RASHTRAPATI

About:

• India has had a woman President earlier. The first time this happened, there was a minor debate on the proper way to address the Head of State, apparently because “Rashtrapati”, according to some people, has a “male” connotation.
• That debate died down soon, after it was agreed that in India’s constitutional scheme, words like Rashtrapati and Sabhapati (Speaker) are understood to be gender-neutral.
• Activists and feminists objected to expressions like “Rashtrapatni” and “Rashtramata”, saying the use of such terms for a constitutional post was “patriarchal” and “gender-biased”.
• Constitutional experts argued that the word Rashtrapati, which was finalised after discussions in the Constituent Assembly, should not be changed only because India had a woman President — because the word has no gender connotations; it’s simply that ‘President’ translates into Hindi as ‘Rashtrapati’.