For one who looks every inch a traditional and conservative Indian woman, the noticeably reticent Pratibha Patil has sparked a political tsunami even before stepping into the Rashtrapati Bhavan as India’s 13th president and its first woman in the post.

After four decades of a relatively uncontroversial public life, the long-time Congress loyalist will occupy the grand 340-room presidential palace on Raisina Hill following an unusually bitter home stretch.

And if the vitriolic attacks on her and her family are anything to go by, the 72-year-old woman, who likes to keep her head covered with her sari and wears a large bindi that married Indian women sport, has broken six decades of male monopoly over presidency.

However, her actions and words are sure to be constantly compared, at least in the first few months, to those of her hugely popular and amiable predecessor, A P J Abdul Kalam.

Enviable record
All this is surprising considering the fact that the Congress party veteran and a loyalist of the Nehru-Gandhi family was a non-controversial figure even though she has had a long innings in politics and holds an enviable record as a community worker-cum-politician from Maharashtra.

The announcement that the low profile Patil was to be catapulted from Rajasthan governor to becoming the presidential candidate of India’s ruling UPA first led to bemused reactions even as Congress President Sonia Gandhi called it an important milestone for women in the world’s largest democracy.

That quickly gave way to some dismay, mostly on account of a politician succeeding a scientist-president, and an ugly war of words unprecedented in the history of Indian presidential elections.

Allegations
While the mass of India watched the unfolding drama that she was anyway going to win, because the numbers were stacked in her favour, Patil did not help matters by keeping largely quiet on the allegations of financial impropriety, corruption and other irregularities.

Her alleged comments about her conversation with her dead guru, her reported — later denied — assessment of Islam’s connections to the female veil and the Left’s initial reluctance to back her, marred the campaign.
In the process, her remarkable rise from a humble home in Jalgaon, Maharashtra, all the way to the presidential palace, her unconventional young days when she became a table tennis champion, winning inter-college tournaments, and her academic and long political career as a Congress leader got pretty much overlooked.

Last laugh
Amid concerns that attacks on her were getting too personalised, the BJP even launched a website denouncing her. But in the end she had the last laugh, with the BJP’s oldest ally, the Shiv Sena, throwing its weight behind her on account of her Maharashtra origins.

Born in the small town of Jalgaon of Maharashtra on December 19, 1934, she was an athletic 13-year-old when India became independent. She studied in Jalgaon and Mumbai to earn postgraduate degrees in arts and law and practised as an advocate in Jalgaon.

Her father was a police prosecutor and she came from a relatively humble family, which did not claim any political connections. But from social work she jumped into Congress politics and was elected to the Maharashtra assembly in 1962 for the first time.

Pratibha Patil headed the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) from 1989-90.

Four decades and more after she stepped into politics, Pratibha Patil has become custodian of India’s highest office, capping a career that was mostly low profile except for the volatile home stretch of course.