First in India: Men and Women in Office, Science and Sport

First in India is the most profitable single chapter in static general knowledge. The facts never change, the questions run to one line, and SSC, Railway, Banking and State papers set two or three of them in every paper. These notes gather the firsts that actually appear: the first holders of constitutional office, the firsts in the armed forces, the firsts in science and space, the women who came first, and the firsts in sport and adventure. Learn them as pairs of office and name, and revise from the tables rather than the prose.

The first holders of high office

Independent India's first President was Dr. Rajendra Prasad, who is also the only person to have held the office for two full terms. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first Prime Minister and Dr. S. Radhakrishnan the first Vice-President. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was the first Home Minister and the first Deputy Prime Minister. The first Law Minister was Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, who had chaired the Drafting Committee of the Constitution; the first Finance Minister was R. K. Shanmukham Chetty and the first Education Minister was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Lord Mountbatten was the first Governor-General of independent India, and C. Rajagopalachari the first and last Indian to hold that post. G. V. Mavalankar was the first Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Sukumar Sen the first Chief Election Commissioner and Justice H. J. Kania the first Chief Justice of India. Dr. Zakir Husain was the first Muslim President and also the first President to die in office, while Morarji Desai was the first Prime Minister who did not belong to the Congress.

Firsts in the armed forces

General K. M. Cariappa was the first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, taking charge in 1949. Sam Manekshaw was the first officer promoted to the rank of Field Marshal, and Cariappa was given the same rank many years later. Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee was the first Indian Chief of the Air Staff and Vice Admiral R. D. Katari the first Indian Chief of the Naval Staff. The first winner of the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest wartime gallantry award, was Major Somnath Sharma, decorated after his death for the defence of the Srinagar airfield in 1947. Neerja Bhanot, the flight purser killed while protecting passengers during a hijacking, was the first woman to receive the Ashoka Chakra, the highest gallantry award for peacetime.

Firsts in science, space and learning

Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian, and the first Asian, to win a Nobel Prize, taking the 1913 prize for Literature for Gitanjali. C. V. Raman was the first Indian to win a Nobel Prize in a science, awarded the Physics prize in 1930 for the scattering effect that carries his name. Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 as an Indian citizen. Satyendranath Tagore, the poet's elder brother, was the first Indian to enter the Indian Civil Service, in 1863. Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma was the first Indian to travel into space, flying aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-11 in 1984. Vinoba Bhave was the first Indian to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award. The first Bharat Ratna awards, made in 1954, went to three men together: C. Rajagopalachari, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and C. V. Raman, and the first Jnanpith Award went to the Malayalam poet G. Sankara Kurup.

The women who came first

Pratibha Devisingh Patil was the first woman President of India, taking office in 2007, and Indira Gandhi was the first woman Prime Minister, from 1966. Sarojini Naidu became the first woman Governor of an Indian state, of Uttar Pradesh, and had earlier been the first Indian woman to preside over the Indian National Congress, at its Kanpur session in 1925; Annie Besant, in 1917, was the first woman of any nationality to hold that chair. Sucheta Kripalani was the first woman Chief Minister, again of Uttar Pradesh, and Meira Kumar the first woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Justice M. Fathima Beevi was the first woman judge of the Supreme Court of India and Justice Leila Seth the first woman Chief Justice of a High Court. Anna Rajam Malhotra was the first woman IAS officer and Kiran Bedi the first woman IPS officer. Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was the first woman to preside over the United Nations General Assembly. Indira Gandhi was the first woman to receive the Bharat Ratna and Ashapurna Devi the first woman to receive the Jnanpith Award.

Firsts in sport and adventure

K. D. Jadhav won India's first individual Olympic medal, a wrestling bronze at Helsinki in 1952, and Abhinav Bindra the first individual Olympic gold, in the ten-metre air rifle at Beijing in 2008. Karnam Malleswari became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal, a weightlifting bronze at Sydney in 2000. Viswanathan Anand was the first Indian to become a chess Grandmaster, in 1988. Tenzing Norgay, with Edmund Hillary, was the first person to stand on the summit of Mount Everest, in 1953; Captain Avtar Singh Cheema was the first member of an Indian expedition to reach it, in 1965, and Bachendri Pal the first Indian woman, in 1984. Mihir Sen was the first Indian to swim the English Channel, in 1958, and Arati Saha the first Indian woman to do so, in 1959. Reita Faria was the first Indian to be crowned Miss World and Sushmita Sen the first to be crowned Miss Universe. Bhanu Athaiya was the first Indian to win an Academy Award, for costume design in 1983.