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THE WEEK India
|September 07, 2025
Thomas Marshall, vice-president under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1921, once lamented: "Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice-president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again."
Vice-presidents of yore made no news—in India or the US. Who remembers S. Radhakrishnan or Zakir Husain as VPs? We remember their presidencies. How many remember G.S. Pathak? The job, as John Garner who was Franklin Roosevelt's veep from 1933 to 1941, said, was as "useful as a cow's fifth teeth".
No longer so. VPs make news these days. Look at J.D. Vance! He has emerged as Don Trump's hatchet man.
There used to be a pattern to the vice-presidency in India. The first three became president, the next three didn't, the three after them did, and the three who followed didn't. The pattern got broken when a fourth VP in a row, Venkaiah Naidu, missed the top job.
This story is from the September 07, 2025 edition of THE WEEK India.
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