Nationalist president on the move

New Indian Express

a day ago

All the president's mien matters. On June 30, the ancient city of Gorakhpur did not merely host the ceremonial arrival of India's President, but it bore witness to a deeper continuity. Beneath monsoon-laden skies, President Droupadi Murmu stepped into the sanctum of the Gorakhpur temple—the beating heart of the math presided over by Yogi Adityanath — not just for prayer, but to represent political will.
Her visit was not a routine gesture of the State, but a ritual of affirmation—of faith, of governance, and of the quiet revolution underway in India's moral geography. Murmu's presidency—like that of Rajendra Prasad walking barefoot into shrines post-independence, or APJ Abdul Kalam igniting young minds in forgotten towns—marks a rare alignment of constitutional stature and popular symbolism. The President's travels do not merely decorate the calendar. Instead, they re-map India's emotional and political terrain, bringing the margins into the nation's beating heart.
But hers is a presidency unlike few others'. In less than three years in office, she has spent 203 days travelling across the country. She has undertaken 110 trips, including 11 to her home state Odisha, and on other occasions to 34 other states and Union Territories—a record for any President. This is not ceremonial restlessness. It is a deliberate redrawing of the moral map of the republic, where forgotten towns, remote tribal regions, and small universities matter just as much as capital cities and international forums.
To appreciate the significance of Murmu's presidency, one must place it in the long shadow of her predecessors'. There have been presidents who inspired widely through intellect—Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who held forth on the Bhagavad Gita at Oxford, and Zakir Husain, who championed Hindustani culture and basic education. Others, like K R Narayanan, stood as constitutional purists, refusing to toe the line when India flirted with instability.
Even Kalam's travels, significant as they were, did not encompass the range or symbolism of Murmu's journeys. Where Kalam represented aspiration, Murmu embodies dignity reclaimed. Where Kalam reached towards the future, Murmu grounds herself in the soil of forgotten pasts: tribal pasts, feminine pasts, marginal pasts that the national narrative has too often edited out. From Karnataka to the Northeast, from Tamil Nadu to Telangana, from Kerala's convocation halls to the salt-swept coasts of Andhra Pradesh, her visits are not mere protocol; she undertakes pilgrimages of presence.