A son of a "kazi", he was elected to the highest office, which he, or any member of the family could ever think of these pleasant incident is the pro… - Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed

As a Congressman he actively participated in the freedom movement...offered personal satyagraha in 1940 and was imprisoned for a year….Again in the Quit India Movement he was detained as a security prisoner for three and half years until April 1945.

He was very close to Jawaharlal Nehru. He could have joined the Central Cabinet much earlier but the Chief Minister of Assam, wanted him to work with him and resisted his going to the centre.

He was the president who proclaimed the two-year period of Emergency that marked such a difficult period in India's political history. This, and his subsequent death in office, marked him in public memory forever as the “Emergency President”.