Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed

In January 1966, while serving as Assam's Finance Minister, Ahmed was appointed the Union Minister for Irrigation and Power in Indira Gandhi’s first cabinet. He was one of a handful of ministers she brought to Shastri's cabinet, which initially remained largely unchanged under her leadership.[48][49][50] In April of that year, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha for a second time.[51]

Ahmed was shifted to the Ministry of Education, succeeding M.C. Chagla, and served as the Union Minister for Education between 13 November 1966 and 12 March 1967.[52][53] In his brief period in that Ministry, Ahmed voiced concerns over the reduced allocations made to the Ministry and its likely impacts on educational reconstruction programs and oversaw the Amending Bill of 1966 to the Banaras Hindu University Act.[54][55]

Ahmed was made the Minister of Industrial Development and Company Affairs on 13 March 1967.[56] In the parliamentary elections of 1967, Ahmed was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Barpeta constituency in Assam, winning over 60% of the votes.[57] During Ahmed's tenure as Minister of Industrial Development ,his ministry, through the Directorate General of Technical Development, issued a letter of intent to Sanjay Gandhi to manufacture 50,000 Maruti cars annually, even though Gandhi lacked the technical expertise and the capital required for establishing such a venture.[58]

In 1969, Ahmed introduced a bill in Parliament seeking to ban corporate funding to political parties.[59] The bill, which sought to amend the Companies Act, 1956, aimed to curb the influence of large businesses on the political establishment. It also aimed to hamstring the centre-right Swatantra Party by preventing its access to funding. The ban, introduced without establishing an alternative financing mechanism, resulted in the abolishment of a key legal source of election funds for parties and a subsequent proliferation of illegal practices in campaign funding.[60][61][62]

In September 1969, Ahmed was sent to Rabat, Morocco as head of the Indian delegation at the Islamic Summit held there. However, upon his arrival in Morocco the Indian delegation was barred from attending the summit on the objections of the Pakistani delegation led by General Ayub Khan. The incident proved to be a diplomatic fiasco for India and led to a vote of censure in Parliament. The censure was defeated by the Government with the help of the communist and regional parties, as the Congress Party's own strength in Parliament had reduced following an August split in the party.[lower-alpha 1][64][66][67]

Ahmed was appointed Minister for Food and Agriculture on 27 June 1970, serving in that office until 3 July 1974.[68][2] He was re-elected from the Barpeta constituency in the general election of 1971, winning over 72% of the votes polled.[69] In May 1971, he was also made the minister in charge of wakf under the Muslim Wakfs Act, 1954.[70] In 1971 the Central Land Reforms Committee was constituted, with Ahmed as its chairman, with the aim of helping the state governments undertake comprehensive land reform.[71] The recommendations of the committee included fixing land ceilings at the level of the family, restrictively defining the family to include only a husband, wife and their minor children, and fixing ceilings between 10 and 18 acres of land for different types of land. Its recommendations paved the way for introduction of agricultural land ceilings in state legislations. 2.7 million hectares of excess land holdings were discovered, of which 53% was subsequently redistributed among people from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.[72]

As minister, Ahmed supported the creation of food and fertilizer buffer stocks to meet shortfalls in production.[73] The nationalization of the wholesale trade in wheat by the government of India was implemented under Ahmed in 1973. Although it was aimed at preventing market distortions and ensuring stability of prices, the policy proved disastrous, leading to lower procurements and the running down of buffer stocks, and eventually forcing the import of over 60 lakh tonnes of grain at high prices. Consequently, proposals to extend nationalization to the trade in rice and for the wheat crop of April 1974 were abandoned.[74][75]

President Ahmed being administered the oath of office by Chief Justice A. N. Ray.

In July 1974, Ahmed was chosen by Indira Gandhi and the Congress Party as their candidate to be the next President of India. In doing so, they overlooked the then Vice President, Gopal Swarup Pathak, who had been elected to that post in 1969 with the support of the Congress Party.[76][77][78] Polling for the 1974 Indian presidential election was held on 17 August in a direct contest between the Congress Party’s Ahmed and the opposition candidate Tridib Chaudhuri, a Lok Sabha MP from the Revolutionary Socialist Party. Ahmed won 765,587 votes (or 80.18% of the 954,783 votes cast) against Chaudhuri’s 189,196 and he was declared elected on 20 August.[79][80][81]

Ahmed was sworn in as the fifth president of India on 24 August 1974, becoming the second Muslim to hold that office and the first person to be directly elevated to the presidency from the Union Cabinet.[82][83] He was also the first president to be elected after the amendments to the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act, 1952 that imposed a security deposit of ₹2,500 (US$31) and made it mandatory for every candidate in a presidential election to be supported by ten proposing and ten seconding legislators. Ahmed’s election was challenged unsuccessfully before India's Supreme Court by Charu Lal Sahu, an advocate-on-record.[84][85][86]

Ahmed imposed a national emergency under Article 352 of India’s Constitution late in the night of 25 June 1975 on the advice of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The legality of its imposition – on the ground that "a grave emergency exists whereby the security of India is threatened by internal disturbances." – was dubious, as there were no reports to that effect from the Intelligence Bureau, the Home Ministry or from any or the governors of the states, nor had the proposal been considered by the Union Council of Ministers. Although the constitutional impropriety was pointed out to him, Ahmed raised no questions and chose to sign the order imposing the emergency, a draft of which was brought to him by the Prime Minister’s personal secretary, R. K. Dhawan.[lower-alpha 2][88][89][90]

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in his study, Rashtrapati Bhavan

In the early hours of the next day, electricity supply was cut off to newspaper offices in Delhi and the main leaders of opposition parties placed under arrest. The Cabinet met at 7AM on 26 June, where it was informed by the prime minister of the imposition of emergency the previous night.[91][92] Prime Minister Gandhi subsequently addressed the nation on All India Radio announcing the Emergency, beginning with the words "The President has proclaimed an emergency. This is nothing to panic about."[93][94] The Emergency, which lasted until 21 March 1977, saw the suppression of civil liberties, the arrest of opposition politicians and clampdown on political parties, the suspension of fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and the muzzling of the media. It has been described as a period of darkness for India’s democracy.[95][96][97]

The two-thirds majority enjoyed by the Congress Party in India’s Parliament allowed it to undertake several wide-ranging constitutional amendments. The Prime Minister also instructed Ahmed to issue ordinances, sidestepping Parliament and allowing for rule by decree.[lower-alpha 3][100][101] In August 1975, the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth Constitutional Amendment Bills passed by Parliament received presidential assent. The 38th Amendment precluded the Emergency and the ordinances passed during this period from judicial review, while the 39th Amendment barred the courts from adjudicating election petitions filed against the president, the vice president, the prime minister and the speaker of the Lok Sabha and rendered any pending proceedings before the courts null and void.[102][103][104]

Ordinances issued in 1975 included one abolishing bonded labour,[105][106] the Equal Remuneration Ordinance which provided for equal pay for equal work or work of similar nature,[107] the amendment to the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, 1974 allowing detention of offenders for a period of two years,[108] and an amendment to the Import and Export (Controls) Act increasing the severity of penalties for offences relating to the misuse of import licences and imported goods among scores of other ordinances issued during the year.[109][110] In December 1975, while President Ahmed was on a state visit to Egypt and Sudan, the government dispatched a special courier carrying three executive ordinances preventing the publication of material deemed objectionable by the government, abolishing the Press Council of India and lifting immunities on media’s coverage of Parliament. These were promptly signed in Cairo by the President.[111] The first session of Parliament in 1976 therefore had to consider and replace with acts the numerous ordinances issued since the proclamation of Emergency in June 1975.[112]

In January 1976, President’s rule was declared in Tamil Nadu after Ahmed dismissed its government, headed by Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, and dissolved the state’s legislative assembly.[113] By two ordinances issued in March 1976, the responsibility of maintaining government accounts were taken away from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India and vested with the accounts offices of individual government departments, while making the Comptroller and Auditor General responsible for the audit of these accounts.[114] In June 1976, an ordinance extended by a year the validity of provisions allowing the government to detain any person for up to one year without disclosing the grounds for detention to the detainee under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act.[115] In December 1976, the Forty-second Constitutional Amendment Bill received President Ahmed's assent. The bill, passed by both houses of Parliament in November, amended as many as 59 articles of the Constitution and the Preamble, besides introducing a new section containing the Fundamental Duties of citizens.[116] Furthermore, it sought to severely circumscribe the powers of the Supreme Court, transferred several responsibilities hitherto entrusted with the state governments to the Central government, and extended the tenure of the Lok Sabha to six years.[117][118]

As president, Ahmed publicly spoke in favour of the imposition of Emergency throughout this period. In his address to the nation on Independence Day, 1975 he assured citizens that the Emergency was a "passing phase" and its imposition was necessary to save India from chaos and disruption. He also cautioned that liberty should not "degenerate into licence" and exhorted the nation to focus on increasing production.[119] Elsewhere, he reiterated that the "Emergency is a passing phase but the era of permissive politics and national degeneration is over and we will never allow that phase to be repeated again" and that the indiscipline and disorder brought about by reactionary forces had slowed down India’s development.[120][121] Addressing the nation on Republic Day, 1976, Ahmed said that the Emergency had helped India’s economy and brought about "national discipline at all levels".[122] On the Independence Day in 1976, he stated that the Emergency would not be used to switch over from the parliamentary to a presidential system of government or to accumulate more power than was permitted under the Constitution and that it had been issued instead “to bring about such economic, social and political changes as have become relevant and necessary in the interests of the people of India”.[123]

In private, Ahmed appeared to have misgivings about the Emergency. This was revealed in an embassy cable sent from the United States Embassy in Delhi in August 1976 which suggested an estrangement between Ahmed and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The cable noted Ahmed’s growing concern that Indira and Sanjay Gandhi were "pushing too hard on the political and Constitutional system of India" and reported that he had rebuffed her suggestion to replace the Vice-President, B.D. Jatti with her former defence minister, Swaran Singh.[124] Indira Gandhi’s proposal to replace her entire cabinet with younger ministers was also cautioned against by Ahmed, who warned her that that this would jeopardize the unity of the Congress Party. The cable went on to note that Ahmed was "uncomfortable with some of Mrs. Gandhi's actions and certainly with those of her son" and that Indira Gandhi had apologized to Ahmed on behalf of Sanjay Gandhi for his rude remarks when the President declined to give a statement for the inaugural issue of the younger Gandhi's magazine, Surya.[125][126]

On 10 December 1975, a cartoon by Abu Abraham, which escaped the notice of the government censors, appeared in the Indian Express.[127][128] The cartoon showed Ahmed, semi-naked and in a bathtub filled to its brim, handing over a paper he has signed to an outstretched hand of a person clothed in a formal suit and shirt. The speech balloon reads: “If there are any more ordinances, just ask them to wait.”[129][130][131] The cartoon, which lampooned Ahmed’s pliability in signing ordinances put before him, became an iconic image of the Emergency.[132][133][134] The cartoon irreparably damaged Ahmed’s image and legacy, and he is widely regarded as a rubber stamp President, who was willing to sign ordinances and the proclamation of Emergency put to him without questioning the government or asking it to be reconsidered.[135][136][137] Subsequent Presidents of India who have been thought of as pliant and meekly submitting to the government of the day have been compared to Ahmed’s rubber stamp presidency.[138][139][140]

President Ahmed made state visits to Indonesia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Sudan, Iran and Malaysia during his term in office.[141][142] His visit to Saudi Arabia in March 1975 to attend the funeral of King Faisal was the first time an Indian President was personally present at the funeral of another head of state and the first visit to Saudi Arabia by a senior Indian leader after Jawaharlal Nehru's visit in 1956.[143][144][145] He was conferred with an honorary degree of Doctor of Law by the University of Pristina, Kosovo during his visit to Yugoslavia.[146] During his state visit to Sudan in December 1975, Ahmed visited Juba in South Sudan, where he addressed the Regional Peoples' Assembly, in one of the earliest visits by an Indian dignitary to South Sudan.[147]

Ahmed was a keen sportsman throughout his life and was an active golfer during his presidency.[148][149] He was a centre-half in field hockey and played for the Combined Universities Hockey Team in Cambridge.[148] For many years he was president of Assam’s State Football and Cricket Associations. He served as the Vice-Chairman of the Assam Council of Sports and was later President of the All-India Lawn Tennis Federation.[150] Ahmed is credited with reviving the Shillong Golf Club and resurrecting the mini golf course at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.[150] Ahmed introduced the President’s Polo Cup as an open tournament in 1975, when he was the patron-in-chief of the Indian Polo Association. Temporarily discontinued in 2005, it has been held since 2013 as the President's Polo Cup Exhibition Match.[151][152]

Grave of Ahmed

Ahmed’s tomb was designed by the architect Habib Rahman. Rahman was also the architect of the tomb for Zakir Hussain, who was the first Muslim and the first President to die in office.[173][174] The tomb is open to the sky and features thin framed marble jalis which are clamped with the help of internal pins onto structural elements made of steel.[175] The tomb is a post-modern interpretation of traditional Islamic forms,[176] and an abstraction of the silhouette of the Taj Mahal.[177] Its openness makes it an "austere" and "elegant" building and one of Delhi’s most remarkable pieces of modern architectural heritage, in the view of some critics.[178][179]