The Presidential Quiz

A short quiz on past presidents and presidential elections

Rashtrapati Bhavan (https://rashtrapatisachivalaya.gov.in/rbtour/)

The good news is that my last review of the book, Can’t We Just Print More Money (see here), received a like on Twitter from one of the authors herself. However, nobody has responded to my request for references from Adam Smith showing that he elucidated the three functions of money. I, therefore, stand by William Stanley Jevons, as stated in my earlier post on CBDC (see here).

Presidential election

Some of you might remember that I ventured to make a few predictions as to who would be the next President of India (see here). Unfortunately, I was wide off the mark. They ended up with a candidate that I had not even considered. Maybe it passed my notice, but I did not pay attention. I vaguely remember a lady who was Governor for one term, but I did not give it a second thought. Looking back, I think I got bored and tired with my research and went with my instinct rather than sense.

At the same time, I feel that I was on the right track as far as the way the BJP might go about its selection and the criteria: an unrepresented State, several birds with one stone, disarming the Opposition as in the case of Abdul Kalam. Maybe even have Plan A and Plan B for almost every likely candidate the Opposition might consider. I will elaborate in one of the following posts along with answers to the Quiz below.

Presidential Quiz

I am keeping the questions short, given other timebound writing commitments and my increasing inability to sit for long hours at the table. I admit the questions are more on a few presidents. This bias reflects my limited knowledge or scarce publicly available information on others.

1. Which President of India was among the last few persons to meet Mahatma Gandhi before his assassination?

2. Who was the first President to be elected unopposed, even by one-minute-fame-seekers or footnote-claimants?

3. Which Indian President was a professor of economics in Calcutta?

4. Which former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India was the opposition candidate for the President of India? What was the significance of the election and the votes polled by him?

5. Where did Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan start his career? Don’t bother to look up Wikipedia. The information there is wrong.

6. Which eminent jurist did Giani Zail Singh defeat when he became the President of India?

7. Who was the oldest while assuming charge as the President of India?

8. Sarvepalli Gopal, in what is perhaps the most candid biography of one’s father, reveals this unusual fact about his father in the first paragraph. What was it?

9. Which President undertook only one official foreign visit during his one term of five years?

10. Apart from having one Malayali as President, Kerala produced three losers in a row. Who were they?

11. The first presidential candidate put up by the BJP-led NDA was, of course, APJ Abdul Kalam. So who was their candidate in the next election?

12. Who was the last Vice President to be elected President of India?

13. Who was the only President to have been born in Hyderabad? I mean Hyderabad, now in Telangana.

14. In his first election, Rajendra Prasad defeated this person who studied at the London School of Economics.

15. Which RBI Governor was the grandson of a former President of India?

16. Which President of India faced an allegation of plagiarism? He finally sued for defamation. And they settled the matter out of court.

17. Who was Governor of three states before becoming President of India?

18. Who were the only two Presidents to die in office?

19. Which President of India had a doctorate in Economics?

20. Which two presidents were on the Executive Board of the UNESCO, one of them even chairing it?

21. Who was the first President not cremated at the Raj Ghat premises?

22. Which President of India was the first High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon?

23. Who was the first former Union Minister to become the President of India?

24. According to his son Sarvepalli Gopal, what incident or series of incidents made his father, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a lifelong propounder of Hinduism?

25. Which First Lady, or wife of a former President, was the first to be of foreign origin?

26. Which President of India had a doctorate in law from the University of Cambridge?

27. Which President was the only one to die following a tragic road accident?

28. Which President of India signed the order declaring the Emergency in 1975?

29. Which President of India was finance minister twice, and that too 25 years apart?

30. What was the title of Rajendra Prasad’s book on the partition of India?

Note: No prizes, as most information is either well known or available in the public domain. Answers in one of my next posts.