The Times

Ramaswamy Venkataraman belonged to the political elite of the old India, who earned respect and credibility by opposing British rule and going to jail for it — in his case, for more than two years. After independence in 1947, with Venkataraman prominent among them as a minister and coauthor of the Constitution, the revolutionary old guard set about creating its collective vision of a left-of-centre, democratic India.

For half a century Venkataraman was a stalwart of the Congress Party, the once unassailable party of Mahatma Gandhi and the independence movement. As President he had to deal with the chaotic political fallout of his party’s disgrace and fall from dominance, when weak and often corrupt coalition governments dragged India from crisis to crisis. Venkataraman steered the country through the political and economic mayhem, leaving its cherished democracy battered but sound.

In his five-year term he worked with four prime ministers, three of whom he appointed — Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Chandrashekhar and P. V. Narasimha Rao — amid the chaos of collapsing governments. India had never seen the like, and even he must have wondered at times if its democracy was tough enough to survive the criminals, caste bosses and satraps who were muscling into national politics and sullying its name.

Venkataraman was obliged to drag the presidency, a constitutional post with as-yet unused and ill-defined theoretical powers, into the heart of politics. Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace, found itself in the middle of several storms and Venkataraman was propelled from ceremonial head of state to the maker of prime ministers and governments. In less capable hands this unprecedented intervention into unknown territory might have undermined the presidency and destabilised democracy itself. Venkataraman emerged as something of a hero for helping to save the democracy he had helped to create.

There was never much doubt that Venkataraman, who had been a member of India’s first provisional Parliament after independence and had been elected in the first national polls, would win the presidential election. The country was in need of a stable presence at the top, and Venkataraman was almost universally seen as the man of the hour.

The electoral college of national and state legislators chose him by a landslide. He settled the question of presidential powers by declaring that no president could topple a prime minister who had a parliamentary majority, and set about taking the presidency back to the ceremonial role for which it was principally designed. That did not last long.

As governments came and went the presidency once more became ensnared in the sordid political machinations from which Venkataraman had been so determined to extricate it. He liked to describe the presidency as an “emergency light” that came on automatically when the normal flow of electricity was cut.

He was born into a middle-class lawyer’s family in Rajamadam, a village near Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu in southern India, and was educated locally before studying economics at Madras University and law at the Law College in Madras. He became embroiled in the independence movement and joined Mahatma Gandhi’s Quit India movement in 1942, for which he was jailed. After the Second World War he was engaged to defend Indian nationals accused by Britain of co-operating with the Japanese in South-East Asia.

He began specialising in labour law and founded several unions, including unions for plantation workers, railway and dock workers, and journalists. In 1949 he established the Labour Law Journal, which publishes important decisions pertaining to labour law and is acknowledged as a leading specialist publication. In 1951 he was enrolled into the Supreme Court.

As his reputation grew, so did calls to return to Tamil Nadu to help to combat some of the worst poverty in India. He did so, and for ten years headed several departments as a minister. He was responsible for industrialising the state by using government funds to open scores of industrial estates for the private and public sectors.

But national politics drew him back to Delhi in 1977 when he was elected to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) from a Madras constituency for the Congress Party, which had been ousted by an opposition coalition. He remained loyal to Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister disgraced for overturning democracy with her state of emergency in the mid-1970s. Many wondered at his loyalty, given that Mrs Gandhi had suspended the very Constitution he helped to draft as a member of the Constituent Assembly after independence.

He was rewarded with important Cabinet posts when she returned to power in 1980, including Finance Minister and Defence Minister. As Finance Minister in 1981 he negotiated the biggest loan given at the time by the International Monetary Fund — $5.8 billion. In 1984 Mrs Gandhi nominated him as Vice-President.

He was admitted to hospital on January 12 suffering from delirium and dehydration. After the deaths in recent years of Aden Abdullah Osman Daar of Somalia, Anthony Mamo of Malta and Gabriel Paris Gordillo of Colombia, Venkataraman could claim to be the world’s oldest living former head of state. Immediately after his death India declared seven days of mourning, flew flags at half mast and announced that he would receive a state funeral. It also cancelled all remaining events related to this year’s Republic Day celebrations.

He leaves a wife, Janaki, and three daughters.