindu Code Bill. He retired in May 1962, received the Bharat Ratna, and died in Patna in February 1963.