Happy Indian Presidents Day, er, Happy Teachers Day!

India is a special country, where the first President and the first Vice President were teachers and doctorates, and that's not all! The first recipient of the highest civilian award, Bharat Ratna, was a teacher too - who incidentally served as the first Vice President and the President later.

It is not everyday that we realise that 6 out of the 16 Presidents of India were teachers at some point of time, and 6 others among them were associated with educational institutions and even help set up some!

1. Dr. Babu Rajendra Prasad taught English and later Economics. (Dr. Rajendra Prasad did his doctorate in Law later though and did not teach law though he practised it.)
2. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnayya taught Philosophy and his books are considered the best for the subject even today. 
3. Dr. Zakir Hussain founded the National Muslim University, which continues to this day as Jamia Milia Islamia and is also a doctorate who also served as the Vice Chancellor of Jamia Milia Islamia; the engineering college in Aligarh Muslim University is named after him. 
4. Dr. Mohammad Hidayatullah was not just a teacher of law but also served as the Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Chancellor, and Chancellor for five different universities in India and the National Law University at Naya Raipur is named after him! 
5. Dr. Fakruddin Ali Ahmed was an M.D. who also practised law (!) and has a Medical College named after him in Assam. 
6. Neelam Sanjiva Reddy was not an educator but was quite instrumental as the Deputy CM of AP in founding the Sree Venkateswara University and received the first Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the university. 
7. Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma was a Professor or Law. 
8. K.R. Narayanan taught at the Delhi School of Economics and later served as the Vice Chancellor of JNU. 
9. And then, we all know that one President who went back to teaching (at Anna University) after he moved out of the Rashtrapati Bhavan - Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam - and we do not care that he does not have an earned Ph.D. because he has a total of 48 honorary doctorates!! 
10. Pratibha Patil is not a teacher but ran educational institutions under the name "Vidya Bharati Shikshan Prasarak Mandal". 
11. Pranab Mukherjee taught Political Science for a while. 
12. Ramnath Kovind was a member of Board of Management (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University-Lakhnau) and Board of Governors (IIM-Kolkata). 

Happy Teachers' Day, and of course, it is the birthday of the first Vice President and one of the first three recipients of Bharat Ratna, Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnayya (a.k.a. Radhakrishnan) :-)  Incidentally, the other two recipients of the coveted award in 1954 along with Dr. Radhakrishnayya were C.V. Raman, who was also a teacher and C. Rajagopalachari who was the Minister for Education in the Interim Government of India (1946–'47) and was among the founders of the educational trust Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan which continues the legacy of running educational institutions even today! 

Sadly though, India is still not among the best education destinations in the world. Let's get inspired, at least now!