Droupadi Murmu’s appointment as the first Indian President belonging to the Scheduled Tribes is being hailed all around as a triumph of the country’s fundamental tenets of inclusivity and equal opportunity. On 25 July 2017, when Ram Nath Kovind took oath as the 14th President of India, his Dalit identity was similarly drummed up, particularly by the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as an example of its commitment towards the backward castes.
It was felt that the appointment of Kovind, a former Supreme Court lawyer, Rajya Sabha member, and Governor of Bihar – and also a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) faithful – as head of state was a political masterstroke on the part of the ruling party. It was also seen as a step that would go a long way in mitigating the BJP’s anti-Dalit image – an image that had become reinforced by the furore over the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student at the University of Hyderabad, in 2016, and the flogging of several members of a Dalit family on the pretext of “cow protection” in Una in Gujarat the same year.