Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as the President of India from 1974 to 1977.
Born in Delhi, Ahmed studied in Delhi and Cambridge and was called to the bar from the Inner Temple, London in 1928. Returning to India, he practiced law in Lahore and then in Guwahati. Beginning a long association with the Indian National Congress in the 1930s, Ahmed was finance minister of Assam in the Gopinath Bordoloi ministry in 1939. He became the Advocate General of Assam in 1946, and was finance minister again from 1957 to 1966 under Bimala Prasad Chaliha. He was made a national Cabinet Minister by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1966 and was in charge of various central ministries including Power, Irrigation, Industries and Agriculture. He was elected President of India in 1974, securing a greater confidence than his contestant Tridib Chaudhuri.
As President, Ahmed imposed The Emergency in August 1975 and gave his assent to numerous ordinances and constitutional amendments drafted by Indira Gandhi to rule by decree. Lampooned in an iconic cartoon by Abu Abraham, Ahmed's reputation was tarnished by his support for the Emergency. His Presidency had been described as a rubber stamp.
Ahmed died in February 1977 of a heart attack. He was accorded a state funeral and is buried in a mosque near Parliament House in New Delhi. Ahmed, who was the second Muslim to become the president of India, was also the second president to die in office. Ahmed was succeeded by B. D. Jatti as interim president and by Neelam Sanjiva Reddy as the sixth president of India in 1977.
Early life and family
Ahmed was born in Delhi on 13 May 1905, to a Muslim family. Ahmed's grandfather, Baharuddin Ali Ahmed, was an Islamic scholar and his father, Col. Zalnur Ali was a doctor who belonged to the Indian Medical Service and is thought to be the first medical graduate from Assam. Ahmed's mother, Sahibzadi Ruqayya Sultan, was a daughter of the Nawab of the princely state of Loharu. Ahmed was one of ten children, including five sons, of Colonel Ali. In 2018 it emerged that several of Ahmed's relatives were left out of the National Register of Citizens for Assam as they could not produce documents to prove their antecedents.Education and legal career
Ahmed attended government high schools in Gonda, United Provinces and in Delhi. He attended St. Stephen's College, Delhi during 1921–22, before leaving for England. He passed his history tripos from St Catharine's College, Cambridge in 1927. He was called to the bar from the Inner Temple, London in 1928. He returned to India the same year and practiced law at the Lahore High Court before moving to Guwahati in 1930 where he worked initially as a junior lawyer under Nabin Chandra Bardoloi. At Guwahati, Ahmed, who later became the Advocate General for the state, was the founding president of the Bar Association of the Assam High Court after its formation in 1948.Role in the Indian National Congress
Ahmed joined the Indian National Congress as a primary member in 1931 and was a member of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee, the Working Committee of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee and the All India Congress Committee from 1936 onwards, except for short breaks. He was a member of the Working Committee of the All India Congress Committee in 1946–47 and again from 1964 to 1974 during which period he was also a member of the Parliamentary Board of the party.Electoral career in pre-Independence India
Ahmed was elected to the legislative assembly of Assam in the provincial elections of 1937 which were held in accordance with the Government of India Act, 1935. He was one of three Muslim ministers in the Congress government headed by Gopinath Bordoloi, serving as Minister for Finance, Revenue and Labour from 20 September 1938 to 16 November 1939.In his budget for 1939–40, Ahmed introduced several new taxes, including an agricultural income tax, taxes on amusements and betting and a tax on sale of goods in an effort to eliminate the state's revenue deficit. The tax on agricultural income imposed a levy on the profits of the tea industry, a part of which was to be used for the welfare of workers in the tea plantations. This, and the pro-labour stance he took during the strike in the Assam Oil Company, was deemed inimical to British commercial interests in Assam but won much public support for the Bordoloi Ministry.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Congress governments across India resigned in protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's action of declaring India a belligerent without consulting them. In 1940, Ahmed was arrested and imprisoned for a year when he performed a satyagraha on Gandhi's behest. After the launch of the Quit India Movement, Ahmed was arrested on 9 August 1942, along with several other leaders of the Assam Provincial Congress Committee. He was detained as a prisoner for a further three years at the jail in Jorhat.
Ahmed was opposed to the Muslim League's demand for the creation of Pakistan and to the Partition of India along communal lines. However, in the elections of 1946, while the Congress won the majority of seats to form a government in Assam under Gopinath Bordoloi, Ahmed was defeated in the North Kamrup constituency by the Muslim League's Moulvi Abdul Hye. Although the Congress Party under Gopinath Bordoloi spent much money and effort in order to try and secure victory for Ahmed, he won only 844 votes against the 7,265 votes polled by Hye. Ahmed was thereafter appointed the Advocate General of Assam, a post he held until 1952.
Career in independent India
Although he was offered a seat in the legislative assembly elections of 1952, Ahmed refused to contest the elections due to disagreements with the leadership of the Congress and the Chief Minister Bishnuram Medhi. In April 1954, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha and was a member until he resigned in March 1957. He contested and won the 1957 Assam Legislative Assembly election from Jania, winning 66.13% of the votes cast, and was re-elected to the seat in the 1962 Assam Legislative Assembly election; he improved his majority, winning 84.56% of the votes. Under the governments headed by Chief Minister Bimala Prasad Chaliha, Ahmed served as Minister of Finance, Law, Community Development, Panchayats and Local Self Government during 1957-1962 and was the Minister of Finance, Law, Community Development and Panchayats during 1962–66.Ahmed facilitated the entry of Muhammed Saadulah, the Muslim League leader who preceded Gopinath Bordoloi as Assam's Prime Minister, into the Congress Party in 1951. Ahmed played a role in frustrating Chief Minister Chaliha's attempts at enforcing the Prevention of Infiltrators Plan which, based on the National Register of Citizens, 1951, sought to identify and deport illegal migrants to Assam. He argued that if the Congress Party were to continue with this plan, it would lead to its loss of support among Muslims in Assam and across the rest of India. He has been accused of thus allowing the steady influx of Muslims from East Pakistan who became a votebank for the Congress Party. Salman Khurshid has identified this strategy, which he attributes to Ahmed, as one of the factors that led to the Nellie Massacre.
Union Minister
Minister of Irrigation and Power
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. In April of that year, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha for a second time.Minister of Education
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. 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.Minister of Industrial Development and Company Affairs
Ahmed was made the Minister of Industrial Development and Company Affairs on 13 March 1967. 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. 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.In 1969, Ahmed introduced a bill in Parliament seeking to ban corporate funding to political parties. 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.
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.