Dr. Shri Zakir Husain | The 1st Muslim President of India

Dr. Shri Zakir Husain was the 3rd President of India and he was the first Muslim president of the Indian nation.
His life span is from 8 February 1897 to 3 May 1969. He was the first who die in his office term and became the shortest serving president of India. Before he became the President of India he served as the second Vice-President of India and Governor of Bihar state. Zakir Husain was also the co-founder of Jamia Milia Islamia. He served as its Vice-Chancellor. To read more keep in touch with the blog.

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Dr. Shri Zakir Husain Khan served as the 3rd president of India from 13 May 1967 until his death on 3 May 1969. He was an Indian educationist and a politician. Dr. Zakir Husain was the founding member of the Jamia Millia Islamia which was an independent national university. Some of his achievements are as under –

– He served as the university’s vice-chancellor from 1926 to 1948.
– In 1937, Shri Husain chaired the Basic National Education Committee which framed a new educational policy known as Nai Talim.
– He was the supporter of free and compulsory education in the first language of the country.
– He was opposed to the policy of separate electorates for Muslims.
– In 1948 he was appointed Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University.
– He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 for his services to education.
– He was the nominated member of the Indian Parliament during 1952 to 1957.
– He served as Governor of Bihar from 1957 to 1962.
– He was elected the Vice President of India in 1962.
– In the year 1963 he was conferred the Bharat Ratna Award.
– He was elected president in 1967 and became the first Muslim to hold the highest constitutional office in India.
– He was also the first incumbent to die in office and had the shortest tenure of any Indian president.
– His Mazar lies in the campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi.

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Early life of Dr. Zakir Hussain

Dr. Zakir Husain was born in Hyderabad in 1897. He born in a Afridi Pashtun descent. His forefathers had been settled in the town of Qaimganj which is situated in the Farrukhabad district of modern Uttar Pradesh. The name of his father was Fida Khan and the name of his mother was Naznin Begun and he was the third son out of seven sons of the couple.
In the year 1892 his father moved to the Deccan and established a successful legal career in Hyderabad and settled there. But in the year 1907 after the death of his father his family shifted back to Qaimganj. In the year 1911 his mother and several members of his extended family died in a plague epidemic.

Education of Dr. Zakir Hussain

– Dr. Zakir Hussain’s basic education was done in the Quran, Persian and Urdu at their home.
– It is thought that he had his primary school education at the Sultan Bazaar school in Hyderabad.
– He was enrolled at the Islamia High School in Etawah when his family came back to Qaimganj after the death of his father.
– In the yaer 1913 he joined the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh for having matriculated
– Dr. Zakin Hussain wanted to get Bachelor of Science degree for that he joined Christian College, Lucknow for the preparation for a medical degree. But due to illness he had to discontinue his studies.
– He joined the college at Aligarh and graduated in 1918 with philosophy, English literature and economics.
– He was elected as the vice president of the college’s students’ union and also won prizes for his debating skills.
– In the year 1920 he obtained his master’s degree in law and economics and he was appointed as a lecturer at the college.
– Later he went to Germany to do a doctorate in economics from the University of Berlin.

Family background

– In the year 1915 when he was pursuing his graduation, He was married with Shahjahan Begum and the couple had two daughters named Sayeeda and Safia.
– Safia married with Zil-ur-Rahman, a professor of physics at the Aligarh Muslim University and Sayeeda married with Khurshed Alam Khan who served as a Union Minister and Governor.
– Salman Khurshid became India’s External Affairs Minister in 2012. He is the son of Sayeeda khan and Khurshed Alam Khan.
– One of his brother Yusuf Husain was became a historian and a winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award who served as Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University and was awarded with Padma Bhushan also.
– One of his brother Mahmud Husain was a staunch supporter of Md. Jinnah. He came out as a leader in the forefront of the Pakistan movement. Later he went to Pakistan and became the Education Minister of Pakistan and Vice-Chancellor at Dhaka and Karachi Universities.
– One of his nephew General Rahimuddin Khan went on to become Pakistan’s Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and later Governor of Balochistan and Sindh.
– The son of his brother named Masud Husain became Professor of Social Sciences at the Aligarh Muslim University and later he also became the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia University.

Footprints of the Career of Dr. Zakir Hussain

– He had hold the position of the Vice Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia from 1926 to 1948.
– In the year 1937 he became a member of Basic National Education Committee.
– He hold the position of Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University from1948 to1956.
– From the year 1957 to 1962 he hold the position of the Governor of Bihar.
– In the year 1962 he hold the office of the Vice President of India and hold the office upto 1967.
– He was elected as the President of India in the year 1967 and hold the office up to his death in the year 1969.

Remarkable works done by Dr. Zakir Hussain

– In the year 1922 he went to Germany to complete his doctorate degree in economics from the University of Berlin.
– He has submitted his thesis under the supervised by Werner Sombart on the agrarian structure in British India, which was accepted summa cum laude in 1926.
– During his stay in Berlin he helped Alfred Ehrenreich to translate the Gandhi’s speeches into German. He translated at about 33 of Gandhi’s speeches which were published in the year 1924 as Die Botschaft des Mahatma Gandhi.
– In the year 1925 and 1926 he got published the Diwan-e-Ghalib and the Diwan-i-Shaida, a collection of poetry by Hakim Ajmal Khan respectively.
– In the Year 1926 when he returned to India after completion his doctorate degree from Germany he was appointed as “Sheikh-ul-Jamia” the succeesor of Abdul Majeed Khwaja.
– He travelled across India for soliciting funds for the Jamia university resulted he got financial support from Mahatma Gandhi, the Bombay philanthropist Seth Jamal Mohammed, Khwaja Abdul Hamied the founder of the pharmaceutical firm Cipla and the Nizam of Hyderabad.
– In the year 1928 Dr. Zakir Hussain became the secretary of the National Education Society which was established to manage the affairs of the Jamia.
– He became the life member of the society and the members pledged their services to the society for 20 years with a salary that could not exceed Rs.150. He was one of the 11 initial members who took the pledge for the society.
– The society adopted a constitution for the university which stipulated that the Jamia would neither seek nor accept any help from the colonial administration, and that it would treat all religions impartially.
– He remained the Jamia’s vice chancellor until 1948.
– In the Year 1940 he built his home named as “The Zakir Manzil” in the Gulmohar Avenue in Jamia Nagar Delhi.
– He was a political opponent of Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the leader of the Muslim League) and opposed to the policy of separate electorates for Muslims.
– In the year 1946 he refused to accept the proposal of Congress to include him as a member of the Interim Government.

– In the year 1937 an All-India National Education Conference was held at Wardha under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi aimed to establish a policy for basic education in India. And the conference appointed Dr. Zakin Hussain as the chairman of the Basic National Education which is also known as the Zakir Husain committee. The task had given to the committee to prepare the detailed scheme and syllabus for this policy.
– Under the chairmanship of Dr. Zakir Hussain the committee had submitted its report in December 1937 and formulated the Wardha Scheme of Basic National Education or Nai Talim.
– He introduced a policy named ” inter alia” with a proposal the teaching of craft work in schools.
– He also proposed free and compulsory basic education for seven years in the mother tongue with the teaching of crafts, music and drawing and learning the Hindustani language.
– He also proposed a comprehensive plan for the training of teachers and framed its curriculum and in the year 1938 the Congress party in their Haripura session accepted the scheme and sought to implement it nationwide.

– The Hindustani Talimi Sangh (All-India Education Board) was established to implement the scheme under he supervision and he remained as the President of the Hindustani Talimi Sangh from the year 1938 to 1950.
– The Muslim League wholly opposed and rejected the scheme in the Patna session in the year 1939 with a reason that this scheme as an attempt to gradually destroy Muslim culture in India.
– The Congress party’s argumented that this scheme had been formulated by a Muslim person but the Muslim League declared that “the mere fact that a Muslim person has taken a prominent part in the preparation of the scheme does not prove that it is not unsuited to the Muslims”.
– It is remarkable that the India’s National Policy on Education for the year 1968, 1988 and 2020 is drawn on the ideas contained in the Wardha Scheme of Basic National Education.

– The first education minister of independent India Shri Maulana Abul Kalam Azad tasked him to manage the leading the university of the country so that it could be retained as a national institution of higher education because it was observed that many big universities became the center of pro-Pakistan feeling and it was a threat to secular India.
– Between December 1948 and August 1949 he served as a member of the Universities Commission and work to restoring discipline, readmitted the students released from prison for involvement in Communist activism, took up the vacancies created by the departure of Muslim nationalists for Pakistan and also filled up vacant faculty positions with eminent academicians.
– In the year 1951 the Parliament enacted the Aligarh Muslim University (Amendment) Act bill which converted the university from a private aided university to an autonomous institution of the Government of India which will be fully maintained by the government.

Dr. Zakir Hussain as an author

– Dr. Zakir Husain wrote extensively in Urdu language and also translated several books into Urdu language such as National System of Economics of Friedrich List’s, Elements of Economics of Edwin Cannan’s and Republic of Plato.
– He also wrote extensively on educational books.
– He wrote several stories for children.
– In the year 1946 he delivered a series of lectures at the Delhi University.
– As President of India he headed a committee to celebrate the Ghalib Centenary in 1969 which recommended the establishment of the Ghalib Institute as a memorial to Ghalib whereas the Ghalib Academy in Delhi was inaugurated by Husain in 1969.

Death and His legacy

– Dr. Zakir Husain had suffered a mild heart attack earlier but he was unwell after returning to Delhi from a tour of Assam on 26 April 1969.
– He died in the Rashtrapati Bhavan on 3 May 1969 of a heart attack.
– Government of India declared thirteen days of national mourning.
– His body lay in state in the Durbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan where an estimated 200,000 people paid their tributes.
– The funeral was held on 5 May 1969.
– He was buried in the university campus of the Jamia Millia Islamia where his body was taken in a gun carriage in a ceremonial funeral procession and the national salute being offered.
– In the honour of Dr. Zakir Hussain many countries declared several days’ of mourning in their states like The United Arab Republic, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Nepal, Bhutan and Trinidad and Tobago.
– The Pakistan also declared mourned on to the death of Dr. Zakir Husain and the flags flew at half mast on the day of his funeral as well.
– Many of the foreign dignitaries come to India to attend his funeral including Air Marshal Malik Nur Khan, a personal representative of Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan.
– Up to a million people are thought to have lined the streets as the funeral cortege made its way to the burial ground.
– He was the first President to die in office and has served the shortest tenure in office.
– A tomb was built in Delhi at his burial place in 1971 which was designed by Habib Rahman and the graves of him along with his wife lie under the dome of the tomb.

Commemoration of Dr. Zakir Hussain

– In the year 1969 and 1998 the India Post had issued his commemorative postage stamps.
– In the year 1969 the Films Division of India produced a documentary film on the life of Dr. Zakir Husain named “A Rose Called Zakir Husain – A Life of Dedication”.
– In the year 1975 the Delhi College, a constituent college of the Delhi University, was renamed the Zakir Husain Delhi College.
– The Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Dr. Zakir Husain Central Library of the Jamia Millia Islamia are also named after him.
– The Wellesley Road of Delhi was renamed the Dr. Zakir Husain Marg.
– The Rose Garden in Chandigarh was renamed to Zakir Hussain Rose Garden, which is Asia’s largest rose garden.
– In the year 2000 a book was released on Zakir Husain by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations named “Dr. Zakir Hussain – Teacher who became President”

Honour and Awards received by Dr. Zakir Hussain

– In the year 1954 he was awarded with Padma Vibhushan.
– In the year 1963 he was awarded with Bharat Ratna (the highest civilian award of India).

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