Books by Presidents and Prime Ministers of India

India has been unusual among republics in the number of writers it has sent to its two highest offices. A philosopher who wrote on the Upanishads, a scientist who wrote about rockets and dreams, a poet, a novelist and a historian of his own country have all lived in Rashtrapati Bhavan or on Race Course Road. That is why book and author questions from this chapter appear in almost every general knowledge paper, and why they are worth learning as pairs rather than as biography. A question here never asks what a book says; it asks who wrote it.

The Presidents who wrote

Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President, wrote India Divided in 1946 on the partition question, Satyagraha in Champaran on the movement he took part in, and an autobiography, Atmakatha, written in Hindi during a term in prison. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President and himself a professor of philosophy, wrote Indian Philosophy in two volumes, The Hindu View of Life, An Idealist View of Life and The Philosophy of the Upanishads; Teachers' Day is observed on his birthday, 5 September. Dr. Zakir Husain, an educationist, wrote The Dynamic University. V. V. Giri, who came to the office from the trade union movement, wrote Jobs for Our Millions and Industrial Relations. Neelam Sanjiva Reddy left a memoir titled Without Fear or Favour, and R. Venkataraman wrote My Presidential Years, the standard account of a President working with unstable coalitions. K. R. Narayanan's essays and speeches were collected as Images and Insights.

Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's shelf

No holder of either office is asked about more often than the eleventh President. Wings of Fire, written with Arun Tiwari, is his autobiography and the single most quoted title in this chapter. India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium, written with Y. S. Rajan, set out a plan for a developed India. Ignited Minds, Indomitable Spirit, My Journey, Turning Points, Guiding Souls and Transcendence complete the list that examiners draw from.

The Prime Ministers who wrote

Jawaharlal Nehru is the most written-about writer of the two offices, and three of his books are asked again and again. An Autobiography, also published as Toward Freedom, was written in jail in the mid-1930s. Glimpses of World History is a set of letters written from prison to his daughter Indira, and The Discovery of India was written in 1944 in Ahmadnagar Fort; its Hindi version is Bharat Ki Khoj, and the television series Bharat Ek Khoj was based on it. Indira Gandhi's conversations were published as My Truth, and a volume of her writing on the country appeared as Eternal India. Morarji Desai wrote the autobiography The Story of My Life. P. V. Narasimha Rao wrote the novel The Insider and a book on the Ayodhya question. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a poet before he was a Prime Minister, published Meri Ekyavan Kavitayen, Kaidi Kavirai Ki Kundaliyan and Meri Sansadiya Yatra. I. K. Gujral wrote Matters of Discretion, Manmohan Singh began as an economist with India's Export Trends and the Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth, and Narendra Modi has written Exam Warriors for students, the essays in Jyotipunj and volumes of Gujarati poetry.

Pranab Mukherjee's trilogy

The thirteenth President wrote a three-part political memoir that is asked as a set: The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years, The Turbulent Years: 1980-1996 and The Coalition Years. He had earlier written on the economy in Beyond Survival, and a fourth volume of the memoir, The Presidential Years, appeared after his death.

How the question is set

Examiners build the four options out of people who held the same office or wrote in the same decade, so the safe method is to attach each title to one distinctive fact. India Divided belongs to the first President, and no one else. Wings of Fire is an autobiography, so it cannot belong to a writer describing someone else. The Insider is a novel, and only one Prime Minister wrote fiction. My Presidential Years names its own office in the title. Learn the pairs in both directions, because the paper asks the book as often as it asks the author.