Former Indian president Kocheril Raman Narayanan died in an army hospital on Wednesday, after being admitted almost two weeks ago with acute pneumonia, the Press Trust of India news agency said.
Narayanan, president for five years from July 1997, had been on life support since his admission to the hospital in New Delhi on October 29.
The 85-year-old former president was the first in India’s history from the Dalit group, the name adopted by those at the bottom of India’s caste system.
Throughout his tenure as president, he drew attention to the difficult conditions faced by lower-caste communities, tribal peoples, women and other groups facing discrimination in India.
In 1998, the United States House of Representatives honoured Narayanan with its Statesman of the Year award, citing his ”great respect for human rights in general, the rights of minorities in particular”.
Narayanan’s time in office was marked by one of the worst attacks against minority communities in the country in recent history, the 2002 riots that killed at least 2 000 Muslims in the western state of Gujarat.
Almost three years after leaving office, the sometimes-controversial figure openly criticised the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party for not doing more to quell the riots.
In a March 2005 interview to a monthly magazine that was widely publicised in the Indian press, the former president said he wanted the army sent to Gujarat in 2002.
Born in a small village in the southern state of Kerala, Narayanan started his career as a teacher and then became a journalist before joining the foreign service in 1949, working in Indian embassies in Britain, Japan, Myanmar and Vietnam.
He was also sent as ambassador to the US, a political appointment, after leaving the Indian foreign service.
Narayanan, educated in Britain, entered public life after retiring as India’s foreign secretary in 1978 and became president and commander of the nation’s armed forces 19 years later.
South Africa shares in India’s pain and sorrow during its time of bereavement, President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday in a message of condolence.
Mbeki fondly remembers the relations between South Africa and India during Narayanan’s tenure and which continued to grow from strength to strength, said Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa. — Sapa, AFP